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!)

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.

Just downstream from the Roman Bridge at Willowford is an award winning modern steel bridge. This is the first bridge that has crossed the River Irthing at Willowford, and I suppose many miles down stream as well, since Roman Times. People used to cross the river by wading or we have been told by local people, that there was a flying fox type of rope crossing. The Bridge was designed by Napper Architects (a practice based in Newcastle). The design is in steel, gently curved across the river, and beautifully uses the curve of the bridge to cover the difference in height between the banks. The main material is Corten which is a weathering steel. The steel rusts and forms a protective film to stop further rusting. There is no painting and maintenance is minimal.

As this area is sensitive countryside with little access for heavy lorries, the bridge was fabricated in two sections and helicoptered in, (no doubt the local MOD base at Spadeadam helped here as this is only a few miles away and often seems to fly helicopters and jets around us). There must have been some temporary works on the middle of the river to support the bridge while is was bolted up. The hand rails are hardwood(?) with stainless steel cables used for the infill. The deck again would appear to be hardwood as this is unprotected.

Cross bracing can be seen on the underside and it is supported by 2 columns at the “higher” end. Interestingly, when you walk across, you can set the bridge moving as by walking heavily on it, the deck starts to respond. The bridge was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and won a Regional Architectural Award (which I assume was administered by RIBA).

As you approach the pool, it is like a surreal picture, it could be something out of a creepy movie - I wonder if it has been used as a film set? The pool is set above the river level, so I was wondering how the water flowed in and out. Just upstream, is what looks like the old pump house, a stone built building with a few abandoned electric motors. I assume this is what pumped the water into the pool as it would be unlikely to fill with water only at the time of the river flowing full blast, it might just reach it.Walking along there today, its a great walk all around the woods, hotel, gorge, and river edges with the water pouring off the rock cliffs.Its about 10 to 15 minutes walk from our B&B.

If you want to take a great walk to see some wonderful sections of the Roman Wall, there is no better place to stay than Tantallon House B&B and take the walk to Birdoswald and along the river to Gilsland Village. Of particular note on the walk is Willow Ford Roman Bridge. This is set on the banks of the River Irthing and, with a bit of imagination and the pictures set on the notice boards adjacent to the site, you can see just how good at engineering the Romans were.

The first bridge was built in AD 122 to AD 128 when Hadrian’s Wall was first set out. It comprised of a tower, which housed a flight of steps which accessed the top of the bridge. It is thought that this bridge may have collapsed in AD 160 to AD 180.

Second Bridge. This had a superstructure in timber and the old tower was demolished. A new larger tower was built to the east side. The end of the bridge incorporated a platform of masonry to the north of the Wall which acted as a retaining wall to protect the bridge from the fast river flows. There are sluices still visible on the site which are assumed to act as some kind of flood control.

Third Bridge. The tower was removed, the bridge widened and a ramp was constructed. There was also built, a new end to the bridge and pier. It was now known as the Military Way.What can you see today? There are some good descriptions on the boards to show you what the bridge was like, and you can work out from the pictures each section of the bridge built at the different times. You can still see the sluices, the wall, piers, ramps etc and also how the Romans connected the stones together, They cut slots in the stone and joined them with iron or lead cramps. (If you go to the Chesters Bridge at Chollerford you can see the circular holes in the stones for a kind of crane!)

What I find amazing about this today is not only the Roman construction but the way the River Irthing has moved about 200 metres westward and left the bridge behind. The Romans built the bridge not perpendicular to the river flow but almost parallel to the river, so as the river cut away at the rocks and soil on the bend, it gradually moved away from the bridge.It is a wonderful setting and the bridge is only one of 3 on the Wall. Well worth a visit, but only accessible by foot, about 10 minutes walk from Birdoswald.

I have been in charge of Tantallon House’s internet marketing, learning various techniques through intensive research, into this constantly changing field. It may be that you found our site through Google - perhaps the be all and end of all of searching. It seems that the majority of people use Google when searching instead of Yahoo, AOL, Ask, MSN… According to this article (and the evidence varies), Google has around 80% of the UK market. Achieving a high ranking in the search engines, contrary to popular belief is not based on the number of hits a site receives - as this could be easily manipulated by companies, but essentially on two factors - content and links.

‘Content is King‘ is often heard on SEO (search engine optimisation) blogs. Google scans sites and matches up people’s search terms with the keywords that most often appear in your site. For example this site is optimised to the keywords ‘bed and breakfast’ and ‘hadrian’s wall’. To illustrate the point we could have focused this website on ‘accommodation’ and ‘cumbria’ if we were to target a slightly different market. So what does this mean? Well for starters Tantallon House ranks highly for the search term ‘hadrian’s wall bed and breakfast‘ in Google. The higher up the rankings, the more hits the site will get and the hope is the more bookings we will receive.

Google uses another major criteria for ranking - links, and this is arguably the more time consuming side of search engine marketing (SEM). Google’s rankings are loosely democratic, in that sense that each website can ‘vote’ for another one by posting a link to it. This is seen as a sign that there is something of value on the website. However, these votes are weighted - a site that has more votes (and is generally regarded as the ‘authority’) has a greater influence with its links. For example a link from the national trail official website, is considered more valuable than say someone’s relatively unknown personal website.

Sounds relatively simple doesn’t it? Well to be honest it is, but the more you get involved with SEO the more you seen can be acheived and more importantly the bigger the impact that can be created on a business in terms of the number customers. If you would like to know more about this, or how SEO could help your website - then a new site is about to be launched, goodwebpractices where there will be useful and easy to understand articles that delve deeper into internet marketing.

A spectacular event, the Northumberland Lights Festival, was held in the old quarry of Walltown Crags a few days ago.  This is a beautiful area for walking and is on the line of Hadians Wall.  The Victorians extensively excavated the area and there is now a dramatic formation of crags which formed the backdrop for the show.

The show commenced with a walk from the entrance up.  We passed strange eerily lit  sculptures until we arrived in the central part of the quarry.  There we stood with many others listening to the intro music while we waited for the main show to commence. - The lighting, of all sorts of colours and shapes were projected onto the craggy rocks, Majestic fireworks ricoched around the quarry as they exploded in amazing lights over us, the fire works were to the front of us and behind us, seeming to respond to each display, ,at one stage, what appeared to be blazing braziers were swung around the heads of brave volunteers hugging the cliffs, electronic music accompanied the display and all the fireworks, music and lights were synchronised to good effect.

We would recommend going to next years show organised by Northumberland National Park, especially as its very close to our bed and breakfast - about 3 miles away.  You can walk or cycle but there are buses from local destinations serving the site and all timed to ensure the scheduled train and bus services can be caught by the show goers.

About 10 minutes walk from our B&B is the Irthing Gorge. This is a great place for a walk in amongst the woods with the River Irthing running through the area.

One of the places to visit on the walk is Popping Stones. Local legend has it that Sir Walter Scott proposed to his future wife on the prominent rocks that lie beside the river and and it has been known ever since as Popping Stones. There are 2 stones which sit side by side which are rounded, well worn and bear signs of work by modem masons. Reshaping did take place around 1870 according to the historical records (thanks to Will Higgs here). It is a wonderful place to sit and watch the river and wildlife. Visiting today, the route was muddy, but it does dry out significantly in the summer. The river water was flowing out from a tributary half way up the gorge cliff. (reminiscent of Scotland here) and I have also seen a heron flying though.

The area is administered by the woodland trust and the whole Gorge is protected.