Mon. Sept 22 and Tues Sept 23 Runaway Weddings and the Romans

Another big travel day today, although we did manage to see quite a bit on the way. We set off for England again today, and it took us all day because of our stops. Tonight we are staying in Chester Moor, at a hotel called Church Mouse. It’s a pub and hotel both, so we had supper at the pub tonight. All over Great Britain one of the coolest things I’ve noticed is they have these really great signs at pubs/restaurants all over. The names themselves are fun – things like The Green King, The King’s Head, Robin Hood, The Red Lion, The Unicorn, George and the Dragon, and this one, Church Mouse. On the sign, they will have the name of the place and a picture of whatever it is. (except today we saw one called Robin Hood that had a picture of a rooster!) Some of them are really funny. Wish I’d been taking pictures of them all along – I’d have a really cool collection by now! Anyway, I WILL take a picture of the Church Mouse to show you.

When we got up this morning the sky was pretty cloudy, so it looked like we might actually get rain, but instead the sun broke out and shone brightly as we drove. It got cooler as the day went on, but we had beautiful sun, again, most of the day.

Mom and I were a little sad as we left Scotland. We saw and did as much as we could, but we really could have used another couple of days. We stopped just on the border at a place called Gretna Green. It’s a very interesting place – it’s a tourist stop built around a Blacksmith’s Shop. The shop was the site of “runaway weddings” since 1754. When someone wanted to run away and get married, but they lived in England, they could run away and get married at this shop because it was just across the border into Scotland – I guess the blacksmith was also a minister of some kind, or justice of the peace, or something. Now, people still go there to get married, and they have a restaurant, a whiskey shop, a food hall, a hotel, and souvenirs. It’s very touristy, but it was our last chance to check out something in Scotland, so we spent some time there. Right after that building, we were able to find a Welcome to Scotland sign that was on a smaller street so we could actually stop and get our picture taken with it – finally. While we were there, we ran over to the other side of the street to get the Welcome to England sign too, just for good measure!

Our next visit was to Hadrian’s Wall. The wall runs all over in Northumberland, England, and some of our ancestors came from that area, so it’s interesting to know that our ancestors would have seen the remains of this wall too – especially the part that we saw, which is over by Haltwhistle, the place where John Sharp was born and he and Sarah Pickering were married. We went in to see a video about the wall and the Romans who built it. What I found really interesting was that after the Romans lost power and the wall started disintegrating, local people used the stones from the wall for their own buildings, so stones from the wall went into homes, churches, abbeys, all kinds of buildings in the area. We wandered all over the ruins of the Roman fort in the Haltwhistle area, and I went a little farther than Mom wanted to walk, and looked over the top of the hill to the steep valley below. I wanted a picture of me sitting on Hadrian’s Wall, but none of the rest of them had come that far with me, so I had to learn to use the timer on my camera all of a sudden. I had 2 seconds to set the camera and get into place. (I’m sure I can set it for more, but I didn’t want to take the time to learn how) I managed, although I know I was not sitting all the way on the rock at the time this picture was snapped! I’m excited to get on the internet and learn more about Hadrian’s Wall – never paid much attention to it before.

We wandered all over little back streets today on our way, and were able to drive through Haltwhistle, Marley Hill, Newcastle on Tyne, and Waldridge, which are areas where our Gill and Sharp family names came from. More walking (or driving) where our ancestors once walked. Some of the towns are really big now, so they’re not even close to what our family members knew, but it’s fun to see anyway, and to see the names of places that have been just names on the family pedigree charts.

Mom’s had a fun day talking to people too. She’s had 2 different people tell her they loved to hear her accent! She thought that was funny! The first one was a young guy at the gas station, and he started asking her questions about being in Scotland just so he could hear her talk. She told them that she loved to hear their accents too.

We’ve had supper and we’re tired, the only internet service here at this hotel is a paid service, so we’ve decided I’ll just write this up tonight on Word again, and blog it when we get to Pam and Roger’s tonight. Sorry you had to wait a day. That also means I don’t get to chat with Herb again. Rats. So, goodnight from the Church Mouse, and we’ll let you know how things go tomorrow.

It's the next day now, and our day was completely uneventful, so we're going to include both days in this one. We drove all day - that's it. We left the hotel shortly after 9 this morning, stopped here and there for bathroom and tea stops, and got here about 4:15 and have just been kicking back. So, that's our day. Exciting, huh?