Ghosts are very much like the Loch Ness Monster, God and talented X-Factor winners, in that there is no scientific evidence to confirm their existence. But equally, there is no evidence to prove that they don’t exist either. As our trip to Kielder Observatory a few months earlier showed us, there are things going on in the universe that defy the rules, because we don’t know all of the rules yet. The world is discovering something new and amazing every few seconds, and the idea that something doesn’t exist just because we can’t explain it is such a 15th century concept that it is incredible that atheism is on the rise in the 21st century. With that in mind, I hold an open mind about ghosts, hoping rather than fearing that one might appear in front ... read more

We eventually made it into Edinburgh’s Waverley station six and a half hours after starting the trip. We could have been annoyed by this, but the benefit of getting up so early was that it was still early afternoon, and assuming nothing else went wrong, we still had the best part of the day to see the sights. As soon as you step out of the station, you are immediately hit by what a wonderful city Edinburgh is: in one direction there is the classically built old town, looking impressively tall as the skyscrapers of their day while still maintaining their old world looks. In another direction, there is the newer part of town, looking a little bit more spacious and hiding behind the huge gothic Scott Monument. Turn around again and you can make ... read more

I like Liverpool. I’ve only been a couple of times but the place always seems so friendly and the buildings so elegant. It’s the exact opposite of the picture that Brookside painted all those years ago. Some of the Liverpool stereotypes do live up to the billing though; Liverpool never fails to show us, in abundance, locals that use phrases like ‘ay’, ‘erm’ and ‘calm down’, to the point where someone shouted ‘ay’ across the street before we had even parked. We were here, in keeping with the theme, to visit the famous Cavern Club, but before that we decided to grab some cheap food in the local Wetherspoons. While in there, we watched the majority of the Champions League final where Manchester United got well and truly beaten, much to the delight of the Liverpudlians. ... read more

“No-one can judge you, baby” Charles Darwin had a theory. You might have heard of it. It was all about the origins of a particular species, and so he called it ‘On the Origin of Species’ because he was a man of striking originality. His theory of evolution is pretty much universally accepted to be correct, and the big talking point was that men (or women), somewhere along the line, descended from apes (or apettes. Possibly). Going back even further than that, and I have no idea if Darwin suggested this or if it came from some other clever person later on, there is a good chance that we were once fish, or jellyfish, or a great big prehistoric killer whale. Well, maybe not the whale. You might be wondering how on earth this ties in ... read more

Nearly 2000 years ago, Northumberland was full of Roman soldiers, but these days there are so few of them that the AA have put up road signs saying ‘Roman Soldiers Wanted’ near the Chesters Roman Fort. This was the first sign we saw that gave a hint that we were nearing Hadrian’s Wall, having taken another lazy breakfast and started the wall-detoured road home around dinnertime. By this time, the sat-nav had already taken us randomly off course twice, and we were making do with finding the wall by use of a small map on the back of an English Heritage leaflet, one of those that doesn’t put all of the roads on and covers up important junctions with big car park symbols. Given that Hadrian’s wall spans the entire width of the country, it should ... read more