Blogs from Northumberland, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 11

We had a pretty terrible nights weather. The wind felt like it would blow the caravan over and the rain beat so hard on the roof that we could hardly hear each other speak. The weather was even worse when we woke the next day so we decided to put off our departure and booked an extra night. We soon realised how lucky we were to be in Molly the caravan as we watched our neighbours squeezing out of their two man tents and dashing across the field to the loo while we sipped our morning coffee. Later that day the weather finally cleared. We drove to Kielder water and took the scenic route back. This was a 12 mile drive through Kielder forest on a rough gravel road. This road is sometimes closed to the ... read more

Last week I moved like a wandering vagabond up from London to Sheffield, where I stayed one night. From there I spent the weekend in Northumberland with the Northumbria Community and a small jaunt on Lindisfarne Island. It's really cool travelling around places and hearing different people's stories of their locality. I stayed the night in Eastern Sheffield where the houses were apparently built during the Victorian era for factory workers. All the terraced housing is quite an eye-opener as it seems to stretch for miles. Looking at the skyline seems surreal - rows upon rows of identical architecture with their brick chimneys. Contrast this with NZ where a lot of homes have their own back gardens and are very separate to their neighbours. The purpose of Sheffield visit was to have some talks with the ... read more

Well we were on the move again. For out next destination we chose Northumberland and this time we decided on a slightly more basic campsite. We booked on to a site in Bellingham which is on a working farm with free roaming chickens, noisy sheep - which served as a good alarm clock - and a newly born calf (bless). If we had realised the weather we were about to encounter we would probably have picked somewhere a little less open to the elements. We had a look around the village and found everything we needed. Shops, banks and three pubs all within a short walk. After a days travelling something quick was what we needed for dinner. we bought some jacket potatoes and a bottle of wine and headed back home. This was not to ... read more

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 ... read more

As it had been at least a couple of months since our South Africa trip we thought we'd better have another holiday. Volcanic Ash, BA strikes and lots of busy weekends coming up meant we decided to stay in the UK (we will not be using the “word” Staycation) Whilst we drive for 5 or more hours on holiday and think nothing of it we had never even considered going so far in England before - especially northwards! The trip up the A1 was fine and we broke our journey at Wetherby (which we had previously considered about as northerly as you could get) and the Angel of the North. The weather was really good, temperature in the high 20's and we arrived to find the house we'd booked was both really nice and in a ... read more