kate and graeme

aka: We had to go all the way to Glasgow to see an Aussie score a hat-trick

October 26-28

From the same competition that we got tickets to the football in Plymouth, we were also able to get tickets to go to Celtic Park to watch the Scottish Premier League match between Celtic and Motherwell. Glasgow being a not insignificant distance from our place, we split the trip into two legs, the first on Friday night took us as far as Warrington and then on Saturday morning we went the rest of the way to Glasgow. We parked at our hotel, not far from the city centre, and then set about exploring this city that we’d not actually visited yet. The weather was pretty dreary and our time available was restricted by kick-off time, so we didn’t really get up to much other than looking at buildings from the outside and eating some lunch.

Our walk to Celtic Park took us past many pubs packed with football fans and a LOT of green. We queued to collect our tickets and then headed into the ground, past the many policemen and women (and horses) that must spend at least one shift every week supervising the crowd at football matches. It was quite weird to use a modern ticket barcode scanner and then still have to squeeze through the old-style entry turnstiles. We had great seats behind the goal - we were a long way up but hardly any distance from the actual field. There was a great atmosphere, due just as much to the way the stadium was built as to the crowd - the noise just reverberated around the thing. They had some really cool songs that they clearly sing at every match and all went crazy when the team went into a huddle before kick-off. The match itself wasn’t too close, as Celtic were always that much better than Motherwell, though it was exciting to see Scott McDonald (an Australian striker, who played for Motherwell last season) score a hat-trick. The official attendance was 57,500 but I suspect a few thousand season ticket holders never quite made it. Also while the crowd were obviously not as into it as they could have been there was still a great atmosphere and you could imagine the wall of noise once they really got into it (vs Rangers or in Europe). All in all it was a great experience to go to the biggest ground in Scotland.

After the match we followed the crowd back into the city, caught the underground back to where we were staying and got some dinner. We didn’t do much more than that as both of us (Kate especially) were very tired.

The next morning we decided not to just blast back down the motorway but enjoy a bit of a drive through the Scottish countryside to get to Dumfries before rejoining the motorway to head into England. It really is a beautiful and quiet part of the world.

At lunch time and with the prospect of 5 hours of motorway driving ahead of us to get home we decided it would be nicer to go the longer way through the Lakes District and rejoining the motorway lower down. The lakes district is very beautiful, it is not too dissimilar to the Lochs area in the North of Scotland but not quite as impressive. We had fun winding our way around and stopping to eat our lunch on the bank of one of the lakes while watching some locals attempt to fish. Considering it wasn’t ideal holiday weather it was surprising to see the big towns in the area (Windermere especially) so full of people and we could imagine how busy the area must be in summer when you could ‘possibly’ do things like swimming.

We left the Lakes district in the middle of the afternoon and swiftly joined a traffic jam near Preston on the M6, with it taking us another 6 hours or so to crawl our way back to home (our fault for coming home on the last day of school holidays).

Last weekend we travelled down to the south coast of England to Plymouth.  The main reason for going to Plymouth was that I had won some free tickets from Coca-Cola to a football match.  Coke sponsors everything in England and Scotland bar the Premier League, so when choosing tickets the best matches to see were either in the Scottish Premier League or the Championship.  We are doing the trip to Glasgow to watch Celtic, so thought picking a Championship match somewhere interesting where we hadn’t been before would be the best choice.  The result was Plymouth vs Coventry at Home Park in Plymouth.

The difference between going to Anfield and Home Park could not have been more different.  It felt like the difference between going to Homebush or Penrith Park.  The Plymouth match felt like attending a suburban NRL match.  We turned up, parked in the free car park, saw a few players in suits in the car park and got some cheap food from the food sellers outside the ground for lunch. There was a solid crowd (11,000ish), free car parking outside the ground and an easy going feel to the whole afternoon.  The match itself was fun, technically it wasn’t super but it was end to end and there was no lack of excitement.  It also helped that Plymouth won 1-0 and we had no one sit in front of us so we could stretch out a little (how did people ever fit in seats with so little leg room in front of them?!).  Overall it was a very enjoyable experience.

After the football finished (and we got out of the car park free for all) we checked in to our hotel and went looking for a place to have dinner.  We ended up in a inn style restaurant by the harbour side.  We had a bit of a drive around the City after dinner but anything that looked a small bit interesting was closed or wouldn’t have been worthwhile at night.  We were also tired and in need of a ‘crash’.  We ended up having an enjoyable time watching the 2nd half of England losing the World Cup final.

The next morning we started at a huge Sainsbury’s Supermarket to get some Croissants and juice for breakfast before driving a short way from Plymouth to a small town that had a Glass Works Factory with a Marble Museum.  The marble museum was terrific.  They showed you loads of different types of glass marbles, how they made them and a guy was there showing off how they did the glass-blowing on the factory floor.  The best bit was they had all of these machines which dropped marbles from the top and they followed a series of paths down to the bottom through all sorts of contraptions.  Anyway my description doesn’t do it justice, I’ll need to make sure some pictures of them are put up.

Following from the marble factory we made a stop off at Wells near Bath on the way home to see it’s well talked about Cathedral.  The amazing thing about Wells, is that it’s not a very big place, really only a small country town but it has a huge Cathedral that stands out over everything.  As we were there on a Sunday at the time they had a service we couldn’t see all the areas of the Cathedral because of an Evensong service but we saw enough and were very impressed.  After finishing at the church we had a bit of a walk around the area surrounding it with some ponds, gardens, Bishop’s castle and the oldest unchanged street in the Country.  This street, and all its identical houses was built in the 1400’s and is used by those in the Church still today. The impressive things is they are all in the same external state they were in when they originally built.  As it was getting dark, and we were tired when we finished up in Wells we made the trip down the M4 home from another good weekend away.

How amazing that I am updating less than a week after our last post…
After last week’s successful adventure in outlet shopping, I decided that I needed to do some more in the hopes of completing my outfit for an upcoming wedding. So I had a look online to find out where some more outlet centres were and we picked one in Swindon, which any local would consider ages away, but we decided to go anyway. On the way back, we decided to check out the White Horse - you know, the big horse carved in the side of a hill forever ago that they use in all the tourist brochures. Like many of those things that are built up to be super impressive, we found it slightly underwhelming - I was expecting something carved more deeply into the ground that didn’t have obvious signs that it needed regular upkeep (like the grass growing amongst the chalk) and a better view of it without hiring a helicopter (although I will admit that we didn’t actually go to the ‘viewing point’ but judging from angles and stuff I’m not sure it would’ve made too much difference). Anyway, we’ve seen it now, so we can tick that off our list too.

more photos on my flickr

OK, so most of the shopping took place in an outlet park, but I thought of the title and had to use it…
(this is part 3 of 3, scroll down to read them in order)

Monday 27 August:

While watching TV last night (after massive roast dinners that we couldn’t finish) we saw an ad for Dolton Park, ‘20 minutes south of Newcastle on the A19′ - we were heading south anyway and they were promising shopping at 50% off high street prices, so we (well, I) had to go. We arrived before most of the shops were open, so we had some breakfast and then went shopping. 2 hours later we left a now packed car park, marvelling at the massive queue to get into the place and headed for Durham.

The park and ride we had planned on using to get into Durham was closed and the backed up traffic to get anywhere near the town was ridiculous, so we turned around, meaning it effectively took us 45 minutes to travel about 10 minutes south on the A19, though obviously we used a bunch of other roads. Having skipped Durham, our possible/standby activity for the afternoon became our only activity and we headed for the North Yorkshire Moors National Park. We tried to stop in a little village for lunch, but nothing was open, so we ended up at the nearby service centre eating Subway. Then our adventure through the moors began. Through narrow winding lanes lined with hedges, taking in beautiful views over valleys of green and purple, seeing an old fashioned cricket game, a couple of wrong turns on the unmarked roads and eventually we arrived at our intended destination.

Goathland is a tiny little village in the middle of the national park that is surrounded by farm land and has sheep grazing literally everywhere.

It would probably barely register on the map except for 3 things:

• it is one of the stops on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, a short little train line that runs steam trains full of tourists through the area;
• the station is re-branded as Hogsmeade station whenever the Harry Potter crew is in town; and
• it has an alter-ego as Aidensfield, the village featured in TV series Heartbeat.

As we approached the village, we noticed a lot of cars were parked up on the grass next to the road. Figuring this was a good idea, we pulled in too. Turns out, it was the complete opposite end of the village to the station and that we could’ve parked more in the centre near the shops, but that didn’t matter to us. We had a lovely stroll through the village, past the sheep and Aidensfield shops and down to the station.

The Kate and Graeme tourist luck kicked in again and about 30 seconds after we’d crossed the tracks, a steam train turned up (completely off timetable, as far as we could tell). So we watched that come in, saw the conductors in their old fashioned uniforms, got a slight scare when the whistle blew and watched the train leave the station and go off along the valley.

Then we wandered back up the hill to the shops, where we got a drink and some souvenirs and then back through the village. Our guidebook recommended the Mallyan Spout, a waterfall reached by a footpath from the village, so down we went. It was beautiful and green by the stream and we had fun climbing over the rocks to get a good view of the waterfall, which while not massive was still impressive.

The climb back up the hill was a pretty hard slog, especially with all the walking we’d done over the 3 days, but we got there and by the time we reached the car found it much less surrounded than when we left it. By now it was after 5pm and time to start heading home. Out of the national park, we headed towards York, where we got some dinner on the outskirts and then onto the M1 back to London where I finished writing this during Graeme’s driving leg.

Sunday 26 August:

Driving over the Tyne bridge - the one based on the design of the Sydney Harbour Bridge

35 miles north of Newcastle lies Alnwick Castle, which would be considered a great day out even without the fact that it has been used as a location in many films, including being Hogwarts in the first 2 Harry Potter films. We took the ’scenic coastal route’ which really wasn’t all that scenic, offering only minor glimpses of the coast, but being that it wasn’t that much longer than the more direct route, it wasn’t a big deal. We arrived in Alnwick about 10.30am which allowed us our pick of parking spots and let us see most of the castle before it got too crowded. Throughout the day we:

• chased some pheasants in the grounds
• climbed the castle walls
• took a guided tour (always an interesting history lesson)
• explored the state rooms which are still lived in by the Duke of Northumberland and his family
• stared in awe at the amazing library
• had a yummy lunch in a castle courtyard
• watched adorable kids dressed up as knights and maidens as they played in the interactive ‘Knights Quest’ area
• did some brass rubbings

and generally had a great day right up until we left the ‘Battleaxes and Broomstix’ tour part-way through because the girl leading it was hopeless and didn’t seem to know what she was talking about when describing the films that were shot there…

Alnwick Castle


The bailey of the castle


By the time we got back to our car, the parking was packed, as was most of the town from the look of it. We headed back towards Newcastle and then west towards Hexham to try and see some of Hadrian’s Wall. According to our map, there is a road that runs along the wall, sometimes right up close and at other points 3-4 miles away, but always in the same sort of direction. Problem was, the wall just didn’t seem to be there. There were plenty of stone walls, but the sort that farmers build to separate paddocks, not the type built by ancient Romans to keep out invading Scots. Finally we came across a couple of big chucks of the wall that were still reasonably intact, but there was nowhere to stop near them. After stopping in a couple of carparks that looked promising but didn’t really deliver, other than some cows, we found ourselves about halfway across England - the place is so tiny.




We followed advice from our trusty guidebook to go to the place they said had the best views, which we’d earlier thought would be too far away, that whole over half the width of the country thing. We parked in a little carpark, climbed a hill, used some of the cool livestock-proof gates and found ourselves right at the ridge of a series of hills, along which ran Hadrian’s Wall. Once we’d had our fill, we went back to the car and headed back to Newcastle for dinner. Yummy, Sunday Roast.



Hadrian’s Wall

Saturday 25 August:

An early start to beat the long weekend traffic out of London saw us arriving in Newcastle at 12.30pm. Most big cities here have Park and Rides set up, where you park on the city outskirts and catch a dedicated bus into the most touristy part of town. Newcastle’s, however, is set up in line with their metro system, so we parked at a metro station not too far from where we would be staying the night and got into the city centre from there. A very helpful attendant at the station helped us buy the best value ticket and gave us tips about some of the things we should do during the day.

We caught the train to Newcastle central station and then wandered around the city centre. We had lunch in a foodcourt in one of the many shopping centres (both of those things are rare in London). We spent quite a bit of timein the Newcastle United FC shop, deciding if we should buy my brothers and dad anything and if so, what. We decided against a NUFC themed wedding gift (sorry Josh) and they’ll have to wait to see if we bought anything…

We wandered through the covered market where we bought awesome (and super cheap) yarn and a yummy muffin and were tempted by pretty Doc Martens. We went right up close to St James’ Park (home of NUFC) and were mildly impressed by the stadium. More impressive was the Metro station, decked out in black and white, team emblems and even a football pitch with ‘walk of fame’ type imprints on it IN THE STATION. We wouldn’t have even seen that stuff if we hadn’t been planning on catching the train.

We headed to the coast where we wandered along a beach (still fully clothed and wearing our shoes, even though some crazies people were swimming), marvelled over the disused swimming baths, bought icecreams, admired the castle ruins and took photos of the cool station. Then we followed the advice of that guy from earlier and went and caught the ferry across the Tyne, which was covered by our travel tickets. As we got to the other side, Graeme proved he is still a big kid by becoming enthralled with one of the big ships that was clearly headed across to continental Europe, so we sat and watched it take a long time to turn itself around and head out of the river.

Tynemouth Longsands

The station

Graeme and the ship

From here, we caught the train back to our car and went and checked into our accomodation for the weekend, a motor inn on the M1 that allows us to easily explore the area. After making use of the bathroom we headed back out, aiming for the Metro Centre, which is apparently Europe’s biggest shopping centre and where we figured we’d find a cinema and restaurants type set-up to get some dinner. As we were driving there, we saw a sign for the Angel of the North, which we were planning on checking out anyway, but not until later in the weekend. Since I was driving and the light looked really good for taking photos, I made the decision to see it then. It was very un-crowded and was a cool thing to see up close (and photograph :D), and the light was good, although the sun sets behind it, so it’s butt was lit beautifully and the front was in shadow. oops, I digress… We saw the Angel of the North then continued on to the Metro Centre.

After several failed attempts to even get into the car park (confusing signs), we found our way and parked near the bowling lanes, since that was one of the few things visible from the outside. Graeme has been wanting to go bowling for MONTHS, so he went and checked the price, decided it was fair and (being used to much busier bowling alleys) asked if they had and lanes available. Sometimes it is hard to believe he is 27, like when he gets so excited about the prospect of 3 games of bowling. We actually ended up playing 4 games each because the lane kept eating the bowling balls and by the time we were finishing the 3rd game the place was pretty quiet and we had a couple of guys at our lane trying to work out what was wrong with the machine, so the manager told us to play another game which Graeme used to get his best score of the night. During play we had drinks and snacks from the bar and by the end we didn’t really need a proper dinner, so we headed back to the motel in time for Graeme to watch Match of the Day and me to write this before heading to bed. Tomorrow… Hogwarts!