It feels like my blog is becoming more and more history orientated, although I'm not a historian, I do like to let my imagination run wild with the history of England.
In this post I visited Chester's Fort, part of Hadrian's Wall, built 1900 years or so ago, I'm always interested in Roman Britain, I just wish that some of the buildings were more intact than they are, but beggars can't be choosers (as they say).
One of the reasons we decided to visit the fort on the way home was due to some roadworks around the Newcastle area, it caused a bit of delay when we headed up, so we thought we'd go cross country and get on the A1 much lower down, bypassing the hold ups around Newcastle.
The fort sits on the North Tyne River and is now an idyllic location. The river is lovely and clear, there was once an old Roman bridge that spanned the river here, sadly no longer.
(Part of the bath house and changing rooms)
The Romans had a 300 year reign in Britain, Hadrian visited in 122AD and ordered the building of Hadrian's Wall, this was to keep the Scottish out as the Roman's thought the Scottish were Barbarians.
The wall was 80 miles from coast to coast, with forts on parts of it as well as river crossings etc.
It's such a great place to visit, especially with the Grade 2 listed museum, full of artefacts that have been found during the excavation of the wall.
Wondering around is great, although there's only really the foundations left, and it made me think as to how small the door ways were, obviously people were also much smaller back then, we would probably be considered giants.
The English Heritage staff are absolutely fantastic, sadly I didn't get the mans name, but he gave me lots of insights into the history of the fort and how to get on the river etc.
I had to be quick with the camera as a couple of coaches full of American tourists stopped at the fort, and didn't want to get that many people on my shots. Although avoiding people in the shots was hard to do anyways due to the amount of visitors the fort gets.
There is a lot more here than meets the eye, as you wonder around, you think you have seen everything, until you notice little paths snaking off in all directions, these paths lead to other parts of the fort, I can only imagine how big it actually was when it was built.
If you have notice, I have done a couple of shots with me in them, I did use my 360 camera on some of these, I really do love the effect, especially the little planets that you can create.
I'm sure this fort must be haunted, I had my camera stuff on me all the way around, kept my lens cap in my back pocket as I usually do, anyhow, as I was packing my stuff up, my lens cap had vanished, even though I'd not taken it out of the pocket, I'd like to believe it was a pick pocket ghost, but as normal thinking comes in to mind, I'll have lost it, my memory isn't what it used to be now days lol.
If my geography Hadrians Wall also runs near Sycamore Gap, a place I yearn to photograph with the milkyway in shot too, I'm just waiting for the right time etc.
A big thank you if you have made it this far down the page, all shots done using a Sony A7iii and a Ricoh Theta S (an oldy) 360 camera.
I hope you've enjoyed this post.
All the best :-)