Day 60 - Fosse Way

The weather forecast for today was rain, rain and more rain so we put all our efforts into yesterday and chose today to be a "do nothing activity day." Rather, we worked away to catch up on things.  Soooooooo ... today I thought I would tell everyone about the Fosse Way which is now where the main road from Stretton-on-Fosse to Moreton-in-Marsh to Stow-on-the-Wold runs (A429).

The Fosse Way was a road built by the Romans during their invasion of Britain in AD43. It is felt that it was the western edge of their advance at that time and was originally a defensive ditch or in latin "Fossa." In time they converted that ditch into a road that ran from Exeter in Devon to Ilchester in Somerset to Lincoln in Lincolnshire. A distance of 293 kilometres from Ilchester to Lincoln ran in a straight line. Of course, who was going to stand in the way of Russell Crowe?
Oh, come on....Russell Crowe, Gladiator, get it???

Today, aside from that stretch I mentioned above, there is no exact matchup of motorway with the Fosse Way.  However, there are many remaining Roman sites that exist on the route. The remains of a Legion fortress (the 2nd Legion) on the banks of the River Exe in Exeter, a settlement in Ilchester that had stone houses and paved roads, the famous Roman Baths of Bath, a Roman fort in Cirencester which at the time was second only to Londinium (London) in settlement size, the home of the 14th Legion in Leicester, and temples, baths and the home of the 9th Legion in Lincoln.

As history will show, the Romans stayed in Britain for over 350 years and after many conflicts with local British tribes they finally left in 410 AD., taking all the good recipes with them.