Driving North - Past Hadrian's Wall

After the International Anatomical Conference, we rented a car (A Morris Oxford) and drove up to Edinburgh.

Rented English car (Morris Oxford)

We thought all English women were very dominant in their marriages because they all sat on the left side of the car until we realized that the man sitting on the right was the driver. The thing I remember most about this trip was that we had a lot of trouble finding a place to eat lunch. We would stop at 11:30 and the place would not be serving until noon. We would stop an hour later and the place would be out of food because a bus load of people had just stopped and cleaned them out. We finally found a place with a catering license who could feed us out of regular hours.

street in small English town - chimneys

Bull and Swan Inn

We stayed in Ye Olde Bell Inn & Restaurant. We had a room which looked out on the road and there was a big garden. I don't know exactly where this place was in 1950 - there are a couple of places where it could be.

Bell Inn with my sister, my mother and me

In front of Bell Inn

Garden of Bell Inn

Snapdragons in the Bell Inn garden

We continued going north. We had a Royal Automobile Club tag on our car and there were periodic phone booths by the road for people to phone the Automobile Club if they had car trouble. There were also men on motorcycles who road around on the roads - troubleshooters for the Auto Club. There were two kinds - one just AA and the other RAA.

Roadside phones

Auto Club Trouble Shooter

2 auto club trouble shooters

On this part of the trip we stopped by where they were having an auction,

Stockyard auction

Stockyard auction

old castle in town with auction

Inn sign

Poppys

and we also stopped to see (and my sister and I went out and stood on) Hadrian's Wall. I did not really appreciate the significance of this at the time.

over moors Roman wall

Hadrian's Roman wall

stone wall with flowers

It was begun in AD 122 in the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrianand runs from near the North Sea to the Irish Sea. It was meant, I think, to keep the hordes in the north at bay - similar to the Great Wall of China, but shorter. It was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987 (37 years after our visit). Apparently there is a path close to the wall now which can be followed on foot. I remembered that it was the boundary between England and Scotland but it isn't.

Border of Scotland

I think it was about here that we had trouble finding accommodation for the night. We finally found a place which had only three single beds. My parents took one bed and my sister had one bed and I had another bed. It was really chilly at night (even in July) and of course there was no central heating. I had so many blankets on the bed to keep warm that I couldn't even turn over.