Happy New Year!!

And it was certainly a livelier new years for me than last year, which I saw in nearly asleep in my parent’s spare bed listening to the music from the party down the road. This year I travelled down to London to stay with cousin Tash, and together with her sister Cint and partner Dan and assorted friends and in-laws when went to a brilliant club called Turnmills, where we danced to the Chemical Brothers’ all night. Home to Gatwick by 6:30, on the train home by 10am. And the funny thing is, landing in the Newcastle train station after a weekend in London really did feel like coming home.

The office shuts between xmas and new years, so I hired a little car and spent the time tripping around Northumberland. It’s beautiful countryside, and I’m glad I’ve spent some time exploring it.

Just before Christmas eve, I took this photo just as I was about to get to work at about 8am. It was the shortest day of the year, so daylight hours were very scarce.

That night, I walked home in the mist and took a photo of my neighbouring church spire. I might not have seen quite as much scenery on some days as I hoped to because of the fog, but at least I wasn’t trying to get out of Heathrow!

Fog at Heathrow News

A colleague, Paul, was also free the first day of the holidays, so we set off across the moors to England’s largest waterfall, the aptly named High Force. First there was another country ramble. It’s not quite like your average bush walk in Australia - here’s a pretty typical instruction for one of the walks I did.

“At the kissing gate turn left and go through a five bar gate, ensuring that the gate is closed behind you. Once through the gate, head up the field towards Dunstan Square Farm, keeping to the lefthand side of the field. At the farm go through the gate and turn right, then straight ahead through another gate onto a concrete road. After about 1.5 km the road reaches Dunstan Steads Farm.”

http://walking.visitnortheastengland.com

Fortunately we got to the High Force walk in the end, and don’t worry, it might have been a steep cliff, long way down and fast flowing water – but hmmm, I’m sure the life buoy was bound to save us.

The waterfall doesn’t look much in this photo, but there was certainly a lot of water. It wasn’t until I got close that I really understood what the name meant.

The walk continued along the river, past “Low Force” (I think you can use your imagination there, you don’t need a picture), and across a bridge, where we stopped for a quick bite to eat.

We drove home via Barnard’s Castle (yes, that is actually the name of the town) which was the scene of my first ramble.



It was great for a bit of last minute xmas shopping, and the main street had lots of interesting shops, including the smallest car yard I’ve ever seen. Ummm?

The next day I got up early because I was doing the scenic coastline between Berwick and Alnmouth (pronounced alnmouth, being the mouth of the river aln. Please note this for later). Driving round Berwick in the fog I seemed to pick up a little bit of condensation on the car…Who gets ice on your side mirrors? At about -4 deg C it was one of my colder drives, and I could hardly see anything for fog. Didn’t stop the xmas eve golfers though (new definition of keen). I would have taken a photo but I could barely see them through the fog so I’ve no idea how they saw the golf ball!

I went to Bamburgh castle, which is an incredibly majestic craggy castle, but virtually shrouded, as was Holy Isle. So I’ll let you read about them here instead as I couldn’t take photos.

Bamburgh Castle
Lindisfarne Holy Isle

The walk for the day started at Craster, a little fishing village, and took me through farmland, over the golf course and up to the Dunstanburgh Castle. It ended in a lovely little pub drinking a pint of Speckled Hen and sampling the famous local smoked fish (although salmon, not the kippers).

Can you see the green? There are windswept rocky sea cliffs to be seen too. Possibly not the easiest golf course around.

I finished up in Alnwick, just 4 miles up from Alnmouth, also on the river Aln but mysteriously pronounced annick. Go figure. That’s not the worst example round here either.

Alnwick not only has the Harry Potter castle (closed for winter, maybe I’ll come back in Spring) but also one of England’s largest second hand bookstores! Barter Books is located in an old railway station, and has model trains running around as well. I spent £20 and brought away 28 books – my new library is well on the way to being established I’m afraid. Maybe I’ll learn to let some go this time (aha, that’s likely).

I also went to Hadrian’s Wall, but I think I’ll leave that story for later, or I'll never get finished. I spend many hours a day already with this laptop warming my legs in bed - it's just too addictive. Particularly since I've been downloading movies. Watching Veronica Mars episodes briefly took over from reading George Martin books, but now I've caught up with the US screenings, so I have to wait like normal people for the show to air there and for some nice person to stick it up on the net for me to download.