Annual Outings
Grand Days Out
"Friends, Romans, Countrymen" Ardoch
In recent years Trust members have enjoyed an annual outing. Usually there is a coachload from the Borders and Edinburgh - sometimes joined by members from other parts of Scotland, if the venue is within travelling distance. People have sometimes travelled huge distances, in our terms, to be with us e.g. from Angus and Lancaster for the Safari round the Trimontium site.
We have visited Vindolanda (at Hadrian's Wall) where the Birleys - Robin, Pat and now Andrew have always made us welcome. (They loaned us material for display, and even a showcase, when we had our early free Exhibition in Melrose Station in 1989-90). We have also visited the Eastern and Western sections of the Antonine Wall, the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow (to see, with Professor Lawrence Keppie, the collection of Antonine Wall Distance slabs); the Burrell Collection and the Charles Rennie Mackintosh house on that same day in Glasgow; Ardoch, the Roman fort at Braco in Perthshire, with its acres of ditches; and Segedunum (Wallsend), Arbeia (South Shields) and Brigantium (High Rochester) on a July Saturday in Millennium year.
Another vwnue was the Scottish Crannog Centre at Kenmore, Loch Tay, where we saw the 'roundhouse on stilts in the water' and the artefacts and skills associated with it. Birrens and Burnswalk and the Gask Ridge Frontier were the latest venues.
The Ardoch Ditches
What Trimontium would have been like but for 18th century agricultural improvements.