Today we checked out of the Grand to move on closer to the England/Scotland border and our next hotel Maften Hall. Check out went smoothly and we loaded up the bus for our longest ride of the trip. Or was the longest planned of the trip but last nights return from Howard Castle was surprisingly long.

We had a few talks including Alison discussing her new book about Mary Bolyn and her children and Tracy discussing William the Conquerer’s taking control of the north. Thankfully we also had time for a long nap.

Our first stop was Hexham and the Hexham Abbey. Hexham is a nice little town with the Abbey right in the middle. The Abbey survived both Henry’s dissolution and Cromwell’s reformation. The thoughts are that it was just too far from London for anyone to make the effort to destroy the art and also the village bought the abbey and turned it into their village church and practiced Henry’s new religion.

The abbey had painted quire and knave screens. These also preached morality by showing gaming and laziness leading to hell and the devil and godly living getting you to heaven. The devils in these paintings have more a nightmare before Christmas look than real devils or monsters. Kind of sock puppet like. I did not know they had dice in the medieval time but they look just like dice today.

The church also had a crypt that we could go down into. Nothing down there but it was somewhat creepy. Also it looked like they just used odd and end stones there were carved stones in the middle of the walls that didn’t match anything around it. They also still had the night stairs that the monks would come down for night prayers. Generally when the abbeys were removed the stairs vanished during some update or another. However they survived here. We also got to sneak into the old storeroom where they held the gold and silver sacraments. What that showed was how thick the walls of the church are.

We walked around the town a bit but not too exciting. We grabbed a ham sandwich in butcher shop and ate it in the park beside the church. Other than the beginning of the trip and then Saturday we have had beautiful weather. Chilly enough for a scarf or sweater but sunny. Weather we seldom have at home.

We left Hexham for Hadrians Wall and the Chester’s Roman Fort. The wall sadly not that impressive as Julian said it is no Great Wall of china but I was quite surprised with all the building ruins in the area. The Roman’s built forts along the walls to patrol the border. Where we were was a Calvary unit. You could make out the layout of the barracks, the officer quarters the gates and the baths. You could see where the water flowed through and where the gates were placed. We did have the opportunity to sit on the wall. Which was surprisingly pretty cool.

There was also a small museum attached to the fort where basically they had pillars, markers and other statuary along with small things they had found at the site. It was all just kind of crammed in a room. It reminded me of the old natural history museum attached to Harvard but not as extensive.

After the Wall we headed to our hotel the Maften Hall. It is a beautiful country manor hotel out in the middle of nowhere. There is a nice golf course, bars and restaurants so it is a nice place for a retreat. Our room is lovely with a view of the gardens and I nice large bathroom. It will be nice to be here for a few days.

We had a nice dinner at the hotel and Tracy spoke over coffee about Thomas Cromwell. We sat with Sarah and discussed her current book and what she is working on and various other topics. It was a good night.