Travelling DOs & DON'Ts

Newcastle, Old Wall

Since I’m here doing a travel blog, it seems like I should be giving a bit of travel advice based on our trials and tribulations. But giving advice about travel implies that I know something about how you travel and what you’re interests are. Therefore I have to make certain assumptions that are beyond my specific set of interests and travel styles.

LET’S ASSUME that you, my average reader, has a greater than average interest in the Roman Empire. Pretty safe assumption, no?
LET’S ASSUME that you’re traveling to Scotland from somewhere in England, (not the specific album Somewhere In England, that would be silly). Ok, let’s say York. But it wouldn’t HAVE to be York, just because that’s where I happened to be traveling from, it can be any English city with a rich and well preserved history of occupation by Roman Forces. It could have been Bath, for example.
But it wasn’t, it was York.
LET’S ALSO ASSUME that you’ve dismissed the necessity of doing a thorough examination of Hadrian’s Wall* in light of already having seen a good amount of Romance ruins.
However, LET’s FURTHER make the ASSUMPTION, that in your travel up to Edinburgh from York, you have a good number of extra hours to kill, since you’re being hosted in Edinburgh by an old high school friend of your girlfriend, and she works a regular job and wouldn’t be able to begin really hosting you until the evening anyway. So we’ll CONTINUE to FURTHER ASSUME that you were able to find an internet hotspot in the Newcastle train station and find the most likely, most appropriate museum featuring the remains and layout of a Roman supply fort and excavated section of Hadrian’s Wall**

So this hypothetical is a good start for a typical traveler, right? You can see yourself in that position? Good! Here are a few DO’s and DON’Ts for that very common situation:

DON’T forget to check the closing time of said museum. Many outdoor attractions run by the British National Trust *** close at 3 pm before April. You can TELL them that there’s plenty of daylight left, but they won’t keep the museum open for you.

DO look up some info on the Newcastle Metro line and figure out how to NOT do a huge circle around the entire coast of England before visiting “Wallsend”. I thoroughly believe that the solution to this problem lies in boarding from a platform different from the one we utilized, but that’s as specific as my advice gets.

DON’T forget to eat lunch at a nameless**** café next to the Wallsend Metro station with an Italian design theme. No worries. Despite the theme, the Jacket Potatoes are thoroughly English.

DO ignore your assumption that the attendant closing up the shop to the museum simply MUST have a good idea of where to take a walk and see the best local bit of Hadrian’s Wall *****

DON’T feel overwhelmed by your sense of anti-climax when you find the five foot long piece of wall which apparently had even been moved from it’s original location and subsequently replaced for reasons which aren’t made clear by the informational plaque.

DO ogle the ridiculously huge shipbuilding cranes in the Wallsend Ship Yard.

And most importantly DON’T
This one is important: DO NOT be afraid to engage the rough looking, barely understandable Newcastle Dockworker ****** walking his rough looking pit bull. He’s full of useful information including the fact that those huge cranes you’re ogling have recently been sold to Korea, and will be disassembled by a still larger crane. Oh, and by the way, there’s a much better section of wall ******* one can see through a National Trust ******** gate.

I hope this section of DO’s and DON’Ts will be helpful to yo along your travels. If you go abroad, and have more than an average interest in the Roman Empire, and you find yourself with a few hours to kill on your way from England to Scotland, You might find this handy. *********

NOTES
--------------------------
* Hadrian’s wall was an actual stone barrier, commissioned by the Emperor Hadrian to effectively define Roman Britain from the Scottish North. It lies somewhat south from the modern Scottish border and was actually less to defend against attack than it was to control immigration into the Roman Empire. Much like the Arizona / Texas Mexican border fence today.
Not too long after Hadrian, the Roman Empire stretched further north, annoyed by their own barrier which immediately became irrelevant. Much like the Arizona / Texas Mexican border fence will be when the U.S. invades and conquers the small part of Mexico it neglected back in the Spanish-American War.

** This is really the same “Hadrian’s Wall” note as above and really should have had just one “*”. I just wanted to seem smarter by requiring multiple footnotes.

*** I can’t see or write the phrase “National Trust” without having “Happiness is a Warm Gun” stuck in my head for a while. If you’re a White Album fan, hopefully I’ve done that to you now too:
…”a soap impression of his wife which he ate
and donated to the National Trust”

**** Nameless only because I’ve forgotten the name.

***** See note **

******He LOOKED like a Dockworker, but I’m making an assumption. For all I know, he might have been a doctor or Librarian.******/*

******* See Note *****

********See note ***

********* No you mighten’t.

******/* No he mighten’t have.