Aug. 11, 2008

On Monday, August 11th, our group traveled to Durham for a two day visit. For our housing accommodations, we stayed in a castle. The castle is part of the University in Durham and the place in the castle that we were staying is used as a dorm during the regular school year. There were many flights of stairs to climb to reach our rooms but it was worth it once we reached the top. The view was wonderful and from my window we could see both the cathedral and the castle courtyard below. We got to eat a hot breakfast in the Great Hall of the castle each morning as well. An interesting aspect of the castle was simply the age of it. It was built in the 11th century and is therefore almost a thousand years old. There are also stories of ghosts haunting the castle. For those of us wishing to scare ourselves, this was a fun way.

During our short stay, there were two places of significance we visited. One was Durham Cathedral and the other was Hadrian’s wall. The Cathedral was right next door to the castle and houses the remains of some very significant figures both in British Church history and in our class. The two most important tombs are those of St. Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede. Many people travel from far away to visit the tomb of St. Cuthbert and pray for healing. There have been reports of healing resulting from prayer at this site and hope keeps St. Cuthbert’s final resting place an important destination for the faithful. However, there is also a slightly less spiritual reason some people may come to visit the cathedral. Certain scenes from the movie Harry Potter were filmed both inside and outside the cathedral. For Harry Potter fans, that may be an even better reason than St. Cuthbert to visit the cathedral.

The second place we visited, Hadrian’s wall, was a rather long way outside of Durham. We made a day trip out of our visit and spent most of the morning and afternoon hiking along the wall after reaching the visitor’s center by bus. The weather, in my opinion, was quite suitable for hiking that day. It was slightly cold and rained a little but overall it kept us from sweating too much and it certainly could have rained much harder than it did. The wall was significant to our class because it was originally built by the Romans and served as a border between England and Scotland. We hiked along the wall for about four or five miles and ate lunch under a tree along the wall. Incidentally, it was the same tree used for the filming of a Robin Hood movie. We left Hadrian’s wall around 4:00pm and returned to the castle. Altogether, our stay in Durham was very enjoyable. The town was one of the smaller places we visited and had a low-key and relaxing atmosphere. There was also a beautiful river below the castle and a bridge reaching over it. Personally, it was one of my favorite places that we have visited so far. We left Durham on Wednesday, August 13th to travel to Edinburgh.