It was a bit sunnier this morning, but quite cool and windy! Our first stop today was Bamburgh Castle the ancient capital of Northumbria and home to its Kings. The oldest part of the castle is the Norman Keep a 900 year old legacy left by William the Conqueror and it remains the most imposing part of the site. Unfortunately Bamburgh is privately owned and we had to pay for our visit today! When we went through the Great Hall we were fortunate enough to hear a couple of instruments being played for a tour group. It seems that the tour [View Full Entry]

---

---

It started off sunny again today, but clouded over mid morning as we set off sightseeing. We headed to Berwick-upon-Tweed via Doddington and the estate villages of Ford and Etal. We visited the Heatherslaw Corn Mill on the River Till between Ford and Etal. The mill is a working museum and we were able to see wheat being ground. The river is low at the moment so the mill was working rather slowly. This is in contrast to 2008 when the river was in flood and the level of the water in the lowest level of the mill was over my [View Full Entry]

---

---

The sun is still shining today!!! That makes four glorious days in row. Kath and Albert are minding Samantha this morning and not heading off to Northumberland for our caravanning holiday until lunch time. We discovered that we could visit yet another NT property on our way up so we decided to travel up in our car and meet them at the caravan park in Wooler later this afternoon when the caravan will be available to check in. From Stalybridge Edna took us through Grasscroft, Uppermill, Dobcross and Denshaw to the M62. I’m pretty sure this is the way we tried [View Full Entry]

---

---

We woke up this morning to another glorious day! That makes three days in a row of blue skies and sunshine which is a rare thing indeed here in England. Since the weather was so beautiful we decided to drive back down to Congleton to visit some more NT properties in that area. Our first stop was at Mow Cop Folly - the ‘ruin’ that we could see last Sunday from Little Moreton Hall. Edna is still earning her keep as she managed to guide us to Mow Cop without any trouble. Unfortunately, Mow Cop is not a NT property that [View Full Entry]

---

---

The weather today is fantastic - the best day they have had so far in England this spring!! So of course we should have done something to take advantage of the beautiful weather shouldn’t we??? But no, we headed over to the shops at Denton didn’t we so that we could stimulate England’s economy a little bit to help them out of the recession??!! I bought some trousers for work in Denton a couple of years ago so I was keen to go back to the Wallis and Dorothy Perkins stores. Bernie was keen to go back to the discount sporting [View Full Entry]

---

---

Yay, the internet is working this morning so we have been able to load the first three days of our travel blog. We are really impressed with how easy it is to load and how straightforward it is to include photos! The weather is a bit better today. Still overcast first thing, but at least it is not raining anymore! First stop this morning was Stagshaw Garden, a National Trust property in Ambleside. The rhododendrons in the gardens are still quite spectacular although a little bit past their best. The views down over Lake Windermere were fabulous especially since the sun [View Full Entry]

---

---

Oh dear, still wet this morning!! The plan was to take some great photos of the lakes during this visit, but they look very drab and uninteresting in these weather conditions! We decided that we would head to Cockermouth to visit Wordsworth’s birthplace. However, the house where he was born doesn’t open until 11.00am so we needed to fill in some time. We decided to drive over to the coast and do a bit of a loop back to Cockermouth to fill in an hour or so. We drove straight past Cockermouth on the A66 to Workington and then headed up [View Full Entry]

---

---

We really enjoyed our stay at Lowther House (13 Inkerman Terrace, Whitehaven). We had a good sized room and a huge ensuite bathroom. And this morning we discovered that the shower was to die for!! We both enjoyed very long showers without feeling guilty about it. We were extremely well fed at breakfast finally having to pass on the croissants after we had already consumed cereal, full English breakfast and toast!! Mind you this ‘boutique accommodation’ came with a reasonably hefty £70/night price tag! After breakfast we headed back down the coast to Ravenglass with plans to see [View Full Entry]

---

---

With Bernie fully recovered from whatever it was that had him feeling crook last night we headed off to the Lakes District this morning after breakfast. On the way we decided that we should give the TomTom voice a name rather than continuing to call her TomTom. An iconic Australian woman’s name we thought. Bernie’s first suggestion was Priscilla, but I thought that the ‘Queen of the Desert’ didn’t seem quite right for touring around England?! The next iconic Australian woman who came to mind was ‘Edna’ so we settled on that! We travelled straight th [View Full Entry]

---

---

Bernie’s birthday today, so I let him choose what we would do for the day. He decided on a visit to the Imperial War Museum in Manchester. TomTom guided us to the museum brilliantly. Despite it being bank holiday Monday it was reasonably quiet at the museum. With the weather being so good most people probably opted to head for the coast or the country rather than a museum in the city?! We checked out the temporary exhibition area first and looked at their newly opened display dedicated to prisoners or war. Next we proceeded to the permanent exhibition area which [View Full Entry]

---

---