Hadrians wall

I took a train to Carlisle on Friday then went a bit further upland and inland to the Birdoswald centre on Hadrian's wall. It is a fairly grand courtyard farm that was built inside a Roman fort and, much more recently, converted into a visitor and study centre. Here, a number of other drystone wallers and I took a few steps toward becoming instructors. I also took a few steps along the wall and around the fort this morning. The cold wind that blew all Saturday was gone leaving a pleasant and warm day. The rough block of the Roman masonry was regimented into long lines unbroken by risers (those stones that rise above the line of a course), like a long string of words without a breath. Its quicker to build with block so perhaps I am being a bit unkind. This was a frontier after all, with a huge workforce of soldier-masons erecting forts of standard buildings. Like the buildings of burger chains, they were substantially similar across continents, visible signs of some external but enormous power.