Northumberland holiday

For our summer holiday in 2004, we ventured north to Northumberland, staying in a lovely cottage a few miles outside Hexham. Some photos are included below.

We left very early in the morning, and arrived close to the cottage by mid-morning on a warm, sunny day. Unfortunately, it was one of the very few sunny days that we had as that evening it began to rain, and hardly stopped for the rest of the fortnight!

Before our holiday, we had joined English Heritage because of the large number of sites that they had around the area where we were staying. We made the most of our membership too - visiting many Roman forts, castles and - of course- Hadrian's Wall. At one of the forts we visited, Dominic was dressed up as a Roman soldier.

At another fort, we saw some birds that had nested on the wall of a well. The adult birds kept coming to feed their young. It took quite a few attempts to get a picture as the adults didn't even land as they flew in with the next meal before they were off again.

BEAMISH

We spent a day (when it did not rain too much) at Beamish, an open air museum recreating life in 1913.  Beamish has a number of period shops, including sweet shop and a general store.  There are also houses which are arranged as they would have been in 1913, including small back yards with the outside toilet and mangle.

One of the exhibits at Beamish is a drift mine and colliery village. To go down the mine we all had to don miners' hats (without a lamp!).

KEILDER

At Keilder, we went to the birds of prey centre.

Probably the best picture of the day was not of one of the birds of prey, but of a chaffinch which came to join us for lunch.

CRAGSIDE

We found two old bridges at Cragside, a National Trust place near Morpeth.

Cragside was one of the first houses in England to have electric lighting.

TYNEMOUTH PRIORY

On one wet day we went to Tynemouth Priory. Although it was not a good day for taking photographs, the weather did add to the atmosphere!

HIGH FORCE

Steve likes to fly his kite - though it is not quite as impressive as the kites that we saw at a kite festival near High Force – a big waterfall.

It was quite a trip getting to the kite festival - we took what looked like a short cut, only to find that it was a gated road - with huge herds of vicious bulls (well, a few cows) guarding each of them that had to be opened before we could get through.

The day was also notable for Dominic's first bee sting.

ALNWICK CASTLE

Towards the end of our holiday, we went to Alnwick Castle, where many of the scenes in the Harry Potter films were shot. Alnwick Castle has been used for Hogwarts, and is where Harry first learnt to fly a broomstick. Rachel tried to learn at the same spot - but with slightly less success.