What's up guys? Welcome back.
We've just landed in Newcastle
We're about to kick off an epic week-long
road trip adventure through Northern England.
And not only are we going to be taking you guys to
some of the coolest places here,
we are going to be traveling through time.
So we're going to begin at the beginning.
This is episode 1.
We're going all the way back to prehistoric England.
Today we're going to be taking you to
Northern England's version of Stonehenge.
We're going to be checking out Celtic rock art.
And we're going to go to the farthest edge of civilization
the northern boundary of the Roman Empire
Hadrian's Wall
We should also mention that we're doing
this trip in a sports car.
Marko, What we driving?
We've got a Mini Countryman.
It's tricked out...black with a red stripe.
Looking pretty sweet.
Good morning guys.
Right now it's dawn.
We're walking through farm land
in Dudo, Northumberland
on our way to the Duddo Standing Stones
The Duddo Stones is a group of 5 stones
arranged in a circle.
They date back forty-two hundred years,
and they're somewhat similar to Stonehenge.
The north of England is littered with these ancient relics.
We're going to meet up with Claire Dakin who is the
owner of this land, and she's going to tell us a bit more
about her prehistoric neighbors.
So here in Northumberland
we're an area where there's still a lot
of existing remains of very ancient occupation.
But twelve and a half thousand years ago,
people started to come from Northern Europe.
Six thousand years ago, they started farming in this area.
They started to cultivate the land
So what we know from carbon dating
is that they were put up about 4200 years ago.
It was probably an agricultural clock.
The stones are set perpendicularly to each other,
pointing to the winter summer solstice.
The reason they would want to know about
those points in the seasons, because particularly
the winter solstice, they would then be able to start
counting the days to when is the optimum time to put
seeds in the ground when they would germinate and
grow crops.
I love sites like this because
it' s a place where you can quite literally see
and feel and touch
ancient history.
And you have to wonder exactly what this place meant
to the people people who built it.
And it's kind of cool because people are actually
still worshipping it in some way.
If you look closely inside of the stone,
they're coins where people have left
a little offering to whatever
spirits still dwell here.
You would have had to imagine
what this would have been like 4200 years ago.
It's just crazy to think that there is so much history here
that it goes back so far.
As we continue with the day, we're going to be moving forward in history.
Actually, I think the place we're going to next is older.
We're going to go to Lordenshaw
and we're going to go find some rock art.
This is what they were using for a clock.
We're going to see what the ancient Britons were doing
with their free time, their creative time.
Let's go.
That car is definitely fun to drive on these little country
roads, no? It's super fun. It's beautiful.
There's very few people here.
This is actually the most sparsely populated
region in all of England.
But we are going to find some really cool remains
of who used to live here.
We're meeting up with Pauline, who is a local expert.
She's going to show us more about the rock art
and this Iron Age fort, which is right over here.
This one that we're looking at is called the
Main Lordenshaws Rock
and that's got a hundred different sorts of designs on it.
So it's the best one in Northumberland
This is an Iron Age fort.
It doesn't look like a fortress,
but these mounds are the old fortifications and foundations.
And everywhere there is heather growing
used to be a house.
And you can see that they actually used parts
of the old rock carving from overthere
to build these fortifications
which would have been thousands of years later.
It's kind of crazy. iI you take a look around
I am inside somebody's old home.
I don't know how many thousands of years ago
somebody might have been sitting here with their family
and now I'm soaking up the sunshine.
If these are about two thousand years old,
we're now approaching
the time that we're going to check out next,
which is the Roman Era.
So we're going to head over to
Vindolanda and learn more about
what happened when Britain became
part of Rome.
To Vindolanda. Onwards! We ride!
We've just arrived at Vindolanda
It was a fort; it was a barrack
and it was on the frontier of the Roman Empire
at the time.
We are also going to meet up with Marta, a local archaeologist,
and she's also Italian.
She's not quite Roman. She's from Milan.
But maybe she'll give us some prespective
on what a Mediterranean culture was doing
way up here in the British Isles. Let's go.
An antiquity classic alter
described the Britons as rich as hell.
What Romans found when they came here
wasn't tons of silver and gold,
but they found woodland and cultivabile land.
What you're looking at is just
the top of the iceberg.
Underneath these layers,
which are stone forts,
which are dated 3rd and 4th century,
we've got up to nine layers of archaeology.
First ones to arrive here were
the First Corps of Tungrians
Tungrians are Belgians.
They arrived here in 85 AD
when the wall wasn't even a project.
Who lived here besides soldiers?
It's actually a question I'm looking at really carefully
because more and more evidence points
to the presence of women.
They bring their community with them:
blacksmiths, spinners, and weavers.
So basically there can be no military without
its surrounding civilian settlement.
What's the coolest thing you've found here?
We've got a wooden toilet seat.
The earliest and best preserved wooden toilet seat
in all the empire. Still functioning?
I haven't tried it.
This is such an expansive site.
And it's crazy because it puts into prespective
how much Rome invested in Britain.
You kind of think it's the end of the road.
This is the edge of civilization.
Well, even at the edge of civilzation,
they had a huge structure. It's really cool.
Definitely not something I expected to stumble upon
up here.
Here they excavated the Vindolanda tablets.
They're basically like postcards they sent home.
One of the Vindolanda was talking about
a guy getting a pair of socks, underwear,
and sandals from his mom.
I hope they were wool socks because if he was
from Italy, he would be really cold here.
I'm from California, feeling similarly chilly.
Pretty incredible guys
We just got to Hadrian's Wall.
It's an UNESCO World Heritage site.
73 miles from coast to coast
and was the northern-most limit of the Roman Empire.
It took three legions of soldiers to build,
which was about 15,000 people,
and about six years.
It kind of reminds me of the British version of
The Great Wall. Yeah, I was going to say that
when you're looking and seeing it snaking off into the distance.
I haven't been to The Great Wall,
but I've seen a lot of photos of it,
and I'm feeling that vibe a lot right now.
The Great Wall of Great Britain
But you have to wonder, Bro.
What was it like to be a soldier at Hadrian's Wall?
More specifically,
what would it have been like to be one of the last
soldiers there as this is the high water mark of empire,
and they're wondering whether they should stick around?
Should we find out?
Socius Alexander!
Salutations. Good day, Marcus.
How are you? It's freezing cold over here, isn't it?
One warmed by my honour towards the Empire
Defend Rome from the Picts
Defend Britain.
It sounds a lot more glorious than it is.
Are you complaining?
Well yah, I am!
Don't you feel proud?
The god Mars shines his light on us.
It's bloody dark for six months a year.
It's freezing my nipples.
I could got diamonds from ice.
I'm warmed by knowing that I serve
the great emperor, Hadrian.
You are a naive idiot.
Are you not equally proud to serve Hadrian?
Of course not.
Hadrian doesn't give one flyin' fart about me.
I'm done freezing my bum off over here.
Are you deserting?
Only if dessert's involved.
Knowing you, you're already praying to the god Bacchus
for a glass of wine.
My turn to talk!
I'm out of here. I've had enough of your crud,
and I've had more than enough of Hadrian"s.
This wall's freezing. It's the end of the earth,
and I'm going home.
See ya later.
This man!
I don't care what he'll do. I'll stay.
Vale Britannia! [Latin: Goodbye Britain!]
I'm going home.
All right guys. Well if you enjoyed that video,
you know what to do. Give it a thumbs-up,
share it with your friends,
and subscribe to Vagabrothers, if you haven't already.
And stay tuned because tomorrow we are going somewhere else.
This is just the first video in our eight part series
about the north of England.
So stayed tuned for the rest of the adventure.
In the meantime remember to stay curious,
keep exploring, and we'll see you guys on the road.
Pax Vobiscum. Peace!
...be upon you.