Vindolanda

Where the frontier gets names and voices. Vindolanda, just south of Hadrian's Wall, is famous for the thin wooden writing tablets preserved in its waterlogged ground: letters, lists and requests written by the soldiers, officers and families who lived here. Most of the originals are in the British Museum, but the museum on site shows a selection and gives them real context. It is also a working dig. More than 400 volunteers join the excavations each year, and the Trust estimates only about 27 percent of the site has been uncovered, so a summer visit often means watching finds come out of the trenches. Pair it with Housesteads for one long day on the Wall.