The Last Patrol by Little Boot

A bit of background to the picture...

The picture is based upon a stretch of surviving Roman Road (that linked the northern spa town of Buxton and the garrison town of Rocester) where it crosses the windswept Butterton Moor. It probably was built over an earlier prehistoric Ridgeway.

It isn't a threatening moor...but wooly with heather and gorse and goose grass. It has never been cultivated and is therefore probably largely unchanged since those days. It wouldn't have taken long for the undergrowth to encroach and cover it. But, like the Roman legacy, its still there, even though its not obvious.

I wondered what the scene was when the last Roman feet trod that byway.

The soldiers have been here a long time....and Britain has been Roman for almost 4 centuries when the legions get the call to return to defend Rome. By this time Britain was a peaceful place, safer by far than mainland Europe which was threatened by Goths and Vandals.

The shield...well they only use one...and that is really to deflect the wind rather than deflect anything more sinister. The old (by then out-moded) curved shield is much better at the job that the contemporary flat oval one.

They are walking into the mists....the land and sky kind of overlap, heavy with moisture, so different from Rome. Quite right OG, there is a faint hint of a pale sun trying to break through but never quite making it.

Sometimes, when the mist is very opaque and the light is beginning to fade, I narrow my eyes and look across the Ridge and fancy I catch a glimpse of tattered red cloak. Then it is gone.
And that's when hubby looks at me with a cocked eyebrow and suggests its high time we repaired down the hill the the Jervis Arms for a restorative pint!

My interest in Roman history in my area was re-ignited by a little movie Russell made called Gladiator