More on Hadrian's Wall

Hi Everyone,

Sorry we've been away for almost 2 weeks, I've been finishing up the last two weeks of my first module at school (it's hard to believe that 6 weeks are almost over), and Kristin had one of her weekend shifts last weekend, so we were hustling around quite a bit, and didn't have time to write another post.

Kristin captured much of the glamour of Hadrian's Wall.  Incredible to stand along it's side, seeing the fallen ruins, or parts of the forts still buried under the Earth and to think of how much has changed since those stones were set in place.  The entire modern era, world wars, the industrial revolution, the enlightenment, modern thought, the greatest institutes of education of the day, the dark ages, even entire dynasties and eras have risen and fallen while those stones still stand in place.

Long smooth outer walls, impenetrable for advancing
armies, with a rabble core

While I stood beside the wall I also marvelled at how the outside face of the wall, still after nearly 2000 years remains an abrupt face, nearly perfectly vertical with very few outcroppings, or places where one could manage so much as a hand-hold.  The centre however, as we were able to now see, is all but a rubble, a pile of stones remaining that are mortared together for strength, but which appear to have been placed with little concern or thought.  A few examples to show are below.  The second photo is one of the only places that we saw in which natural forces (in this case the ground uplift at some point over the ages caused the wall to topple over).

The wall was tipped by the uplift of the ground

Another example of the different stones inside and outside of the wall

"Hey Sir, don't you think the sheer rock cliff should be enough to keep the northerners at bay, do we really have to build the wall straight up"?
"Yes"

Kristin and I were both marvelling at some of the ingenuity and thought that went into each and every one of the forts.  In Roman times, all of the forts would be built to the exact same standards and dimensions, so the soldiers knew exactly how to construct camp every night.  All of the forts that we saw included such luxuries as heated floors, a bath house, complete with hot, medium and cool areas, and a very advanced waste system to keep pee and poop downstream of the camp.  We didn't see any examples that were preserved of aquiducts to supply the forts, but saw mention in several places that they were likely in place to supply water to the soldiers.

As was long ago promised, I have also uploaded the audio I captured while we were in the Priory.  It was built around 1200-1300, and has stood in some form or another ever since, including through various attempts to destroy it.  

While we were in the sanctuary, the choir was warming up for a service set to begin in an hour.  I sat down and managed to catch the recording you can hear below.  

Singing in the Priory - You may have to save this and play it on VLC or another media player.  My phone used a strange file type to make the file.

Straighter than you would think possible 2000 years ago

The oldest grave stone I found at the Priory

A look from inside the chapel out to the abandoned back half

Ancient Roman Poo Troughs

Ancient Roman Five Fingers

Speaking of the Romans, we are off to Venice tomorrow morning for a four day weekend to see the city.  We have a gondola trip booked, entrance to a glass blowing museum, and a number of other historical sites to visit.  Stay tuned for more photos.

Hadrian's Wall

We spent this weekend up at Hadrian's Wall and at some other ruins in the north of England. It's one thing to think about a wall across the entire country (the northern extent of the Roman Empire around the 170's AD), but to see the workmanship, and width of it, and the landscape it travels through, and all of the milecastles and manpower that went into it was something else!

 

We walked along several kilometers of the wall (some people will go on week-long walking journeys coast to coast!). We visited several forts and ruins of old Roman milecastles and turrets, and were lucky to have wonderful weather (nicer than in many parts of Canada this weekend, we hear!)

Justin wondered if these sheep know they're eating inside the ruins of 1800 year old army barracks. The sheep had no comment.

Along the way, Justin was delighted to find that he has long-lost Roman engineer ancestors.

We also visited a semi-ruined priory in the same area. It was built by taking stones from the ruins of the wall in the 1100's or so (this was common - and why the wall is no longer 15-20 feet tall as it is thought to have been) and even all these years later, it was incredible to see.

"...and the rest..."
(See less ornate inscription in the darker stone below)

This was one of my favourite displays. The cross outside which had been carved in Latin for the church in 1214 (the bottom half) was knocked down and used to build a child's gravestone in the graveyard. The top inscription reads "... who was buried ye 20 July 1657 2d yere of his age."  They later found this piece of stone being used for a barn in the area. No one ever accused the Brits of being poor recyclers!

 To break up the drive home, we stopped in Manchester. We had sushi at this neat place with a moving conveyor belt of food items. It made dinner feel like a game show! The two-person lift to the bathrooms upstairs helped maintain this atmosphere.

And now it's time for bed. Tomorrow we're going to try and figure out how to post the audio file we took today - anyone ever heard 13th century church acoustics?

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

This is going to be posted in Canada just as most of you will be digging into a perfectly roasted Turkey, with mashed potatoes, veggies, and gravy, oh so much gravy.  So we wanted to wish everyone a very Happy Canadian Thanksgiving.

We were super lucky this year, that one of Whitney's friends, Robyn, and her girlfriend Whitney (it's a little confusing), are located just North of London, and made sure that this weekend would not pass without having a turkey roasted and shared with good friends.  We're so lucky that we were included in their Canadian Thanksgiving plans.

Thanksgiving Table, decorated and ready.  Including red, orange and yellow foil maple leaf decorations from Ontario.  Thanks Ron and Kerry.

Sooo delicious.  

The meal was fantastic, and the company really great.  We had 5 Canadians, two Brits, a Spaniard, an Israeli and an Irish.  If we didn't drive on the wrong side of the road to get there, it might have just as well been in Canada.

Our Thanksgiving Gang.  Thanks Robyn and Whitney for pulling it together.

And a goofy one

As we went around mentioning what we were thankful, I was reminded about the unspoken tradition in Canada, that if you know someone who doesn't have a Thanksgiving dinner to go to, you bring them home with you.  I can't count the number of times we've had a friend or colleague of one of my cousins come in for the Thanksgiving meal with us.  It reminded me of one of the best things about being Canadian, the sense of community and importance of involving not just family, but friends, far and wide in your important celebrations.  I was very thankful to have friends who believed it was important to include us in their celebration.

The rest of last week went by in a bit of a blur.  I'm getting regular coursework now, and Kristin's job is starting to settle into a normal routine, so we didn't have much exciting going on to share.  However last Wednesday night, we did go out to a try-a-dive with the SCUBA club on campus.  They offer a certification course and practice dives throughout the year for a ridiculously low price.  Both Kristin and I are signing up, me to get certified, and her to get re-certified.  Kristin was a bit surprised by how quickly they moved here.  To make sure you're going to be ok going through the practice, they let you try out a dive in the swimming pool.  This entailed about 90 seconds of instruction, and in the pool you go.  Floating ok, fins comfortable, alright, underwater we go.  We both got about 10 minutes to swim around on the bottom of the pool before the next novices got their turn to try out.  It was a surreal feeling, but I enjoyed it, and we're looking forward to doing the course work and training on Wednesday nights until Christmas.  We'll have our open water certification in the spring.

Kris is asking me to post the latest fun food from the UK.

For your consideration as you dig into a Turkey dinner, there are surely some poor students in the UK eating this tonight:

On that lovely note.  Enjoy your Turkey.  We're sad we're not there, but are sending our love.  At least we're thankful we can communicate easily enough to send that message to everyone.

GO JAYS

A Pretty Fine Weekend

Kris and I took this past weekend as a bit of a rest and rejuvenate from a busy week; it was the end of my first full week of classes, and Kris' second week of work.  The fun surprise this week was her coworker fell ill with a chest infection and was in bed recuperating for most of the week.  Unfortunately, that left Kristin running around, as she puts it "like a one armed poster hanger".  She managed well and everyone at the clinic recognized how hard she was working and the great job she was doing.

Last Saturday night we ventured out to the next town over, Nottingham.  To set it in perspective, if they were to build a bypass to get from A to B faster, while completely ignoring those who live at C, which is located right between A and B.  A is Leicester, B would be Nottingham, and Loughborough is the lowly C.   Definitely the smaller sibling of most of it's neighbours, all except Quorn, but that's getting ahead of myself.

So we headed off to Nottingham, because a little known band from a small Ontario town was playing that night.  We found ourselves in the middle of about 500 energetic fans of Walk Off The Earth.  They played a great set, to a very appreciative crowd.  They really are as talented live as they appear in their videos.  They played many of their original hits, but also several really well done covers, and, in an homage to the bit that made them famous, a mashup played as 5 guys on 1 guitar.

Without any pushing or fighting, we were able to have these seats

It was fun to see a super talented Canadian band outside of Canada, where their popularity is just starting to grow.

We only managed to get ourselves lost twice on the way home, stupid GPS telling us to go to the middle of a nothing road called Ashby, rather than, oh I don't know Ashby Road, where we live and have searched a dozen and a half fricken times.  Alas it was a scenic detour, and we had little to do on Sunday.

Sunday we managed some running around and tidying up of the apartment before we finally set off to have our first British Sunday Roast to the lovely village of Quorn (In the Bypass illustration this would be D, a place that no one from A, B or C would ever have interest in getting to quickly).  The pub was established sometime around 1750, and has been operating in some capacity ever since.  The town is quite small, but quaint to walk around, and has a few decent geocaches we were able to locate before we sat down for dinner.

Kristin was content with just roast beef, but for just 60 pence more, you could have all four meats that were on offer that night, so my pate included roast beef, ham, lamb, roast pork, and for unknown bonus, a really tasty sausage.
The yorkies were as large as our head, and Kris is even washing hers down with a local Cider.  After 5 years, I'm finally making headway on the beer front with her.

One other joy we had on Sunday, while at the Grocery store (it's like the US here, where booze is sold in the grocery store), I came across something I haven't seen since the 6th of September, and have been searching for ever since.

While normally I'd be most excited about the scotch, in this case the notable thing in the above picture is the tiny can of Ginger Ale.  Scheweppes no less.  It's not quite a Rye and Ginger, but finally setting my hand on a ginger ale for the first time in a month, I'll just have to accept a blended scotch as my 'bar spirit'.

Now that we're getting into a more normal rhythm, we've also started to look at options for future travel.  This coming weekend, we'll be celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving with Robyn and Whitney (her gf, not my sister) in London.  The following weekend we hope to drive up to the Lake District and tour Hadrian's Wall, and at the end of October, we're going to Venice for our anniversary.
No guarantees the mid-week posts will be more exciting than the daily grind, but we have a few adventures planned for the rest of the month.
Stay tuned.

Miss you all

Justin & Kristin

Wake me up when September ends...

Update from me - I'm still alive! It's been a trying week but things are improving.

When I took my job, there were a lot of promises - namely a permanent partner to work with, long hours of 9-7 but a dedicated lunch hour, training from the outgoing vet in generalities of the practice as well as certain things that were new to me (the increased emphasis on exotics and small mammals especially), etc.

That all sounds great! Until 1.25 days into the training, when the outgoing vet walked out of the practice while I was performing a surgery and didn't come back for her evening of appointments and rechecks, leaving me to flounder about. And then my partner got sick with a chest infection and was ordered off work. And everybody and their mother needed a refill, appointment, or surgery for the same day and I learned to hate the sound of the clinic phones.

I had the same sandwich in my lunch bag three days in a row. I did 5 surgeries (only one of which was a cat neuter) plus 2 other sedations yesterday (in my 11-3 surgery and "lunch" slot), and have never had less than 2 surgeries per day. Without considering my commute (supposed to be 20 minutes each way, closer to 40 minutes in the morning and 25 minutes in the evening) I am pulling 10.5 to 11 hour days, without any breaks. They wanted me to do 10 minute appointments - I've dialed back to 20 minutes with multiple 'catch-up' breaks through the day. Yesterday I was in the clinic alone and grossed 2150 BSP - 1500 BSP per day is considered standard for two vets.

I don't know why the universe felt I needed this little kick in the ass. Combined with the annoying bureaucracy of moving, culture shock, exhaustion from packing and travel, and fun things like a screw in my car tire ("tyre") it's been a rough week.

Justin's been great at emotional support, picking up the slack, making all of the meals, and keeping it together. And today I had time to eat a sandwich, finally make a list of the pharmacy so I can start memorizing the different drug names (and all of the hormonal drugs), AND I got out nearly on-time!

I guess we're starting off with a bang. And a trial by fire means that hopefully the rest of the year will seem easy in comparison. And my surgical skills are going to be "well sorted" (aka mad tight, yo) by the end of the year.

But at the same time, I'm not sad that it's October now. September 2015 (or at least the last week and a half of it) can suck it.