July 26, Saturday

Today started out pretty rough.  Adam set up an itinerary to visit several of the English Heritage sites in the area, so we got into the car to head out for the day.  The kids immediately started fighting in the back seat.  First it was an argument over who had to sit in the middle (which actually began before a single person got in the car), and then it turned into a fight over who was going to control the back seat air conditioning vent.

By the time we got to our destination, Holden had already been fined $3 and Josie was down $2.

The first place we stopped, Belsay Hall, wasn’t open yet.  We decided to wait outside for them to open, and Holden selected the farthest bench from us he could find.  This is one unhappy dude.

We got chased out of there by an employee who didn’t like where we’d parked ourselves to wait.  We decided to come back later in the day and in the meantime just move on to destination #2, Aydon Castle.  It started out very nicely.  Pretty setting, beautiful weather … (me in my 70s “what were they thinking?” dress that I still like even though Randy doesn’t …)

Josie and I had great talks on the walk there.  

This is nice.  We were the first ones to arrive for the day and had the place all to ourselves. 

Lovely courtyard.

Josie getting to run ahead.  It’s inconceivable that someone could be unhappy in a setting such as this.  

Holden and Josie posing in the prestigious seats.

This room had a couple of barn swallows that had gotten trapped in it.  They flew in the door downstairs, headed up a staircase, and got stuck on the upper floor.  Birds’ instincts are to always go UP when stressed, so they don’t manage to fly down to safety.  I knew these two little swallows were probably going to fly themselves to exhaustion and die in this room.  There was nothing I could do about it, which was a big bummer.

Well-preserved exterior.  This building is special in that it still has it’s wooden roof.

When we got to Corbridge, we got out of the car to wander around.

The girls and I went off to explore a couple of the antiques shops. When we came back out, Adam and Holden were sitting on a park bench eating muffins.  There was a spectacular bakery right in the town square, so the girls and I went over and bought some treats, too.

Immediately on getting back into the car, the kids started fighting over the air conditioning vent again.  I finally turned it off.  The car just wasn’t that hot … it’s England, after all.  The Land Rover didn’t have an air conditioning unit and we got along just fine all summer.  The kids all squawked about how they were going to die of heat stroke and that I was guilty of child abuse, but eventually they settled down.  We turned on the radio so we could listen to some tunes and ignore each other for a bit.

Adam punched the radio button and a DJ’s voice filled the car:  “So, Shannon … I hear you play the ukelele.”  We all groaned.  British radio is almost as dreadful as British television programming.  Luckily the radio in this car is a digital one and a lot more powerful than the old freebie Geoff threw into the Land Rover as a favor, so we actually were able to get a different station to come in.  We found a station playing Queen, P!nk, and Lady Gaga.

Our next stop was the Corbridge Roman Town.

At Corbridge Roman Town they had fake Roman swords and shields for kids to play with.  Isabella and Holden established some rules for a fair, injury-free sword fight.  Josie decided to go rouge and stab the unsuspecting Isabella in the back. She’s been wanting to do that for quite some time.  Here is the approach …

… and here is the stab!  Hyaaaagh!  The look on Josie’s face is priceless.  (Isabella didn’t even notice.)

These walls are all that remain of the Roman settlement.  These buildings were for grain storage.  They had big passages constructed below the main floor to allow air flow.  It kept the grain from getting moldy.  

It’s hard to fathom just how old these foundations are. 

Down by the river you can see remains of the old bridge.  There isn’t anything left except some squareish rocks in the water.  You have to use your imagination here.  The wall visible on the other side is part of Hadrian’s Wall.  

For our last stop, we went back to Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens.

Adam:  The Middleton family constructed Belsay Castle around 1370 and lived there for almost 450 years.  In 1810, Sir William Fowle Middleton (1st Baronet) modernized the estate by building Belsay Hall about 1/2 mile away.  This house was occupied up through the 1960’s.  Both are now open to tourists.  Both are also conspicuously empty of all furniture – this was interesting to me when visiting the Hall, because it gave a new perspective to these houses – all rooms were open to explore and get a sense of the building styles without being guided through crowded, roped off areas filled with furnishings.

Adam:  Belsay Hall – exactly 100′ wide by 100′ long.  All proportions were very proper and rigid throughout the building.  The Hall had a basement cellar for beer and wine storage (actually no less than 5 rooms for this storage) and it was cold down there.  Those underground, passive cellars really worked if you built the walls thick enough and below ground level. 

Of all the fancy houses we’ve visited, this one was my favorite.  It wasn’t quite as big as the others (although plenty huge) and had a very livable floor plan.  This was the only grand house I think someone could live in comfortably without a whole staff of servants necessary to take care of it.  Well … you’d need a huge staff of gardeners, but they don’t have to come into the house so that’s OK.  You’d still have privacy.

The entire upper floor of the house was bedrooms.  They had at least 7, and if the opposite side of the hall was identical, they had 14.  Each bedroom was huge, too, and every room had gorgeous views.  The rooms are kind of ratty at the moment, having been empty for so long, but it wouldn’t take more than some floor polish and some paint to get them fabulous again.  

Middleton loved Greek columns.  As it noted on the information plaques, he loved Greek architecture but “wasn’t an architect.”  That was a nice way of saying that he haphazardly mixed periods like crazy and nothing here properly “matches” from an architectural standpoint.  

Out in the gardens, the Belsay Croquet Club.  All old people, and all dressed from head to toe in white.  

Belsay Castle.  I can see why they decided to abandon it and build a new house on the other side of the gardens.  The rooms were cramped and the staircases were so steep and uneven that walking on them was dangerous.  Also, the spiral stairwells were so narrow that a normal-sized man would have trouble fitting his shoulders around the bends, and trying to carry anything up or down stairs would have required a degree in engineering (or some serious Tetris skills.)  

This is the main hall and the biggest room in the castle.  It originally was two floors, not one big room with a nice high ceiling.  You can see the stone outcroppings on the wall that held the wooden beams for the floor of the second story.  

Holden sitting in one of the window alcoves in the staircase.  They had these built in so you wouldn’t have to climb the treacherous stairs in the dark.  

July 27, Sunday

Today is in many respects the last day of our trip.  Tomorrow we make the final drive up to Edinburgh and our flight home leaves early Tuesday morning.  Today is our last day of play.

On the drive from York to Newcastle, we passed several roadside signs advertising piglets. Josie wanted to stop and see piglets something fierce, but the signs looked more like the kind of thing serious farmers would put up, advertising to people who had an actual interest in buying pigs.  We didn’t think it would be appropriate to show up as tourists just wanting to play with piggies which would have wasted a farmer’s valuable time.  We promised Josie that when we got to Newcastle, we’d look for an appropriate venue to see pigs.

So, we headed out to Eshottheugh Animal Park.  (We never did learn how to pronounce that scramble of letters.)  It was a small but very nice farm with tame animals that allowed themselves to be petted.  We all had little bags of popcorn to bribe them, which helped make us more attractive.

I loved the goats best.  Their little noses feel like velvet.

This little calf was too new to want popcorn.  She was still on an all-milk diet.  She also had an itch on her tail that she just could not get scratched. 

For some reason they had this rhea and this goat sharing a pen.  They made for strange roommates, but seemed to like each other just fine.

Isabella feeding my favorite goat out of the whole park.  She was such a sweetie, I wanted to take her home.  

Even the rabbits will come running for popcorn.  It felt strange to have a rabbit running towards us.  This guy could have eaten the entire bag of popcorn by himself. 

Holden paying some attention to the pony after he’d handed out all his popcorn.  The pony was one of the only animals who still wanted to be petted when the food was all gone.

Isabella’s favorites were the donkeys.  They were sweethearts, too.

And then there were the meerkats.  We weren’t allowed to feed popcorn to them.  (I think it’s not healthy for them.)  Anyway, they weren’t tame at all.  They actually seemed a little on the aggressive, nasty side … kind of like badgers.

We drove back to downtown Newcastle for lunch.  While looking for a parking spot, we passed the public library.  I said, “Hey, kids, look …. let’s go to the library!”  — knowing how much they hated being dragged to the libraries in Manchester.  They sat in stunned silence for a second, trying to decide if I was serious or not, then realized I was joking.  “Very funny, Mama.  Trying to freak us out.  Nice.”

We finally found parking, which turns out is much easier to do in a tiny car like a Vauxhall than it is in a monster Land Rover.  Then we walked to a restaurant Josie spotted while we’d been driving around, an Italian place called Portofino, and realized that we’ve eaten here before.  It was the first place Adam ever ate haggis when we were here two years ago.

After lunch, we headed to the pedestrian shopping area to look around.

This guy was doing some street performing.  He’s from Sydney, Australia and has stopped briefly in Newcastle on his way to the Edinburgh festival.  We watched for awhile, but he was taking a little too long to get to the point.  He was going to balance on that thing and juggle knives, but he spent a very long talking and asking for donations.  (“If you don’t have any money, that’s fine … there’s an ATM right over there.”)  We finally gave up and walked on. 

Newcastle’s shopping district.  

Lastly, we headed over to the Newcastle Art Gallery, but they were closed and had a 2:00 p.m. opening time.  We needed to use a bathroom, and the closest one was across the street … in the public library.  I’d mentioned the library as a joke earlier, and here we were!  Never say never.

The library had a cafe on the top floor, so we got some drinks and waited for the art gallery to open.  For all the complaining the kids did about being dragged into a library, Isabella and Josie happened to find Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia and, in the end, we had a hard time dragging them out.

The art gallery turned out to be a bust — we walked in and Adam said, “We’ve been here before.”  It would appear that we’re now inadvertently doing repeats.  That’s our cue that we’re done and ready to go home.

By this time, we were all a little tired and decided to just head back to the hotel.  We have packing to do for tomorrow.