Daily Times

Some 16 million people visit the Lake District each year – well, normally. But how many bother to linger in Carlisle, the Great Border City and splendid county town in Cumbria, despite being just 25 miles north of Ullswater? ‘There are few cities in England which have been the scenes of more momentous and more interesting events,’ was the view of the great historical novelist Sir Walter Scott, and he wasn’t just referring to his marriage to Charlotte Charpentier in Carlisle’s Cathedral on Christmas Eve 1797. Carlisle was an important military garrison for several centuries. Inside its 900-year-old castle, the most frequently besieged in the British Isles because of Auld Scots/English rivalries, I spend a fascinating hour in the Cumbrian Museum of Military Life. Through a series of well-mounted exhibits, it tells the story of the famous 34th and 55th Regiments of Foot of the British Army, raised in the 18th century and which later became the 1st and 2nd battalions of the Border Regiment. I imagine that once the drilling was done, Carlisle Castle was a good place for a soldier to be billeted.