Northumbria

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The harbour at Seahouses.  This is where you can take a boat out to the Farne Islands to see all the sea birds.

It was very cold and windy and we decided to give the boat trip a miss!

Bamburgh Castle recently owned by the Armstrong family who also owned Cragside ( more of which later). This was the Armstrongs who founded Armstrong Whitworth the renowned engineering company. The inside of the castle had many similarities to our local, Arundel castle. A great deal of money had been spent to make it a comfortable home.

Both the castle and the village are worth a visit.

We visited Berwick upon Tweed very briefly but it did not grab us as a particularly interesting town. A town we did like was Alnwick which had a lovely market town feel about it.  We also travelled into the Scottish borders and visited Kelso and Hawick.  It was interesting how the local accents changed so quickly.

Desnée undertook some family research in Kelso and we visited the shop where her great grandfather had a shoemakers business

A particularly interesting outing was to Cragside which is a National Trust property and one of the best we have visited. Cragside was built by the Armstrong family, see above, as a holiday home.  It is magnificent and is full of labour saving devices of Armstrong’s own design. It was the first house in the world to be supplied with electricity which was generated by water power from the numerous lakes on the estate.  

Our first visit was a particularly rainy day and although we enjoyed seeing the house we were disappointed at not being able to walk around the amazing estate.  We returned for a second visit on a dryer day.

If you are in the area then Cragside is really worth seeing. There are miles of footpaths which meander around the park like estate. When we were there the rhododendrons were in flower and it was just wonderful.

After our visit to Northumbria we returned to Worthing for the wedding of our friends Keith & Evelynn. It was too far and expensive to bring Priscilla all the way home and so we stopped off at Teversal near Nottingham and left Priscilla in the care of our friends Simon and Jools.

As you can see we had some spectacular weather whilst we were in Teversal.

Just outside the Teversal campsite is a beautiful public area which has been re-landscaped from the old coal mines. Walk up the hill and you have a wonderful panorama of the surrounding area. It is topped by a statue of a miner. He should have a Davy lamp in his raised hand but unfortunately the local ‘youff’ amputated the lamp with a hacksaw!

Simon and Jools, site managers at Teversal.  A great site to stop over and just off the M1.

In the distance to the left of the miner is Hardwick Hall. This is an easy walk from the campsite and is an interesting NT property. What is surprising is the vast areas of glass on all sides of the Hall.  The NT restaurant is worth a visit and the gardens and grounds are lovely with many guided walks

Above Hardwick Hall (south side) and the entrance to the stable yard on the left.

Keith & Evelynn Branson sign the Register. 25th May 2009.

After the wedding weekend we headed north again, collected Priscilla and made our way towards Scotland. We were due to rendezvous with our friends, Keith and Fran, in Penrith.

 

The saga continues in “Scotland”.