We woke to steady drizzle interspersed with heavy downpours and the weather forecast said it would rain all day, but be dry tomorrow. We gave in and picked up our books and spent a couple of hours escaping!
Some time later, the sky had brightened, so we thought we’d venture out and see how we got on. On our way back to the main road, we stopped to take photos of the clouds, the hills and the sheep and just admire the huge landscape all around us.
We had been too tired yesterday to take much notice, but the road had crossed Hadrian’s Wall to reach the farm. Today we stopped and took a closer look, walked a short way along the wall and took a selfie with the star of the trip!
Emperor Hadrian came to Britain in 122 CE and, in the words of his biographer, ‘was the first to build a wall, 80 miles long, to separate the Romans from the barbarians.’ At every mile of the wall, a castle guarded a gate, and two turrets stood between each castle. In today’s measurements, it is 73 miles, from Carlisle to Newcastle and quite a lot remains, being celebrated next year with the 1900 Festival.
We drove to Housesteads Roman Fort, known as Vercovicium to the Romans and the best preserved of all 16 forts on the Wall. It’s location and the clarity of its excavations make it the most must see stop on the wall. The name Housesteads comes from the farm, built in the centre of the fort in 1604 and home of the Armstrongs, a notorious family of border reivers, well known horse thieves and cattle rustlers, but more about the reivers later.
In Roman times, the fort was occupied for around 280 years by up to 900 auxiliary soldiers and for much of that time there was also a vicus or civilian settlement just outside the walls. This helped meet the everyday needs of the soldiers, with houses, shops and inns and also fields to grow crops and raise livestock.
We walked from the car park up to the fort and looked round the museum, fortunately during another downpour, and noticed they they couldn’t resist a Game of Thrones reference, just as we couldn’t!
The ruins were extensive and easily recognisable as barracks …
… granaries …
… latrines …
… and also a bake house built into the outer wall.
I also noticed a novel in the shop called the Eagle of the Ninth Chronicles by Rosemary Sutcliffe which Chris remembered reading at school and I resolved to download it when I could.
We were getting peckish and decided to grab a sandwich in the local pub, so we drove to Once Brewed, a village on Hadrian’s Wall, today consisting of an inn, a couple of farms and the The Sill National Discovery Centre and Youth Hostel. But it hasn’t always been thus …
Once upon a time there was a village northwest of Hexham called Twice Brewed with an inn, a couple farms and a stretch of road first laid down in 1751. The inn was, and still is, called the Twice Brewed Inn, and there are several stories about how it got its name, mostly about soldiers complaining about weak beer and demanding it be brewed again as it lacked fighting strength, or that this inn generally served stronger ale, hence twice brewed. Of course the inn is also situated between the brows or ‘brews’ of two hills … take your pick!
In 1934, the first Youth Hostel in England was built just beside the Twice Brewed Inn and it was opened by Lady Trevelyan, a staunch teetotaller. In her speech she mentioned the inn and said ‘Of course there will be no alcohol served on these premises so I hope the tea and coffee will only be brewed once.’ Henceforth the hostel became known as the Once Brewed Youth Hostel and when the Northumberland National Park Centre was built on the same site in the late 1960s, it was also christened ‘Once Brewed’.
Someone, at some point, either visited or heard about the village, and thought the name of the youth hostel meant ‘the youth hostel of the village Once Brewed’ and at that point Twice Brewed vanished from official maps. Now the description of the village on Google Maps or Wikipedia says ‘Once Brewed, also known as Twice Brewed or Once Brewed/Twice Brewed is a village in Northumberland, England’, but on the actual map it only says Once Brewed.
Nevertheless, one fact is definite: ‘Once Brewed’ is only called ‘Once Brewed’ because it’s next door to ‘Twice Brewed!’
Fortunately we located it with no trouble, took full advantage of the wifi and thoroughly enjoyed our lunch – my blt was delicious!
We drove back through the nearest village called Haltwhistle, but the rain was coming down again and they obviously have that quaint custom of half day closing on a Saturday so the place was deserted and we’ll come back another day.
Back at Hope Sike with a cuppa, I escaped to Roman Britain with my new book, an adventure starting in Silchester then north, over the wall in search of the lost standard of the ninth legion, stopping briefly to heat up some chilli. Fortunately, it is a trilogy as I managed to finish the first book before bed!
Off Travelling Together 