Hello again – I’m back!

I had a wonderful trip, although driving over 3,000km in 8 days was a lot…but worth it for the chance to see many old friends and old haunts, not to mention my mother. My daughter and her friend had a wonderful time at a musical theatre course in Edinburgh and believe it or not sang (very loudly) all the way from Edinburgh to Zürich.

We had real English summer weather – RAIN – so I ended up with a lot less photos than I would have liked!

Here are a couple of my favourite places:

Durham Cathedral and Castle. I studied at the university in Durham many moons ago (well alright, many, many moons ago) and haven’t been back for a good few years. It made it even better to visit with one of my closest friends and my god-daughter. The Castle is home to one of the university’s colleges – so believe it or not, students actually live in it. In my day it was all male, but today it’s mixed. I remember it being a great building, but the food in the canteen was dreadful!

Alnwick Castle. Somewhere I always make time to visit when I’m in Northumberland. It’s the home of the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland and has a wonderful modern garden designed by the Duchess – which even includes a Poison Garden – with strictly controlled access! The first two Harry Potter films were filmed here.

The Turbinia. This is the first ever turbine-powered ship and at the beginning of the 19th Century was the fastest ship in the world. My great grandfather sailed on it and his ship jersey is in the Discovery Museum in Newcastle along with the ship itself. They also have his merchant navy service book, but don’t seem to have it on display anymore.

St. James’ Park – The home of Newcastle United – my favourite football (soccer) team. My son and I took a tour and it was fabulous. Max was thrilled to be able to sit in the manager’s seat and view the dugouts and dressing rooms. It’s a shame they were thoroughly drubbed 3-0 last night by Manchester United in the first match of the new season.

Fabric and wool shops seem to be pretty thin on the ground in North East England, so I had a very restrained time – only buying a few balls of nice Rowan mohair & silk yarn which I will no doubt show you before too long, as I’m itching to get knitting!

So, tired but happy, normal life will now be resumed….(I know this is true because after not having seen each other for two and a half weeks my two daughters were already fighting with each other within 30 minutes of us getting home 🙂 )

Helen

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Places. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.