LONDON, Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Rory Stewart, a Scot representing a Northern English district in Parliament, wants people on both sides of the border to join hands on Hadrian's Wall.
Stewart, Conservative MP for Penrith and the Border, compared the relationship between England and Scotland to a marriage, the BBC reported. He spoke Friday during a parliamentary debate on Scottish independence.
"What we need is the human expression," Stewart said. "On 19 July this year I'm hoping that 100,000 people will gather along that old, foreign, Roman wall -- English, Welsh, Irish, Scots, holding hands, linking arms across that border -- because in the end what matters is not the wall that divides us but the human ties that bind in the name of love."
Hadrian's Wall, built to mark the Roman frontier in Britain, runs south of the border between England and Scotland. At its western terminus, at Bowness-on-Solway, the wall is about half a mile south of the border while at the eastern end it is 68 miles to the south.
Stewart has an unusual background for an MP. He went on a number of extended walking trips, writing "The Places In Between" about a walk across Afghanistan, and served as an occupation administrator in Iraq, leading to another book, "The Prince of the Marshes."
