May 29, 2014

We finally have possession again of Adam’s finished Land Rover!  This has been an almost three-year-in-the-making project.

We’ve realized after years of experimentation that staying in houses is much nicer than staying in hotels, and often a less expensive option.  We’ve rented a house in County Durham for four days.  It’s in a small town near the mechanic who has been restoring Adam’s car.

Our first couple of days were taken up with car business … returning the rental, getting our car taxed and registered, working out the insurance, etc.  We finally have all that worked out, are in possession of the Land Rover, and are now officially on vacation.  We have 8 full weeks to spend exploring Northern England, Scotland, and (possibly) Ireland.  We don’t have our itinerary set much past the next 10 days.  Adam’s parents are meeting up with us in Edinburgh in a few days … we’ve rented a house for all 7 of us and will have a week to “do” Scotland with John and Elaine.  After that, our schedule is wide open.

One of the nicest things about renting a house instead of a hotel is that you get a full kitchen.  By the end of each day, we’re usually tired and none of us really want to go sit in a restaurant for a long dinner, so being able to just make sandwiches or eat take-out is fantastic (not to mention cheaper).  

Another huge benefit is getting lots of room.  The key to five people (three of them children) being able to spend 8 weeks on the road and not kill each other is having space to get away from each other at the end of each day.   

Kids have to share a bedroom, though.

View out our front window.  It’s a gorgeous setting.

Horse riding trails at the end of our block.  We looked up the prices of some of the homes in our row that are for sale; a three-bedroom is going for roughly £150,000  ($240,000).

May 30, 2014

(Adam’s write-up):  Today we visited Beamish – a 300 acre outdoor “open museum” that has preserved several small towns and working areas to show typical Durham County daily life in 1913, 1943 and 1825. This is the same museum that Jim, Arge and I visited last October – but this time we had much better weather and the full day to see everything at our own pace. The kids really enjoyed getting out and exploring around. Everything in the towns are “hands on” and allow you to snoop into actual houses and shops as they would have been set out in each time period. People dressed up in period clothing (a la Williamsburg) give you color commentary about what life was like and how it contrasts with contemporary living.

View of the Beamish Pit Village, frozen in time to 1913.

Demonstration of how they weighed the coal carts.  The full cart is parked on a metal platform connected to a big scale.  The kids are pushing on the cart to see if they can make it register as heavier.  This behavior by the coal miners was grounds for dismissal.

The town’s industry centered around coal mining. The kids got their first up chance to not only see a mine (they’ve done this before) but to play with the coal and see how it was used 100 years ago.

Lunch break … for employees and working dogs, too.

Example of the things for sale in the grocery store.

Holden at the school house – 3 room building covering all grades K-12.

The school house had an astounding number of exhibits of taxidermy exotic animals, minerals, cotton, cocoa beans, poisonous snakes, skeletons, bones, etc.  It looked like they put a real emphasis on the natural sciences.   They also had old-fashioned ink wells and pens out for people to try.

Trying to figure out the hoop in the schoolyard.

Playing Quoits.  It’s very much like horseshoes, but played with a circle of rope.  You try to toss the rope circles onto that metal nub.

Coal carts.

The town has many working farms and lots of animals.  This is lambing season, so they had lots of really cute babies to see.

More farm equipment.

View of the Pockerley Manor Farm – first construction dates back to the late 1400’s, but the house we toured was finished (and shown) as it was in 1825.

 

At the 1825 house.  The kids got to try writing with quill and ink, and were able to see just how much better the metal nib pens were in the 1913 school house.

View of the pantry.

Woman demonstrating how to cook the old-fashioned way.

They let people have rides on a recreated Stevenson 1825 steam engine.

It’s hard to see in this picture, but the pig has sky-blue eyes.  I’ve never seen such pretty eyes on a pig.

You can scratch an itchy blue-eyed pig (background by the fence) and then listen to a guy play some kind of mini-bagpipe.

Entertainment, 1825 style.  The oddly-proportioned man and the guitar lady sang while the younger woman did a modified tap dance on that wooden platform.  The lady in the middle really wasn’t much to look at, but she was a pretty darn good musician.