Roman Ruins Part I

We finally found ourselves some Roman Ruins today, in the form of the Roman Fortress located at Caerleon in Wales. That's pronounced "Kayleen" for those who aren't local. We actually had trouble finding Caerleon, bypassing it entirely and ending up in Raglan, thanks to a fantastic motorway with virtually no exits.

We travelled down picturesque backroads to get to Caerleon by 4.30pm yesterday and decided a snooze was the order of the day. Alan, our host, booked us into The Red Lion (not the same pub as The Red Lion in Avebury) for dinner, and we were treated to a delicious roast chicken dinner. It's arguably the best meal we've had in England.

Mark will probably say more about the ruins, but I'll say something about the Roman candles, used by the Romans to light life in general, nearly two thouand years ago. The candles were made with tallow - animal fat - and the volunteers who run the Fortress Museum in Caerleon had a go at making tallow candles themselves. The said it was very smelly business. Imagine what it was like sitting in a room totally lit by tallow candles? Pee-yew!

Which brings me to the smell of Caerleon itself. It was a mixture of farm animal poo and spew - we heard lots of young lads out on the piss last night, singing their heads off in Welsh, and by the smell of things this morning, spews their guts up too. Even more odd was the smell of the area around the Roman Ampitheatre, which is the only one of its kind in Britain. The smell was pungent, and dare I say putrid. But I couldn't see any reason for this. There was no sheep poo, no piles of fresh spew - that's just how the ground smelled.

Now we are in Glastonbury, and the pervading smell is incense - it's hippie town. We are sitting in a falaffel bar typing - that's how hippish it is here. The Halays would be totally at home in this place. Crystal shops abound, the clothes shops are selling purple crushed velvet full length dresses, and I see there is an aura soma shop down a laneway, which I may just have to check out... toodles!

The Tor is not far from here. We'll walk there this afternoon, I think. It looks steep, maybe so steep as to make one delerious, at which point the mists will part and the way to Avalon will be clear. That would be good. I'd like to go there.