Dear Sharon

YOUR article about your visit to Hadrian’s Wall took me back nearly 40 years. I too took a party of children there. What a great learning experience they had.

Sadly I note that your visitors were from a prep school. The pressures of the National Curriculum, SATs, league tables, and funding make it virtually impossible for a state school to “waste” one day doing that with the pupils. Oh, for the days when the pupils where more than just statistics. I’m glad I’m out of it!

Bill Bartle, Barnard Castle

And – ooops! – many thanks to Colin Woodward who emailed me, very nicely, to get my maths right...

Eurolottery winner Neil Trotter’s interest on his £108m could probably be about £75,000 a week – which still seems a ridiculous amount of money to me. On the other hand it’s still only a quarter of Wayne Rooney’s weekly wage of £300,000.

Now that really is ridiculous.