Tantallon House on Hadrian’s Wall

About 10 minutes walk from us is the East Turret 48A. its about 100 yards west of Gilsland Primary School on the west of the village.

The turrets are simple stone watchtowers and were built to a standard plan. The Turrets were built first and had a section of Wall built on each side. The Wall was build later to butt up to these sections, The Romans could use these as defensive watchtowers as the Wall was built.

Interestingly not all of Hadrian’s Wall was built to 3m wide. East of Willowford the Wall is 2m wide on a 3m wide foundation. You can see all of this along the section of Wall to Willowford.

We have seen (not the first time) deer in and around the local area. I saw a mother deer and baby this morning just crossing the road about 100 yards down from our B&B. They were using the Red Beck as a route up to the forest. The baby was somewhat scared of me and Rufus (our dog on a lead) but they were only about 10 yards away from us.

Deer are often seen in the field opposite us and in the forest area around us. Great to see them. (for the record this isnt my photo, it is taken from wikipedia!)

10 minutes drive from us in Hallbankgate is a great pub, the Belted Will Inn The food is excellent, mainly home cooked and all the meat is from the Lakeland Farms. (I think this is all organic). There is a wide range of starters, main courses and sweets to choose from and there is also a specials board.

There is also a choice of Local Beers. They had the Jennings Cumberland and Hesketts Newmarket Brewery Doris 90th Birthday brew on when we visited a few days ago. The Cumberland was a very good beer. Interestingly, there are a number of local breweries around the area and the pub changes them frequently. The most popular ones are the Brampton Bitter, Helvellyn Gold and Cold Fell…

Information is available in the pub for the Cumbria Ale Trail. There are 22 breweries in Cumbria, the closest one being the Geltsdale Brewery in Brampton. This is a 5 barrel brewery built within the Old Brewery.