Chester's Fort and Durham

Okay, so maybe one more post about Spring Break . . . I had forgotten about the things we managed to see and do on the way home! We decided to divide the drive home into two days because if there is any way to avoid eight straight hours in the car we're on board. Jared found a hotel in Durham where we could spend the night and only two kids had to sleep on the floor. Before we made it to the hotel there were a couple of stops to be made. 

First we stopped for lunch in Jedburgh, a lovely town just ten miles from the border with England. We walked around until we found someplace to eat, finally settling on Simply Scottish, a little cafe with the best burgers we've had since arriving in Britain. After a little while at a playground, we loaded back up and set out for Chester's Roman Fort, the most complete Roman cavalry fort in Britain. It was a beautiful sunny day, almost too warm and sunny to be running around the ruins of a Roman fort, but there was a scavenger hunt to complete! We can officially check Hadrian's Wall off of our list of things to see and do in England.

There were six of these little stones hidden in the different areas of the fort. The goal was to be the first to find them and make a crayon rubbing at each stone. It got a little rowdy because competition does tend to bring out the worst in some of us. We may have been the stereotypical loud and obnoxious Americans for part of our time at Chester's Fort.

I think I remember visiting this site as a child when I was about the same age as Natalie? The bath house area was probably the most interesting and certainly the most complete part of the remains of the fort. 

Once we found all six stones it was back on the road and on to our hotel in Durham. We got checked in, Jared parked in one the amazingly small parking spaces we're becoming more and more accustomed to (if I remember correctly he had to climb out of the back of the car?), and then we decided to explore the town. 

What better way to get to know a new area than by just walking around and stopping to explore anything that looks cool? That strategy is what led us to Escape Room Durham. We had an hour to find the key that would unlock the door and release us from Mr. Borrowdale's Study and we managed to solve the puzzles to find the key with only minutes to spare. We couldn't have done it without the clues that would occasionally pop up on a screen in the room. There's no way we could have done it without those clues letting us know if we were on the right track or nudging us in a different direction when we were overthinking things. It was fun, it was something I think we'd do again, it was a lesson in the importance of working together! We wrapped up our evening in Durham with a rousing game of red rover and a picnic of Subway sandwiches in the shadow of the Durham Cathedral.  

That night we did some searching and found a meetinghouse nearby so we could attend Sacrament meeting. It was kind of surprising to see that there wasn't a ward in Durham - we ended up driving about thirty minutes to get to the closest ward. Visiting different wards is one thing I love about traveling, but we sometimes feel bad when we walk into a small ward like the one we went to this time. You can see the excitement and hope in the member's eyes as soon as we walk into the chapel trailing our kids behind us. A new family! With kids! We had at least four different people come talk with us and ask us if we were new to the area. The best part was when the bishop came over, shook our hands, and then asked an entirely different question - could any of us play the piano? I confessed that I could play and was grateful that the hymns that day were familiar. 

As much fun as we'd had on our vacation, it felt good to pull into the driveway of our home that evening. Sleeping in our own beds, wifi that connects automatically, and room to spread out are things that just can't be appreciated enough. The girls have requested somewhere warm next year for Spring Break. Maybe I'll be writing about sunny days by the shore a year from now!

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