Sycamore
Hadrian's Wall was built under the instructions of the Roman emperor Hadrian. It stretched from The North Sea in the east to to the Solway Firth in the west, covering some eighty four miles. It marked the very edge of The Roman Empire and was also intended to keep out unwanted visitors and warriors from the land we now call Scotland. The wall rises and falls, clinging to the landscape in terrain that remains challenging to this day. It was an ambitious project that took around six years to complete but it did not function as intended for very many years. After Hadrian's death a new but less imposing wall was built further north called The Antonine Wall. I remind myself at this point that when I sat down to create this blogpost, I did not intend to write a potted history of Hadrian's Wall. That is just background context for my reflections upon a beautiful sycamore tree that hugged the wall at a point where the base geology had formed a significant dip in the land. ...