Another Brick In The Wall

I have just returned from a short vacation, and so I am out of WoW stories for the moment, having not played for 5 days. My little excursion involved taking the family to a remote lake just south of the Scottish Borders and north of Hadrian's Wall.

Hadrian's Wall is something that fills me with great pleasure and great sadness. The wall in case you are unfamiliar with British History was commissioned as part of Emperor Hadrian's strategy to preserve the outer edges of the mighty Roman empire. The wall was 80 Roman miles long and stretched from the East Coast at Wallsend to the West Coast near Carlise.

For anyone hoping to find a British version of the Great Wall of China, I am afraid you will be terribly disappointed. Much of the wall was recycled and used in nearby farm buildings and the military road that was built to move troops quickly to crush the Jacobite insurrection.

The joy for me comes in the huge engineering feat to create a wall spanning 80 miles across rough terrain and it is a solid reminder of the influence of the Roman civilisation over the British Isles. The sadness comes from the sad state the ruins are in and a wish that we could have witnessed the spectacle of the wall at full height stretching and winding across the barren countryside.

The fate of Hadrian's Wall also mirrors my feelings towards Stonehenge. As wonderful a spectacle the stone circle is, I wonder why it is that we can not build a full sized replica of the what the stones would have looked like in the completed form. Made from fibreglass which visitors can touch and explore as opposed to the seclusion zone that currently surrounds the original site for most of the year.