old by the less than helpful salesperson at Great Western that I am not allowed to break my journey in London as planned, but can only do this on the way back (Clause 6, paragraph 9 of the Pointless Restrictions Charter), I am faced with the task of making a very long journey in one day.

That said, the journey was very smooth, with no hiccups - for once. The GNER train did in fact make the journey from London to Newcastle in a little over 3 hours, which is very good.(Far be it for me to say nice things about a privatised rail company - they did inherit a decent line in the first place after all. The fact that they haven't managed to ruin it yet is hardly high praise.) In the course of the journey I managed to read The New Scientist magazine and the Guardian from cover to cover (you may call me a pretentious snob if you wish), consumed a British Rail polystyrene burger, gazed blankly out of the window for long periods, and picked up The Economist briefly before deciding that it was far too right wing, and would only make me cross and ruin my holiday. All in all quite a pleasant journey, apart from the two school kids I had to sit next to on the Exeter - London leg. About fourteen, they prattled on endlessly about buying mini discs, and the relative de-merits of their teachers. Trying to figure out who they reminded me of, I came to the devastating realisation that it was me at fourteen. I therefore turned up my music and looked out of the window again.

Unfortunately, having made it to Hexham on a rickety old train which was constantly in danger of pulling itself apart, it proceeded to start raining. I made it to my B & B by taxi and luckily it cleared up later on.

I settled into my B & B, run by a nice lady called Janet Ellsworth. Like all northern people I've found, she took a little while to warm to me, but in the end we got on very well. With only two rooms, and a very open plan house, it was more like living in someone's home than in a B & B as I have experienced them before. I also had made the assumption that there would be somewhere to eat nearby, as I didn't have a car at this point. This was wrong, but thankfully Mrs Ellsworth offered to cook for me that evening, and explained that it would be included the next evening anyway, as part of the excursion I had booked. I should explain here that Mrs Ellsworth runs a B & B, but also organises heritage tours of Hadrian's Wall with another man named Michael, who lectures at Newcastle University. These tours were my reason for being here. I had booked a full days tour on the following day - Thursday, and a half day for Friday. I would pick up the hire car on the Friday afternoon, to return on Tuesday morning.

Although we had planned to get going by 9.30. Michael was a bit late arriving from Newcastle, and we were further delayed by a call from my car hire agency asking me to confirm my booking, that I had made some weeks before hand. They also informed me of a completely different price from the one I had been quoted on the 'phone originally. What a mess.

We finally got going some time after ten, and went straight to Chesters, a Roman cavalry fort. The most interesting thing about this place is probably the little museum that goes with it. It is packed with gravestones, memorial plaques, altars and so on, almost piled on top of one another, in that peculiar Victorian