On Fridays during August we have the afternoon off, so that we can spend more time with our families outdoors and step away from our desks. I chose to go for a photo walk and I shall do the same for the next few weeks and hope to find a whole bunch of new places to explore along the way.
The title gives the game away here! I chose to take a walk around the Roman Wall at Silchester, the entire circuit, carrying a bottle of water, as the temperature was a chilly 23 Celsius, compared to near 30 today.
Calleva Atrebatum was an Iron Age oppidum, the capital of the Atrebates tribe. It then became a walled town in the Roman province of Britannia at a major crossroads of the Roman roads of Britain. The modern village of Silchester in Hampshire, England, is about a mile to the west of the site.
St Mary the Virgin, Silchester
Looking for perspectives in photography leads to many different possibilities, as I had tried the other angle where you look along the pews but that hadn't worked in this case. So I tried this angle, I wanted to pick up on the prayer cushions.
It is documented that this 12th Century Christian church was built on a pagan site and prior to that, some 1100 years beforehand would have been part of Roman Silchester. Some of the materials used to build the church were borrowed from the nearby Roman wall.
Waking the Roman Wall
The scene reminded me of foreign climes, which these days, seem more familiar than ever before with every, field, garden and park looking as parched as the desert. You see landscapes like this in all of the hot places,Spain perhaps but in those cases you would most likely see more goats than sheep!
Looking out across this field, I imagined how it must have looked as a town. There have been many excavations on this site since the Victorians began digging places up from Hadrian's Wall down to Herculaneum, Italy. My Wife and I once came across a dig that was taking place on the far side of the field pictured above. It was very fascinating. I can recall it being a hot summer much like this one, they had a number of gantries set up across trenches where walls and streets could be seen. Just small sections of them, as the Archaelogical team are given an area so big to measure out and down they dig. A little bit of poetry there for you!
Many of the finds can be seen at Reading museum, if you get the chance to go, do go, look out for the Eagle!
The last photo in this set, is of the same tree and section of the wall that I photographed in November 2021 when it was bare and the landscape looked very different.
I always enjoy going for the close-up shots. More often than not there is a lot to see in these mini-landscapes than there may be in the wide vistas around you. It's all part of the story we tell as photographers, a part of the narrative.
I was trying to capture the impressions this section of the wall presented to me, as having
At first they were ignoring me and then all of the sudden they realised that they were on camera and posed. I think initially they were being sheepish... ok, I'll stick to photography and not stand-up comedy...
I love this one, it's got a nice flow and elements to it. If only the sky was more inspiring.
The berries were looking plentiful but we've had no rain for a long time, so they may not be any good for human consumption this year. More for the wildlife I guess?
I was fascinated by the sign here for the Camino Ingles which is a long distance pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. I've long been fascinated by this, long before there have been two celebrity shows on British TV in connection with it.
I was having some trouble taking photos handheld in the shady wooded section of my walk. Maybe my camera is playing up or was it just the craftsman blaming his tools. Anyway I cranked up the ISO a tad and grabbed some pictures of the wall from it's base. You can see the blend of materials here, stone, flint and some sand for the mortar. The reason for this would have been because both the Romans and the Iron age tribe worked together in developing the town and it's defensive wall.
This photo is a bit naff, but I took it to try an show the ditch, which 2000 or so years ago would have been about another 2 feet deeper. This follows the walls circumference, I believe the whole way around, most definitely a big proportion of it.
The old tree growing out through the wall. Q: Is the tree as old as the wall? A: I don't know lol!
All photos were taken by myself with a Sony AR3.