Time Team Cobalt – The Roman Road

Winter has its upside.  We heat the house with wood during the coldest months and we are able to enjoy the lower family room that is otherwise too cool in the non-heating season. During the dead of winter, we watch TV downstairs – movies and documentaries – whatever we can find for free online. We don’t have cable.

That also means the cats get to watch birds and chipmunks or squiggly pieces of string. Great entertainment for us, too, to see four pairs of feline eyeballs glued to the screen, heads snapping from left to right and back again, in unison.

As winter slooooooooowly morphed into spring, we found ourselves missing TV time. I think the boys did, too. We’d be downstairs for some reason or other and there was a cat, sitting in front of the darkened screen, waiting for the show to start.

So, by way of justifying the extravagance, I told myself that buying a smart screen for upstairs would provide year-round entertainment for the entire household. I expected some resistance from the man of the house, but he happily took on the research aspect of the purchase.

That’s the backstory as to how we have become HUGE fans of Time Team.

I watched an episode or two when the BBC ran the series in the mid-90s. I enjoyed it then mostly because of the host, Tony Robinson, the actor who played Baldrick on Blackadder.

For the life of me, I cannot remember what brought the series to mind when we sat down for the first time in front of the new upstairs “telly.” But no matter how we stumbled upon the YouTube channel, we’ve been watching at least one episode a night ever since. The series ran for twenty years and the BBC produced something like 219 episodes. No shortage of content.

What’s the appeal? A chance to learn something new – and to enjoy a laugh or three. The members of Time Team are quirky and likeable and enjoy teasing each other in a good-natured way. I suppose archaeology is just like rock collecting since you have to dig to unearth the treasures hidden beneath. Plus, we are learning about British history and how people lived from prehistoric time to present. Fascinating stuff.

We are nerds, what can I say?

Reiner likes the Roman period best, and that’s a good thing, since the series seems to focus mostly on that era. On the other hand, hubby gets bored with the Saxon period – stuff then was made of wood or other organic matter that didn’t survive the years buried underground. Not much to be found in these digs other than “ghost posts,” rings of darkened soil where once stood a support beam for a Saxon roundhouse, or fence posts, for example.

So, that explains why, when we were midway through last night’s dinner-time viewing, I turned to him and said, “This is boring, right? Want to go for a walk?”

Finally! Last night was warm and pleasant, and the snow has melted enough for us to make the inaugural trek along one of my favourite hikes in our neighbourhood. I must have been channeling the Time Team when I named this path three years ago. It is the original cart-way up to the Nipissing Mine. I call it “The Roman Road.”

Remnants of snow along the bank of the “Roman Road,” the original road to the old Lowgrade Mill site on the Nipissing Mine, site 7 on the Heritage Silver Trail.

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Categories: Blog Blog Blog

Tags: Cobalt Historical Society, Heritage Silver Trail, Nipissing Mine, Time Team