Time for a wee break.
It’s been a busy, and sometimes eventful, summer and we needed a break.
Lisabet donned her sleuth attire and found us a few deals, one of which was here: Chollerford in Northumberland.
Chollerford’s a tiny little village, just a few miles north of bonny Hexham, and consequently not far at all from Hadrian’s Wall. Near the B6318, a stone cross marks the site of the Battle of Heavenfield (633/634 CE), where Oswald of Bernicia’s Northumbrian army confronted Cadwallon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd’s Welsh troops.
Just down the river from the village one can find the impressive ruins of Chester’s Bridge Abutment. The east abutment at Chesters is a surviving part of a large road bridge built around 160 CE. It carried the Military Way (the road following Hadrian’s Wall) over the River North Tyne. Across the river from the abutment is Chester’s Roman Fort, known as CILURNUM or CILURVUM, one of the best-preserved Roman cavalry forts in Britain.
Light conditions could’ve been better, and I was still recovering from a sprained ankle, but it was a lovely and much needed break.
All photos taken on my Sony α7ii using my Sony 24-240mm F3.5-6.3 OSS zoom lens. RAWs developed and edited in Capture One, edited and finalised in Affinity Photo.
Chollerford Bridge from the grounds of The George Hotel, where we were staying. It was built in 1785 by Robert Mylne after the previous bridge had been swept away in the great floods of 1771. This older one was, in turn, constructed to replace an earlier medieval bridge.
This is the ruins of the tower that was attached to the eastern abutment of Chesters Bridge. Isn’t it crazy to think that, 2,000 years ago, people from Rome travelled thousands of miles, made it to our little island, crossed north through the country, and then built this?
Lying on the abutment you can also find a stone column from the old bridge. People carved this. Two thousand years ago.
This is the “Stone Park”, near the abutment. These stone blocks were recovered during the excavation of the site in the 1980s.
The site in all its summery glory. The river used to come right up to the tower, but in the intervening 2,000 years it’s moved west about 60-odd feet, leaving these ruins dry.