Being the day before the Ides of May, in the 2,763rd year after the founding of Rome, during the consulship of Silvio Berlusconi (Friday, 14th May, 2010)
My dread of oversleeping the five o’ clock train to London, and thereby the six fifteen to Newcastle, and thereby the whole expedition, proves unfounded, and I arrive at the grand Central Station at half past nine, bleary-eyed, but happy. Unlike Hutton, who for his six-week journey carried only Camden’s ‘Britannia’, maps, paper, ink and an umbrella, I am overburdened with clothes, medicine, toiletries, food, wine and the old boy’s book, which, being out of print, was only available as a heavy, bound facsimile.
I take the metro train to the hostel in Jesmond, drop off my rucksack, put map and lunch into a shoulder bag and set out for the nearby Hancock Museum. I find it quickly enough, a fact which I read as an ill omen. In my experience, long journeys never begin this easily, but for the time being at least all is well. The museum, having recently consolidated Newcastle’s major collections, is a delight. A special treat for me is the fifty-foot-long model of Hadrian’s Wall, with every fort, milecastle, turret, bridge, hill and river represented in miniature. I pace along it fascinated, imagining a tiny model of myself struggling up hill and down dale at six inches an hour.
The permanent exhibition contains many of the most important finds from the Wall and the northern forts. The tombstones and altars, the treasured memorials of provincial soldiers and officials, are touching in their simplicity, but also dramatic and striking. No pretensions of urban sophistication here: their devotions to wives, daughters and gods come from the heart. The large altar of Mithras from Housesteads bursts with action and energy, the head of the god Antenociticus glares mysteriously and an official’s wife still stands proudly on her gravestone in her humble provincial dress after eighteen centuries. The loss of their brightly coloured paint, in my opinion, only increases their dignity.
A short walk takes me to the metro station in Haymarket and the train to South Shields. Over the River Tyne and along its south bank, the modern urban transport glides, a synthesized voice announcing ‘doors closing’ at each station. We pass through Jarrow and a station called ‘Bede’, named to honour the venerable old monk who was born ‘ad murum’ (in no village in particular, but ‘by the wall’) in around 673 and who kept the embers of civilization glowing in the Dark Ages, while the rest of the island thought about nothing but its next meal. He gave us in his histories our second native (the first being from another monk, Gildas), but first reasonably objective account of Hadrian’s Wall. I’ve planned a brief stop later at the nearby monastery, St. Paul’s, where he lived and worked and where the church’s dedication slab from the year 685 still bears its inscription in Latin. Interesting how quick the English immigrants to these parts were to adopt those aspects of the language and culture of their predecessors which suited their purposes.
I sit at the back of the train, looking straight down the tracks as we trundle into South Shields on the coast. There’s another half a mile or so on foot through the little Geordie holiday paradise and over a hill looking out across the harbour and what Hutton called the ‘German Ocean’. All journeys begin and end with the sea, so let mine begin here at Arbeia, the ‘fort of the Arabs’, probably named after the ‘Tigris boatmen’ stationed here on the edge of the vast Roman world, two thousand miles from home, seventeen centuries ago.
My dread of oversleeping the five o’ clock train to London, and thereby the six fifteen to Newcastle, and thereby the whole expedition, proves unfounded, and I arrive at the grand Central Station at half past nine, bleary-eyed, but happy. Unlike Hutton, who for his six-week journey carried only Camden’s ‘Britannia’, maps, paper, ink and an umbrella, I am overburdened with clothes, medicine, toiletries, food, wine and the old boy’s book, which, being out of print, was only available as a heavy, bound facsimile.
I take the metro train to the hostel in Jesmond, drop off my rucksack, put map and lunch into a shoulder bag and set out for the nearby Hancock Museum. I find it quickly enough, a fact which I read as an ill omen. In my experience, long journeys never begin this easily, but for the time being at least all is well. The museum, having recently consolidated Newcastle’s major collections, is a delight. A special treat for me is the fifty-foot-long model of Hadrian’s Wall, with every fort, milecastle, turret, bridge, hill and river represented in miniature. I pace along it fascinated, imagining a tiny model of myself struggling up hill and down dale at six inches an hour.
The permanent exhibition contains many of the most important finds from the Wall and the northern forts. The tombstones and altars, the treasured memorials of provincial soldiers and officials, are touching in their simplicity, but also dramatic and striking. No pretensions of urban sophistication here: their devotions to wives, daughters and gods come from the heart. The large altar of Mithras from Housesteads bursts with action and energy, the head of the god Antenociticus glares mysteriously and an official’s wife still stands proudly on her gravestone in her humble provincial dress after eighteen centuries. The loss of their brightly coloured paint, in my opinion, only increases their dignity.
A short walk takes me to the metro station in Haymarket and the train to South Shields. Over the River Tyne and along its south bank, the modern urban transport glides, a synthesized voice announcing ‘doors closing’ at each station. We pass through Jarrow and a station called ‘Bede’, named to honour the venerable old monk who was born ‘ad murum’ (in no village in particular, but ‘by the wall’) in around 673 and who kept the embers of civilization glowing in the Dark Ages, while the rest of the island thought about nothing but its next meal. He gave us in his histories our second native (the first being from another monk, Gildas), but first reasonably objective account of Hadrian’s Wall. I’ve planned a brief stop later at the nearby monastery, St. Paul’s, where he lived and worked and where the church’s dedication slab from the year 685 still bears its inscription in Latin. Interesting how quick the English immigrants to these parts were to adopt those aspects of the language and culture of their predecessors which suited their purposes.
I sit at the back of the train, looking straight down the tracks as we trundle into South Shields on the coast. There’s another half a mile or so on foot through the little Geordie holiday paradise and over a hill looking out across the harbour and what Hutton called the ‘German Ocean’. All journeys begin and end with the sea, so let mine begin here at Arbeia, the ‘fort of the Arabs’, probably named after the ‘Tigris boatmen’ stationed here on the edge of the vast Roman world, two thousand miles from home, seventeen centuries ago.
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