What can be said that has not already been said about Hadrian's Wall: A marvel of Roman ingenuity, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the last frontier of the Roman Empire. A stretch of 73 miles of stones from sea to sea, covering the entire width of the island of Britannia, from Wallsend on the River Tyne in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west. A Wall up to 15ft. in height and 6 ft. deep with large forts and smaller mile castles with intervening turrets. It took six years of work by skilled Roman legionary masons, along with thousands of auxiliary soldiers, to build. Upon its completion, the Wall was fully manned by almost 10,000 Roman soldiers to protect the Roman province of Britannia, Imperial Rome's final province and frontier, from the barbaric Caledonians of the north.

The sound of the tracks was calming as my railway car glided effortlessly through Northern England's breathtaking countryside. Watching the miles pass from a train window allows a perspective that is not offered by plane travel. And now, heading to Carlisle in Cumbria, nothing else seemed to matter besides the little farms and villages and sweeping green fields in England's north. Our life-long London friend, Trish, sat beside us, occasionally offering a soft-spoken narrative of its history, a history where the green fields were once soaked in the color of red from the Celts, the Romans, the Vikings, the Angles and Saxons, the Normans, the Jacobites and the Border Reivers

The middle of winter has long been a time of celebration around the world. Centuries before the arrival of the man called Jesus, early Europeans celebrated light and birth in the darkest days of winter.