Tuesday, August 26

The day started with a visit to the Dryburgh Abbey ruins - located right next door to our hotel. Founded in the twelfth century, not much remains of the Abbey.  It is best known as the burial place of Sir Walter Scott, a Scottish novelist, poet and historian.

Next we visited the ruins of Jedburgh Abbey and took a walk around the town of Jedburgh visiting a few antique shops.  Jedburgh Abbey was also founded in the twelfth century and is considered one of the best preserved abbeys along the Scottish/English border.  Its Abbey Church remains intact.  The cemetery had a few interesting headstones and there was an exhibit about the stone masons who built the Abbey. We found some good examples of the stone masons' work in a doorway arch.

We then drove on into England and left Scotland behind.

Our next destination was the Housesteads Roman Fort. This is Britain's most complete Roman Fort.  The fort is not the oldest the Roman's built in the region but is the one that was established to build Hadrian's Wall.  The wall was built around AD 122 and extends 73 miles across northern England from the Irish Sea to the North Sea.  One wall of the fort also served as part of Hadrian's Wall.  Next to the site is the only area of the wall that you can walk on.  It was a bit of a walk up to the site through an area with grazing sheep.

We ended the day at a B&B on a working farm. The farm has a breed of sheep known as the Bluefaced Leicester.