The host at the Bed & Breakfast also worked as a tour guide and was invaluable in helping us schedule our time to enable us to see the better sections of Hadrian's Wall. Without his help, we probably wouldn't have seen any of the wall and would have missed our train to London. As it was, the schedule was pretty tight.

Hadrian's wall is reputed to be the largest single engineering project ever undertaken by the Roman Empire. During their occupation of England, they failed to conquer the northern tribes on the island. (These were the Celts and the Picts, who later became the Scots.) The northern hoards kept attacking from the north and so Emperor Hadrian gave the approval to build a fortified wall across the entire width of England, near the northern boarder. The wall was 4 meters tall, had a huge ditch in front of it and had watch towers every mile, plus full fortresses along its length.

Now, the wall is hardly still standing, with the best sections only being 1 to 2 meters in height.

On the recommendation of our host, we caught an early bus to the fort at Birdoswald. Birdoswald is one of the Roman forts and stands near some of the better sections of the remaining wall. It's also one of the more recent excavations and therefore has been conducted in a more scientific fashion. A museum on the premises also tells of the construction of the wall and life as a Roman soldier.

The remains of he wall hardly do justice to the feat of engineering it must have been. The fort itself is nothing but some foundations, and the wall would easily pass as a stone barricade thrown up by the sheep farmers to keep the flocks in.

The fort is situated in a pleasant bit of countryside and it was nice to stroll around till it came time for our return bus to Carlisle. At one point, we got to watch some sheep dogs in action, herding a flock of sheep. I can always marvel at how much smarter other peoples' dogs can be than mine.

Most of the rest of the day was spent returning to London. We checked back into the same Bed & Breakfast we used before, having already got the lay of the land.

We returned to Piccadilly Circus that evening and I began buying souvenirs in earnest. We had been unable to carry much on the rest for the trip because our luggage was to the bursting point, but we had brought a duffel bag to fill with stuff for the return trip and it was time to start filing it.

After some shopping, we headed to Leicester Square, which was awash with people. Apparently this is an entertainment area, with lots of theatres, restaurants and clubs. We escaped the area just in time as the coppers were arriving to break up what promised to be a big fight brewing in the square.

That night, I got the depressed "my vacation is over feeling" that I usually get the day I'm back home. The difference is, when I'm back home I also have a "it's good to be home feeling" which was absent It was quite depressing. I decided that I would always recommend Scotland over England as a vacation destination from that day forward.