Ravenglass

So it doesn't really matter if you're not at the top of Scorefell Pike.

You might be taking Lull Ratty and then doing a little gentle stroll back down the valley to Ravenglass.

We offer all sorts of walks.

One of the latest trips that we've just developed is along the west coast of Cumbria.

So the reason I'm choosing him is because it is now firmly established and it was debated for many years.

Where was he born? Was he born in Scotland? Was he born in Britain? Was he born in Wales? He was born in Ravenglass in Cumbria, Wales.

And it's worked out from what he said himself in one of the few writings that he left called his Confessio, where he talks about his life as growing up and what happened to him early on.

So when the Romans left Britain in about fourth century AD, Roman culture and the Latin language and customs didn't just disappear because what happened was that all the soldiers who who came and finished their service in england married local girls settled down and uh and had a normal you know normal village life except they they spoke a bit of latin so raven glass and you can go there today and you can see the ruins of the roman bath house which are quite extensive it was a very important port on the coast and it had an important harbour which has since silted up, so Ravenglass is not a port anymore.

And the first cohort of Hadrian's Marines, would you believe, were stationed there.

That was the Navy.

Patrick describes him as a Decurian, which doesn't mean a soldier by then.

It means that he was like a town councillor, And he had a job of collecting taxes, it's thought.

And I," said he with a grin, "am no Hylas.

But indeed a wonderful place is this little harbor, Ravenglass.

Five years ago, a desert of spreading sandhills by the gray and bony-sounding sea, or at least a village of the wildest barbarians, who, in frail barks of basket, so they call it, covered with bull's hides, essay the fishery of herring and of cod, yea, even attack the porpoise and the seal.

Then comes our great Agricola, marching through estuary and forest, opening out dense ways and lightless tracks for the rays of wisdom and the arts of life to enter in.

The reign of chaos and old night.

Only I learned that this dreadful road, dividing again, leads one branch to Ravenglass and the other to Hawkshead.

For me, I went no farther than the farmer's, better than four miles from Keswick, at Grange.

His mother and he brought us butter that Cicero would have jumped at, though not in a lordly dish, bowls of milk, thin oaten cakes and ale, and we had carried a cold tongue thither with us.