Maiden castle
I went here yesterday - http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/newsletter/issue17/maiden_c.JPG
Sadly I did not take a camera :( I have been there before but it amazes me still. It really is a work of art & I imagined it being a Horde stronghold with big spiked wooden stockade style walls being raided by Vespasians legions as the alliance. Took us 4 hours to walk (and meander lol) around the inner ramparts which are huge!! How they took this place we shall never know but it must of been a good fight with the Celtic tribe Durotriges http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durotriges . The intricate entrance ways are devilish in their construction & from the ground you really cant tell which way you are going.
Then we visited here *blushing ladies look away now* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerne_Abbas_giant . Check the Homer Simpson thing!! Got the Pagans in a bit of a spin lol :)
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I live relatively close to the Uffington White Horse and have been to see a few hill forts and barrows, but mostly you come across them when walking the downs or the Ridgeway etc.
This weekend Im taking my youngest boy to the roman silchester Excavation open day - if the weathers good www.silchester.reading.ac.uk
We are so lucky to have this history here in Britain, Chunder. So many castles/places to explore! I always get lost in imagining what it would be like to defend or attack such places. I mean how on Earth would you attack http://www.castlewales.com/caerphil.html ?? Certainly not through the front door(s) lol! Military muscle is almost nothing here. Its more about starving them out to force surrender. Or have 10,000 archers with unlimited arrows lol :)
Have fun at Silchester with your young'un :)
You hire the Irish to be meat shields :)
Ah the lure of the Kings purse to be sure! Back in (certain) Medieval times we had more "hired hands" than than regular English troops. From Germany, France, Holland, Ireland & further afield they came. All for the coinage :)
Very cool! That Homer is hysterical!
Living here in the US we have nothing. Like, I get impressed if a house was built in the 1920's, and that is antique for us. Meanwhile, when I went to Italy the bar I got plastered in was older than the United States. It felt so wierd that this (if it was in the US it would have been a musuem) was a place that I was ordering shots and dancing, etc.
That is just so fabulous. When I visited the UK many, many years ago I was struck by the age of places. You could sit on a crumbled wall, half overgrown by grass and could feel the ages flowing past you. It's wondrous knowing that a few hundred years ago somebody carved that rock and placed it, living in a world that is so much different to our own. And there was always something eldritch about those places, an almost otherworldly sense of peace and quiet. And then you step into a cathedral, or even the ruins of one and you can really feel the holiness of those places. You are lucky, having that heritage on your front doorstep. I am very, very jealous.
Oh c'mon Tan! You can't say that the New Zealand town of Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu provides none of those same heritage feelings!
P.S. That town is now in a radio commercial for Mountain Dew in the US.
The grass is always greener at the neighbours. I am from the Netherlands, and although we don't have many ancient buildings like the Britons (Holland / Germany was all swamps and forests, and especially Holland was mostly water, that's what made us a bit famous (God created the world, except holland, which was created by the Dutch etc) but it doesn't allow old buildings to survive.. But still we can buy houses in Amsterdam or farms in the country that date back to 1500-1600. And live in them. And we have some Roman ruins as they have been in our south from about 0-400 AD
The dark side of this is, that our countries , with their hundreds , or even thousands years of history have been totally completely worked over by generations of people.. there is (almost) no tree in Holland that isn't planned.. every strip of land is cultivated.. only when absolutely nobody can make an economic use of some land, it's allowed to get ' nature' , but even our so called natural areas, are cultivated nature for tourists and the local people .... There is just not a single piece of rough wilderniss...
So WE envy you... you the 'babarians' from the young world... with your 'pathetic' 100-200 years of history... you still have vast areas of wild lands.. Middle Earth....
Very interesting read. Always cool to hear the perspectives of different cultures!
Qwertius; I went cycling in holland once. I have never seen such long, straight, flat roads. It was hell!!! Its okay cycling on "normal" roads, but when you can see the road right to the horizon and know it doesnt even end there its purgatory.
Even so I have to say its such a different country to experience than the UK and it has some of the most beautiful scenery to watch as you slowly pass by.