Are You Sad Because You’re On Your Own?: UK 2023, Day 04

On the last night of this trip, we four friends sat at dinner and chatted amiably about the week that was. Lisa and I broke out one of our go-to icebreakers between the two of us – what was your favorite part of the week? Lisa and our friends each recalled favorite moments, or locations, or times spent out together. Very lovely thoughts one and all, and it was fun to go over them again even as fresh as they are. My answer? I gave a little self-deprecating and entirely true preamble before saying “I’m just glad that after 10 years of telling the same story over and over again, Vindolanda didn’t disappoint y’all when you finally saw it.” Yeah, I live in my head more than you might realize. Eat your heart out, Quentin Tarantino, I’m time-jumping this thing like scriptwriting Evel Knievel. Explain, you say? But of course.

Many moons ago, when we were newly-wed, Lisa and I covered much of this ground on our honeymoon. “The story” that has been told over and over is that we first went to Housesteads for the morning and then made for Vindolanda, a site only minutes away. Lisa, however, was absolutely exhausted. When we pulled into the carpark for the Vindolanda Archaeological site it was… well, modest. A tidy little building flanked by a tall screen of trees that didn’t really do more than hint at there being anything behind them. She weighed that first impression against her heavy eyelids and told me that I should go on, she would take a nap. (If you don’t know, this is nigh-unto apocalyptic, for my bride does not engage in naps as a rule.) I of course told her that was fine, grabbed her camera, and made for the building.

One enters the modest premises now and then to be greeted by a little ticket-selling/ticket-taking counter, and past that there’s a nice table model along the lines of “what Vindolanda looked like back then!”, with little audio recordings you can queue up with spotlights indicating the different buildings being described. Cute. So then it’s through a door, where there are a couple of little statues presumably recovered on the site, and then you ascend a hill . . . and SEE IT.

Vindolanda is huge.

No, really. It’s an enormous archaeological site, bigger than anything we’ve seen outside of Italy; not that we’re all-time world travelers but we’ve seen a few things. Imagine expecting to see a dozen buildings or so like you had just seen an hour earlier, only to be confronting a town bigger than most of the ones we stayed in during our visit. (Ok, they’re more like villages, but still.) On that first visit I was gobsmacked. I barely took in the scope of it, never mind the details, and that was before I saw the museum. Oh yes, the museum. As the story goes, when the fort was decommissioned and the Romans moved on, some clerk or other was tasked with gathering up all the accumulated documents on site and setting fire to them. Near as anyone can tell, the pile was gathered and a fire was lit, but probably the weather sucked (safe bet) and the man in charge said “enh, good enough” and left. The fire quickly went out, the pile was left to be swamped by time and tide, and nearly 2000 years sitting in an anerobic swamp meant that the documents were remarkably well preserved. One of the best finds anywhere, up to and including Italy. I took all of this in during a scant two hours, about the longest I was comfortable leaving Lisa alone in the car. Returning to the car, she woke up but was still so groggy that we just decided there was no point trying to rev her up to take the whole thing on. For the first of what has been many many occasions we said “next time!” and moved on.

And so it came to pass that eleven or so years later “next time” finally arrived. The site is, unsurprisingly, much the same, but not entirely. Vindolanda is an active dig site, so groups of volunteers cycle in and out every couple of weeks. Newbies/rank amateurs who want to help out clearly start on “dirt duty”, digging out top soil and filler and wheelbarrowing it away; there’s a lot of that action going on. Folks with more experience get to dig near where the cool stuff is, before giving way to supervisors who are vetted to actual handle the good stuff. Watching this in action is always fun, and it reminds me how lucky we are to visit places like this multiple times. To paint the picture with a little more detail, Vindolanda was a fort but, having been in place for quite a long time, a significant civilian infrastructure grew up around it. So, you have formal military structures with barracks, latrines, stables and so on, but then outside of the walls you have the much more informal day-to-day life. Again, all of this remains only in bits and pieces; most foundations don’t get above your knees. Still, seeing the remains of such a robust fortification is just magnificent.

On the far side of the fort from the entrance point, and down a long set of stairs, is an old house that has been converted into the gift shop, cafe, and museum. The museum is more than just an afterthought like at some places (I didn’t even bother describing the museum at Housesteads, it’s about the size of a modest living room), since the weather and other conditions made so much recoverable. Just to be clear, much the walls there isn’t much still around in what you’d call “good shape”, but after 1800+ years the fact that you’ve got clothing, armor, and even correspondence in any condition whatsoever is a near-miracle. The museum has numerous good examples of the remains of the fort and is absolutely worth your time. And bonus tip – if you’re planning a day of these sites up in the Borders then Vindolanda is probably a good place to plan your lunch break. Not the food is “great” but it’s more substantial than your usual sandwich-and-chips fare, with nice outdoor seating to let you catch your breath.