September 11th, 2006 Day 3 and Remembrance

On this day we headed out from Carlisle, England. We had stayed at a very quaint hotel that night. They had a couple of cats running around down on the main floor and while I was down there working on blogging and downloading one of them jumped up on my lap and snuggled down there while I typed. It made me miss my beautiful Fia immensely. Shout out to Hyla and JennO for taking care of her and giving her lovin while I am gone. So anyway, as I said we headed out from there and stopped at Hadrian’s Wall. This is a stone wall that is built on the fault line of where Scotland and England came together when the Panacea broke apart. It is amazing. They built it by hand and at some places it was more than six feet high and six feet wide. For the most part now the stones have been filched by local farms for use in their own fences. There are sheep and stone fences everywhere.















Oh a couple of things I have learned here. Any place name that starts with Kirk/Kil usually means that it has a church located in the town, so Kilmarnock is church of marnock. Dun/Dum means fortress, Dumbarton-Fortress of Barton and Pit comes from the Pictish decent of the people living there. If the place is known as a Hamlet it has no church if it is a village it does have a church.

The portion of Hadrian’s wall that we saw had a small milecastle located there. And that is exactly what it was, a castle located a mile from the last. There are two milecastles between the next fortress. Thus every fortress could supply the milecastles and the milecastles could supply the lines. A pretty ingenius plan if you ask me :-). The fortress here is known as Housesteads fortress and as you can see it is only a foundation of what it used to be.

After this we finally crossed back over into Scotland and being the quinticential tourist I got my picture taken at the rock that declared I was in Scotland. :-) What can I say!!! :-)

(okay here we go again the site is giving me problems with the picture downloading)

Then we made a short stopover and WC pause at a place called Jedburgh. Here is a picture of the beautiful but ruined Jedburgh Abbey. It was quite beautiful.

Then it was on to Abbotsford House, the home of Sir Walter Scott, author of Waverly, Rob Roy and many other wonderful novels and poems. I forgot to take pictures of the inside except for my favorite room the library. In his one library he had over a thousand books in the second one he had well over 7,000. I think I have found my new “idol” ;-).

While there, in the gift shop I found a scarf that I had really been wanting and it was on sale because it had a defect. However I can’t find the defect and I am the proud owner of a cashmere scarf in the tartan of Princess Diana of Wales, Memorial. I can’t wait to wear it. It is very beautiful and will go well with my navy peacoat. Here it is with some heather.

Back on the road again we, reached Edinburgh by 2:30pm. Grandmum and I napped all afternoon and then hit the local pub for dinner. Then it was back to the hotel and we passed out for quite some time. Well at least she did. I fell asleep and then, oh the frustration, my Grandmum snores quite loudly and consistently. I have not yet had a full nights sleep. If I beat her to sleep I usually get about three hours before she starts snoring. I mean her snoring is so loud that I can’t even get my iPod up loud enough to cover it. I try to turn it up loud enough that it is soothing to me and covers her as well as I cover my head with a pillow. It just doesn’t work. Any of you reading who care, please pray that I will get some sleep each night. I am starting to get exhausted. Don’t get me wrong, I love being here with my Grandmum. Anyway…

As for it being September 11th, you don't notice it near as much here. I saw one brief thing on the bbc in the morning regarding the fact that Bush had visited all three sites of the attack but that was it. I know that I was thinking about it and how glad I was that I wasn't in the Pentagon that day. I still relive that horrific attack everytime a plane flies over where I work to land at Reagan. For those of you who don't know I work two corridors down from where the plane hit the Pentagon. When those planes fly over to land at Reagan I get chills up and down my spine and I can see the visual images as if they were happening all over again.

I know that I for one will forever remember September 11th, 2001 as a day that will live in Infamy much like December 7th, 1941. Many people lost their lives that day and many more since then. GOD bless America and the Men and Women who fight for her freedom daily.