The Ancients - Hannibal vs Rome: Hannibal's Greatest Victory

Episode Date: August 4, 2022

One of the most studied military victories in history, and arguably one of the worst Roman defeats - what went wrong for the Romans at Cannae?In our final episode in the Hannibal mini-series, Dr Louis Rawlings explains just what happened at Cannae in 216BCE, and why that battle is still so important today.With 50,000 Romans dead, 20,000 captured, and only 10,000 managing to escape - Cannae is truly Hannibal's greatest victory. Using tactics that are still studied and used in modern military academies and in the field, Cannae demonstrates the importance of knowing your terrain, dividing forces - and never underestimating an enemy that's smaller than you.Previous EpisodesHannibal vs Rome: Terror at Trasimene (Episode 1)Hannibal vs Rome: The Road to Cannae (Episode 2)For more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host.

And in today's podcast, well, I'm recording this intro from the mainland of Orkney. We're up here to finish off a series all about prehistoric Scotland. It's an absolutely incredible place series all about prehistoric scotland it's an absolutely incredible place with some amazing prehistory from neolithic all the way down to the iron age so we're going from things such as mace howell chamber tomb all the way down to gurness brock village that's all to come we've recorded so much content both for the podcast and for the tv channel and for the YouTube channel so stay tuned for all of that in due course I can't wait to share it with you all but in the meantime for the podcast today you might have guessed it already we are wrapping up our special Hannibal

mini-series with Dr. Louis Rawlings we've talked about the Battle of Lake Trasimene we talked about the aftermath of that battle and now we're focusing in on Hannibal's next great clash against the Romans. His most famous or infamous clash against the Romans. What some people have called Hannibal's greatest victory. We are, of course, talking about the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Louis, he was absolutely fantastic. He is so enthusiastic. I don't have to speak much at all because he tells the story so well. I really do hope you enjoy this episode. It's a

deep dive into the battle and what happened immediately after it. And without further ado, to talk all about this, here's Louis. here's Louis so Louis how does it go from there to the battle of Cannae itself? so the winter drags on and winter actually lasts until May before Hannibal because he can't really move out until the crops are growing again until there are supplies to move to so he stays his supplies begin to fail but he's he's still there the romans have decided that fabius's tactics are not getting them anywhere you know it's preserved the army but thanks but no thanks really we want hannibal dead we want the army out we want this war over so they decide to raise a super big army so they their new consuls who are Gaius Terentius Varro and

Aemilius Paulus are given double-sized armies so normally a consular army is two legions and equivalent number of allies so around about 16,000 to 20,000 in total and the legions are normally 4,200 men Polybius says that the legions that were raised for this campaign were bolstered up to 5,000 men that the cavalry numbers were enhanced and that each consul was given four legions instead of two an equivalent number of allies so they now each had 40,000 plus men 80,000 total in in fact 86 000 says polybius in total this probably however somehow includes fabius's men so there are new legions raised and then they're added to the old legions that they march out to join so some of the army is green completely green and some of the army

are these veterans of gerunium so these join together but by the time the consuls with the reinforcements get to Gerunium Hannibal's gone. Hannibal has just marched out only a few days earlier heading south towards Apulia where he's looking for supplies and Hannibal in fact finds one of these Roman storage facilities essentially a sort of a base where they've kept all their grain. They've stockpiled their grain and siloed it, ready for the coming Roman campaign. Knowing that Hannibal's going to be on the move, the Roman armies are going to march to their supplies. And Hannibal seizing this is quite an annoyance. He captures the supplies at Cannae and can kind of just sit on his heels.

It's a lovely place for Hannibal's army. It's got a lovely river for for hannibal's army it's a lovely river the river alfredus it's got a small town but the plains are they're gorgeous for cavalry they just love you know these are these are just right for the kind of military operations that hannibal likes to conduct so it's a great strong position he can just wait for the roman armies to come along and see what they're going to get up to and it's also and i guess an appealing place for a roman army too those flat plains so it works for up to. And it's also, I guess, an appealing place for a Roman army too, those flat plains. So it works for Hannibal and it's also tantalising for a Roman army too when it arrives.

Yeah, normally, by instinct, Roman armies like to fight on the flat and on the plains as well because their infantry is line infantry, it's heavy infantry for a start. I mean, it is flexible enough to fight in mountains and hills and passes, but psychologically, Romans like to fight on flat ground and you know big open terrain and with an army of 80,000 men you need a lot of plane to fit them on so psychologically it's it works for the Romans too so they go they know they outnumber Hannibal quite substantially not quite two to one but nearly there and they arrive and the two consuls Pharaoh and and powerless in our sources

are depicted as being tactically at loggerheads it's probably not the case but because i think by instinct roman generals wanted to win battles apart from maybe fabius most of the others just want to win battles not at any cost but you know if the advantage is there they will take it and they think they've got the advantage they think they have numbers on their sides they think that this is a nice open flat place no tricksy valleys no horrible little ambush points you know it's everything it's gonna be a nice straight fair fight just the kind of thing that you want with a relatively inexperienced army with that you don't have to maneuver too much you can just line them up and throw them at the enemy and and it will all happen no cold rivers like trebia where you know hannibal can create some kind of you know physical and psychological problem for the romans it just

seems like an ideal place so the romans divide their forces into two camps a large camp and a small camp on either side of the river alfredus hannibal is opposed to the main roman camp about five miles away and there is some skirmishing pharaoh and paulus according to polybius and indeed livy command on alternate days this is one of the things that sometimes happens you know to avoid kind of disagreements as it were they just take it in turns and this plays into the narrative of can i as a military disaster because the impulsive one varro the one who is perhaps strategically tactically inept is the one who's commanding on the day of the battle whereas powerless is more cautious in fact the day before the battle refuses to engage Hannibal

in more favourable terrain that Hannibal has adopted in his position near the river so on Varro's turn and this is about three or four days after they've arrived and have confronted Hannibal so they're not there for very long

I mean there's good reasons for that because they are eating a lot of food you can imagine how many bags of wheat 80 000 men get through in a day i guess and the other thing is that like in regards to the date just quickly before we go like it's usually so you know the first of august is the traditional date for can i is this given the calendar at the time is so unfixed uh you know and unregulated do we think it actually probably occurred earlier in the year or do we have any idea when exactly earlier in the year or do we have any idea when exactly it would have happened yeah we probably think i mean it's not too early

in the year so it's probably about july maybe early july rather than early august so i think that's probably probably where we're safe to be it's summer there is food available it can be and in fact that that second roman camp camp is designed to protect Roman foragers who need to be out there collecting food because Hannibal's got it all in his position. So the big army needs to fight quickly. It's foraging, but it's good weather. It's a good sort of time of year really for armies to fight. These armies are used to fighting in these kind of conditions in the middle of summer.

It's going to be hot. It's going to be uncomfortable for soldiers. But nevertheless, it's better than midwinter. So it's an ideal time for both sides to engage. So Varro marches the army on his day of command, the fourth day, across the Alpheidas to join with the troops who are in the lesser camp and deploys his army. And Hannibal marches across the river to join him on the other

side so in this battle we know that Hannibal's army has its left wing against the river and looks up the river and the Romans have their right wing on the river and look down or maybe it's the other way around we're not entirely sure which way they're facing but we think possibly that Hannibal is facing the Adriatic possibly so the armies begin to deploy and I think this is where we will get into the nitty-gritty of of this kind of military okay let's go for it the Romans have a very large army but it's quite inexperienced so what they do is they deploy the Roman cavalry on the right wing up against the river it's probably about 2,000 men their allied cavalry it's about 4,000 men on the open side on their left.

In the centre, they'll have the allies on the wings. They'll have their light infantry skirmishers in front of them. And then they'll have the triplex acies, the three lines of Roman infantrymen, deployed. So it's the Hastati, Principes and Triarii. Gotcha, yeah. Some people suggest that the Triarii aren't actually there because there are 10,000 people guarding the main camp so the romans have 70 000 infantry then probably are triarii there but maybe not all of them they have 70 000 infantry and they have 6 000 cavalry spread 2 000 4 000 split okay of the

infantry about 15 000 of them are levies or light infantry including some archers from Syracuse about a thousand archers maybe the Carthaginians have to leave some troops in their camp as well and the estimate is about 8,000 which I think is possibly a bit high but nevertheless they still need to protect their camp particularly from the 10,000 that are on the other side you know who might sally forth and Hannibal doesn't definitely doesn't want to lose his cap and all that food so he may have about 32,000 infantry of which 8,000 is about our light infantry a mix of Lanchoferoi so these guys with spears who are some kind of skirmisher and his Balearic slingers who are extremely effective users of the sling probably the most effective people on the battlefield in terms of ranged conflict. In terms of his cavalry, he has on his left-hand side his Gallic and Iberian cavalry. So

the core of his army, the best part of his army, the 6,000 cavalry under Hasdrubal are there on that left. On the right, he has about 4,000 Numidian cavalry facing the allied Romans. The open ground suits them for skirmishing and they're not really going to engage the allies, they're just going to make them spend their time chasing them around. So that's the plan. Hi there, I'm Kate Lister, sex historian and author, and I am the host of Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex, scandal and society, a new podcast from History Hit. Join me as I root around the topics which have been skipped over in your school history lessons. Everything from the history of swearing to pubic hair, satanic panic, cults, there is nothing off limits.

We'll be bed hopping around different time periods, from ancient civilisations to the middle ages to renaissance and early modern right up to now. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Is Mahabal another cavalry commander? Hashtrabal? He's not? Just so I'm... Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a different Hashtrabal.

So this Hashtrabal quartermaster general is the man who is commanding on the left. Mahabal is possibly on the right, commanding the Numidian cavalry. We see him a couple of times commanding Numidians. So that's it. But Hannibal's army is flexible enough. The high command is flexible enough to swap roles. So they're not attached to particular units, but they are moved moved around but the quartermaster general seems to be playing a really significant role in this year in various ways keeping Hannibal's army going and has been in command of

the cavalry for quite a lot of this so it seems natural that he's kind of there leading this force of the elite cavalry got it well continue with the story then my brain is relaxed so the center now is comprised of mainly iberian and gallic troops don't forget there are about 16 000 gallic infantrymen there's 4 000 gallic cavalry with the 2 000 iberians so they're employed in the center now normally carthaginian armies and most ancient armies deployed by ethnicity so the africans and the spaniards then the then the gauls would be the sort of natural way you would deploy them. You wouldn't mix them up

because it's hard to communicate internally if you mix up people. But because the Gauls had been out and about at Gerunium operating with the Carthaginians for so long, Hannibal was confident enough to break them up into what Polybius called spare eye, handfuls. It's the same word he uses for Roman maniples, which are the building blocks of the Roman legions. So around about 200 to 300 men, maybe.

So Hannibal's army is stretched across the battle line in alternating groups of 200 or 300 Gauls and then Iberians. And maybe there are 200 Iberians, 300 Gauls. There are a lot more Gaulsuls and then Iberians and maybe there are 200 Iberians 300 Gauls you know a lot more Gauls than Iberians so but the point is that the army is well trained enough that it can be articulated in a non-ethnic way or at least in a much more complicatedly ethnic way than previous armies could possibly do that's why at Trasimene that doesn't happen you know the army the forces are kept relatively separate the force that is kept separate at Cannae is the African infantry the African infantry seem to be held in reserve on both flanks in deep columns and as Hannibal's army advances towards the Romans after the skirmishers have done their job of allowing their armies to deploy and Hannibal's outnumbered light infantry seemed to

be doing perfectly well against the the Roman light infantry both of those forces have withdrawn to safer places the Roman levies are at the back now of the formation as the Roman legions rumble on forward and the levies for Hannibal's forces have perhaps done something similar, but may have also gone to the wings a bit. Hannibal's army advances from the centre at a double, but as it extends towards the wings, the troops advance slower. So what you get is a kind of bulging effect, and Hannibal's army becomes a kind of... I've used the bowl metaphor, so it becomes a kind of bowl,

or a very convex thing, yeah a very convex crescent, a crescent is actually what Polybius says, so that's what his army moves like, he may have a very slight, thin line of reserves as well perhaps

but the main part of the force of these 24,000 or so infantry are advancing in this kind of weird way, where the middle is moving forward sooner, or get to the Romans sooner than the wings. And the Africans aren't moving at all. In fact, they're deploying very deep columns on either wing of the infantry. But the cavalry battle has already started, and the Romans are already beginning to lose on the river side, where their Roman citizen cavalry, commanded by Paulus, are really taking it again.

Because they're heavily outnumbered. They're outnumbered three to one on that side. The Allies and the Numidians are stalemating each other roughly the same numbers. And Numidian fighting style just means nothing's going to happen there because the Allies can't land a blow because of the evasive tactics that noridians have the romans however their infantry is marching forward in a mass block and in this deployment they have actually doubled the depth of their maniples because they've got so many men they can adopt a frontage similar to hannibal but be twice as deep or three times as deep everything 70 000 against 32 000 even if you take away the 15 000 8 000 skirmishers you know there's 24 000 facing

you know 50 000 Romans that's two and a half to one that's massive odds you know you could they were just gonna steamroller the carthaginians so they engage at this point the engagement starts and the carthaginian line begins engage at this point the engagement starts and the carthaginian line begins to fold as it would you know it's outnumbered it's very thin it's also not many units are engaged to start with and they wear out quite quickly and start to withdraw at which point the romans move forward and encounter more units on the flank but nevertheless they keep pushing forward this fits the way that romans how Gauls fight. Gauls come forward fast and they're a sort of riotous charge, they're difficult to resist for a bit

but then eventually they get fed up, the Sun rises and gets up in the sky, they get a bit tired and then they run away. It's what happened at most battles that the Romans sort of fight against Gauls, at least that's the stereotype. And this is what seems to be happening, the Gauls are beginning to withdraw, they're fighting withdraw but nevertheless they seem to be giving way and the romans keep pushing forward so hannibal's line becomes flat and then it becomes concave as it starts to collapse in and the romans to keep pushing now don't forget in all the other battles the romans managed to smash their way through part of the carthaginian line at trebia they had smashed the carthaginian

center and at trasamine they had broken through the front part of the Carthaginian centre and at Trasimene they had broken through the front part of the Carthaginian's position so this is natural this is to be expected and this is the Roman plan it's just a steamroller that Hannibal's infantry just get rid of it bam

unfortunately for them their citizen cavalry and Paulus has been killed at this point has given up has been completely overwhelmed so Paulus is with the cavalry and he was killed by the carthaginian charges on that on those things probably called by another gaul or a niberian but yeah so the cavalry are so constrained on the right the heavy cavalry that some of them dismount to fight apparently on both sides which seems very curious and i'm not sure i entirely believe i don't think they were all dismounted I think

that you know where the fighting got really tight like up against the river people got off their horses or their horses were killed off underneath them got tired but eventually the Romans quite quickly actually the Romans are broken now what does Hathrow do he doesn't pursue those surviving cavalry and we're not entirely sure how many survived but only a few hundred maybe he manages with the skill of Cromwell at Naseby to swing this cavalry victorious cavalry back in hand around the entire Roman line and attack the Roman allied cavalry on the Roman left and on the Carthaginian right who have been skirmishing with the Numidians. They can't stand this.

They're attacked from behind by superior numbers. They're now outnumbered 10,000 to 4,000. They're going. They don't last very long and they flee. And Varro is in command of the allies. So he gets away with these guys. The Numidians pursue them, make sure they don't come back. And then with the discipline of Oliver Cromwell at the Battle of Naseby, Hasbril rallies these 6,000 cavalry,

brings them back from two victories and restrains them from chasing off after defeated cavalrymen, which is very difficult to do to cavalry, particularly Gallic noblemen and all the kinds of ethos that they have he gathers them together and attacks the roman rear now by this point the romans are inside a bag we're bold if we want to take that analogy they've been pushing the carthaginians back but the carthaginians haven't broken and they push beyond the point where the two african columns have stood those african columns no longer have to worry about enemy cavalry. They turn inwards and attack the Romans on the flank. The Romans are caught in a trap. There's nowhere for them to go.

And there are estimates that in this battle, 100 Romans are killed every minute for the entire duration of the battle. And possibly in the hard fighting, maybe 600 Roman legionaries are killed every minute when they're actually in contact. And most ofaries are killed every minute in the when they're actually in contact and most of that towards the end of this so they're caught in this bag they can't escape and they are basically more or less slaughtered polybius says that of those 80,000 men 70,000 are killed and 10,000 escape or captured that's an exaggeration because that's the entire field army and only 3,000 escape he actually says says, so 10,000 are captured. Livy is a bit more cautious. He says something in the region of 47,000 Romans are killed, Romans and

allies are killed on the battlefield and about 19,000 are captured and 14,000 escape. But this is an absolutely catastrophic thing. So the Romans here, if they suffer 47,000 casualties, round it up to 50,000, it'll just be easy. If they suffer 50,000 casualties, that is equivalent to the casualties that the British army at the Somme received on the first day of the Somme,

with machine guns and artillery and mines and wire and all that sort of thing. And actually of the British army, only 20,000 of those were fatalities. Hannibal has done this with swords, spears, slings. All in one location. All in one location in a few hours. And he's butchery at this point.

This butchery continues until nightfall, and then possibly on. So the Roman army is utterly destroyed. 80 senators of the 300 senators in the Roman Senate, 80 were present at the battle and were killed. Not only was Paulus killed, but our old friend Geminus died because he was in the centre. Also, Minucius Rufus was in the centre. And Minucius as well, he loses it.

He dies in this battle. There are 46 tribunes and roman officers who were killed later on when hannibal's brother mago who was present at this battle as well and plays quite important roles in some of the campaigns i've talked about i've kind of rubbed him out of the story but he is there and he he plays some important roles he travels back to carthage and at one point when he's at in Carthaginian Senate, they say, you know, how's Hannibal doing? And he pours out this sack full of rings, golden rings that have been taken from the fingers of Roman senators. They roll across the floor of the Carthaginian Senate.

So this is utterly, utterly devastating. This is the worst military defeat the Romans suffer in their history up to that point probably in their entire history except possibly one battle against the kimber and chutone yeah where the figures may be grossly inflated but this is this is clearly you know 50 000 or so dead and a considerable number of captured 20 000,000 captured potentially. This is an utterly devastating blow to the Romans. Was there a story that apparently everyone in Rome knew of someone or someone who had perished at that battle? Or was that it was that demoralising and that significant? I think it's undoubtedly the case that that must that must be the case.

You know, the citizen body is is not infinite. You know, it's large, but it's spread across Italy so yeah I can imagine that kind of story being even if it's not quite true being really reflective of the impact on Roman demographics in in the city and beyond I think it really is it's such a extraordinary battle to cover so thank you for covering it in detail and so just before we completely wrap up talk to us about i guess the significance of can i in that stage of the hannibalic war and also i guess the immediate aftermath how hannibal reacts after gaining this crushing victory yeah so its significance is well there are different ways of looking at significance obviously it's one of the greatest victories by an outnumbered force ever you know it's taught in military academies now you know it inspires

all kinds the whole idea of a double envelopment from the from the flanks in you know it inspires all kinds of military strategies you know from gulf storm and desert war to uh you know even the schlieffen plan was probably modelled on it, you know. So there were all these kinds of ideas of how military commanders tried to replicate it since. But in terms of the campaign itself, it clearly was absolutely devastating to Roman morale. And one would expect the Romans to give up at this point. They've lost three major battles in three consecutive years. They've lost all the best

troops they've lost the you know great sections of their political elite who's left and you know and how are they going to continue this is clearly what Hannibal thinks he sends an ambassador Carthalo off to Rome to negotiate terms or offer terms at least the Romans continue to fight and that's another matter but all intents and purposes to everybody who's watching this theater of battle the Romans have lost this war it seems and actually Hannibal enjoys that in terms of starting to receive allies who defect now the allies think the writing is on the wall they start leaving the Roman alliance system anytime a Hannibal's army approaches them they're willing to kind of join him so Hannibal's immediate reaction is not actually to march on Rome so there's a story that one of his officers Mahabal says to Hannibal give me the cavalry I will be dining in the capital in five

days in Rome and Hannibal is reluctant to do that and Mahabal turns around says Hannibal you know how to win a victory, but not how to use it. Very famous. However, it's a bon mot, it's a line, you know, that gets in everywhere. But is it true? Firstly, would Mahabal have said that? Yes, quite likely his officers were allowed to speak freely. So I completely believe that there were dissenting officers.

But Polybius makes it clear that the rest of the officers were much more of hanbal's mind so it was only mahabal who dissents he's the one who gets the line but everybody else thinks that what hannibal does next is the the main thing it's the plan and they stick with it so there are several practical things but not marching on rome firstly the army itself has taken 5,500 casualties at least, maybe as many as 8,000 casualties. What that means is Hannibal's army has lost 11% of its fighting force, or maybe 16% of its fighting force. In the centre where the infantry have been fighting, 25% of the Gauls are dead.

25% who have marched down have died in this battle. These are Pyrrhic victories. In anybody's book, that would be a defeat. In ancient battles, the defeated tend to take about 10% casualties and the victors take about 5%. Except these battles of destruction that Hannibal is fighting. So Hannibal has destroyed an army, but he has taken what a defeated army would normally take.

So his army is in no real condition to do anything it's psychologically battered it's physically exhausted and it just wants to loot and have a rest and the wounded need to be tended to and philippus makes it very clear that hannibal's great talent is looking after his men he does for the next few days so he needs to nurse the army back get the horses ready again and that's so he's not ready to march secondly marching through all the way to rome which was 250 miles away well maybe the cavalry could get there if they could get in then that's fine but how could they hold the city they probably couldn't get in horses are no good in sieges anyway so it would throw away his entire best part of his force on a vainglorious mission. Marching there would take him a couple of weeks if not a month or so through potentially hostile territory through Latium which is the hardcore of

Roman territory and the Latins will have been gathering in their harvests at this point. There would be no food for him to forage when he gets there but there will be lots of defended settlements that are hostile to him and then there's the enormous city of Rome to besiege practically it's not it's not possible to take Rome you might frighten the Romans but you're not going to besiege them successfully at least not this year what's more important for Hannibal is winning the hearts and minds we thought about this theatre of war and this is the great cinematic climax you know the avengers 45 minutes spectacular at the end which you know convinces everybody that this has been a great film and that they're all for the avengers even though the avengers have been fighting you know

amongst themselves this is what has happened here hannibal has won the battle but he needs now to win the war and he needs to get the allies to leave the Romans. So he marches into Campania again and the companions mostly go over to him. Now the city of Capua, the second city in Italy, opens its gates. Hannibal rides in on the back of an elephant to the start of the next phase of the war, which is the phase where he can really leverage the hearts and minds of the allies

and show them by destroying every roman army that comes up against them that only he will be capable of protecting them and only he will be the one who wins this war well louis we'll wrap it up there he said the next stage and i'm glad we to be honest it felt like a good place to end there with the elephant because we did mention that earlier going into capua it's such an incredible story and you're a very very good storyteller so you've been telling the story for many years so you've got all those nitty-gritty little facts there too which we absolutely love so louis this has been an absolute pleasure there we go the story of can i following on hot on the heels of the story of trazamine and it just goes for me to say once again thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast it's been an utterable pleasure it's fantastic thank you well there you

go there was Dr Louis Rawlings talking you through Hannibal's victory very bloody victory at the battle of Cannae in 216 BC I hope you enjoyed the episode and I hope you've enjoyed this small mini series of episodes with the legendary Dr. Louis Rawlings. Now I know that really in Hannibal's story this is just the beginning of his conflict against the Romans in Italy and don't you worry in time we will return to Hannibal and we will continue the story but for now we're going to let it rest because there's so many other topics in ancient history that we're really excited that we're really looking forward to cover in the immediate weeks ahead going from ancient america to the oracle of delphi and so on so stay tuned for all of that now last but not

least from me you know what i'm going to say if you'd like more ancient history content in the meantime you know what you can do you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter via a link in the description below if you want to know a bit more about what i've been doing on orkney this week well you're in luck because you can have a look at that newsletter or we might be talking about ancient egypt or something completely different but whatever if you want more ancient history content before the next podcast is released sign up to that newsletter there'll be a link in the description below and finally last but certainly not least of all, if you'd also be kind enough to leave us a lovely rating

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signing off from Orkney, and I will see you in the next episode.