Castles, crazy golf and chilly temperatures

---

The heat wave is definitely over! It was 27c on Saturday and is a chilly 7c today! It also looked like it was about to rain at any second.

We decided to chance the weather and drove to Alnwick today, about 25 minutes from where we are staying. It is famous for it's castle and gardens and the fact that some of the first Harry Potter film was filmed there (although only about 10 seconds from what we could gather, not that it seems to stop them do a roaring trade on it). It is expensive to go in and they are also part of this scam whereby doing a gift aid donation costs you extra money - it is because they aren't actually a charity. Anyway, enough of the ranting!

We started in the gardens which are really nice and look very established considering they have been there less than 10 years. There is a massive waterfeature in the middle. In front of that there are lots of toy diggers for little kids to sit on and drive about. I obviously also had to sit on one much to horror of this little boy who was already sitting on one. He looked aghast!

We then went into the bamboo maze, Tim lead the way and we reached the middle in about 1 minute, he then made me lead the way out, 10 minutes later, dizzy and exhausted we found the exit!

There were some very nice walled gardens and a cherry orchard full of pink tulips, I've never seen so many, but it started to rain so we headed for the castle.

There were the usual castley things, state rooms, dungeons etc but by far the best thing was the “Knights Quest” section which was full of interactive exhibitions such as sword fighting practice (I won - Tim claims this is because he wasted 15 of his 30 seconds whilst working out what he was supposed to do). There was also a big dressing up box. Tim was less keen on this than me!

The final thing is a walk through quest which is a bit like a Haunted House with a maze of mirros, a spinning room and lots of things to make you jump. Although it is obviously primarily for kids we saw plenty of people a lot older than us being silly too!

The castle is very impressive but it was too wet to spend too much time outside. I am sure it looks lovely on a sunny day, unfortunately it was definitely more dark, gloomy and foreboding! It did brighten up for an hour or so in the evening so we walked to the beach and played bat and ball for about 10 minutes!

Thursday was even colder and wetter so we stayed local. We have now got the heating on! We went to the penny arcade and fed lots of 2p pieces into those penny pusher machines - obviously feeding back in our winnings until we had nothing left.

We then played Crazy golf - our first games since New Zealand - timing our round perfectly between showers - alas Tim maintained his unbeaten record - if only I hadn't got a 9 on the hole that looked like the Farne Islands!

We then bought some chips, a dressed crab and some sticks of rock before slobbing about for the rest of the day. It was even raining if Paris so I couldn't watch the French open.

I did venture out at about 6ish for a brief walk and bird watch which was very nice (but cold) until it started to rain and I got soaked!

---