Wallington Manor

---

"We're not balling
We take it back to the days of yes y'all-in'
We holding onto what's golden
On a stage I rage and I'm rollin"

- Jurassic 5 - What's Golden -

I've been listening to heaps of Jurassic 5 since I've been here. No-one has got me into it or anything, I just got that song 'Freedom' stuck in my head and now I'm forever on You-Tube/Myspace listening to them. Might buy me a CD.

Wallington Manor

Yesterday Mark took us out to Wallington Manor, which is about an hour north of where I'm staying. It's pretty close to the Scottish boarder.
Mark went the Scenic route so I could see all the different towns. Up where we were there's a lot of country side. Every paddock is seperated by a hedge and there's stone walls all over the place. A lot of the stone walls probably came from the Romans or at least their influence. All the walls are built without any 'mortar' (something to hold them together).

The Wallington Manor dates back to 1688 and was a home to many generations of Blackett and Tevelyan families. It was broken up into two parts, the house itself and the garden.
The house was fucking big. Raph and Dom kept refering to my reaction when I went and saw Tane Mahuta with Tim and Ev.
"Holy shit these are big trees!"
"Uh Geoff, there's Tane Mahuta"
"MOTHER FUCKER THAT'S A BIG TREE!"

Every room in the house was giant. You weren't allowed to take photos for some reason, so unfortunately I can't show you the stuff in there. The house basically comprised of all the things rich people tend to own in the movies..except bigger.. There were large walls painted with detailed pictures of verses in the bible; Doll houses that were taller then me, 5 meters in width; entire armies of plastic army figurines (badass as); every wall in the hallways had a painting on it; a viking boat rocking horse (badass); the kitchen had about a 10 metre wall with 3 stoves/ovens; etc.
Just totally mind boggling.
One thing that I found quite amusing was every portrait on the walls of this one lady, her boobs were pretty much falling out of her dress. Either there was an ultra horny artist or she doesn't know how to keep the beast under control.

After we walked around the house, we walked down to the garden which was about 5-10 minutes away. This was probably so far away so the people in the house could feel like they had 'achieved' something with their day. It also probably felt like they were going to somewhere really far away.
The garden was giant and pretty much every gardener's dream. Flowers every where, carefully placed so that they bloomed at different times of the year.
Every where you went in the garden had a different lay out to give the impression that you were in a totally different area.
These people just had too much fucking money, that's about as good as I can explain it. Just look at the pictures.

The Pub

So after we got back and had dinner, Raph and I caught the train to the pub in Tyne Mouth. We met up with a few of her mates who were choice. Straight away busted into talk with the guys about drinking, cranks and other awesome stuff, meanwhile Raph chatted away to her friend about girlie stuff like ponies and doing the washing or whatever they talk about nowadays.

Me and the guys talked smack about all sorts of stuff, but one thing that really stood out was when I was explaining to them the difference between the NZ dollar, the pound and how I had to multiply everything by 3 when I condsidered buying something. They asked me about the cost of Petrol in NZ and I told them it was $2.18 when I left. They then got angry as everything was proportional to what we would pay in NZ except petrol which was £1.2 ($3.14) per litre. haha.

I got a drink called John Smith. I liked it, although apparently according to the guys it's an old mans drink.. so that kinda knocked me down a few pegs haha. Regardless, I continued to drink it all night as it was the frist drink I had enjoyed that I hadn't drunk in NZ before.
Everytime we finished a drink we went to a new bar. Probably ended up going to about 6 in total. I was really suprised at how packed the bars were on a Sunday night. They were so full that we had to stand for the majority of the night. Bloody english.

Well, that'll do for the moment. Hope this entry wasn't too boring.

---

Photos

Lake
On the way to the Garden