The gates open at eight. We are at the south gate at 07:50, because between roughly 10:00 and 13:00 the site fills with coach groups and the South Theatre turns into a queue. Three and a half hours on foot, the full circuit: Hadrian's Arch, the hippodrome, the oval forum, the Cardo, the macellum, the Nymphaeum, the Temple of Artemis, both theatres, and at least three Byzantine churches with their mosaic floors. At Artemis we do the thing with a key wedged in a column joint — the drums genuinely rock in the wind, which is the seismic engineering point, not a party trick. In the South Theatre there is usually a man in Arab Legion uniform playing bagpipes. That is not a joke on tourists; it is a leftover of British-officered regiments, and we will explain how it got there. The friction: this is about three kilometres on broken paving with steps and no handrails, there are toilets at the visitor centre and then nothing for two hours, and by ten in July it is already past 30C. Trainers, a hat, two litres of water. No pushchairs.
We are four guides from Jerash town, and we all grew up on the wrong side of the wadi from the ruins, close enough to hear the bagpipes drifting out of the South Theatre on a still afternoon. Between us we have about sixty years of walking the Cardo. We do one thing: Roman Jerash, properly. That means the drainage under the paving stones and the ruts cut by chariot wheels, not only the postcard columns. We keep groups small, we start early because the limestone throws heat like a griddle by eleven, and we will tell you plainly when something is not worth your entry fee. We also run the Ajloun day, because that castle deserves more than a photo stop.
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