kate and graeme

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!

Click on the photo above to see my set from the 3rd and follow along with the commentary. Graeme was chief photographer on the 4th and hasn’t put his photos up yet, but I’ll edit when he has

We always wake up earlier on weekends that we are going away than any other day of the week. This time though, instead of interrupting our Saturday sleep-in, we were up and away before peak hour had really kicked in on a Friday morning, our travel plans being dictated by the date we could get Tattoo tickets. By 7.30 am we were at Kings Cross station, wondering what to do while we waited for them to announce which platform our 8am train would leave from. I pointed out platform 9¾ to Graeme, but we didn’t take photos or go up to it because we didn’t want to look too lame. We grabbed some drinks and a snack and sat and watched the crowd and the trains, then our platform was announced so we headed over and got on the train to Edinburgh. It wasn’t quite as exciting as the Hogwarts Express, but still the idea of catching the train from Kings Cross to Scotland was kind of nerdy cool, especially since I wasn’t the only person on the train reading one of the books.

We got into Edinburgh Waverley at lunch time, so we stopped at the first place we found and ate. Then we went for a walk through the park, past a burnt-out building still surrounded by firemen and some uninspiring street performers, then up towards the Royal Mile, stopping to look at the Museum on the Mound, which was about banking and money in Scotland and had some very cool old coins, showed how they made money and included £1000000 in cancelled out 20s. We spent several hours on the Royal Mile, watching street performers (and in Graeme’s case, performing), checking out shops and wandering through free exhibitions - basically doing the stuff that we hadn’t got around to last time we were there (last year, also at festival time, meaning we have no idea what regular Edinburgh is really like). After finding our accommodation, checking in, hanging out the window to take photos and convincing Graeme it wasn’t time for a nap, we walked back to the Royal Mile to find some dinner, stopping along the way to enjoy another street performer’s show.

By the time we were finished dinner it had gotten cold and the wind had picked up tremendously, so we considered going back to one of the shops closer to the castle, where Graeme had spotted some potential extra jackets, but instead we encountered the queue for the Tattoo, already packed and long with over 30 minutes until the gates even opened. So we just kind of milled about for a while, refusing to join the ridiculous queue that was now well down the road (unlike Europeans, we don’t consider queuing an enjoyable pastime, especially when so many people are likely to ignore the queue and just push-in) and then deciding to sit on the base of a statue and wait. Eventually we joined the massive throng of people headed up the narrowing street to the castle forecourt and finally got to our seats about 10 minutes after starting time, but it was OK because it started even later than that.

The Edinburgh Military Tattoo was on our list of ‘Things We Must Do Whilst in the UK’ and it didn’t disappoint. It was great to see it live and we enjoyed it thoroughly.

At the end, it was back into the scrum of people and slowly back to our room for the night. We kind of felt like we should be heading somewhere else, being the festival and all, but we were too tired.

Saturday morning we had a cooked breakfast and checked out before heading back to the point where we’d stopped our exploration of the Royal Mile the day before. As we wandered further down we discovered we were way too keen to get going and most things were still closed because it was before 10am. We reached Holyrood Palace, which marks the opposite end of the Mile to Edinburgh Castle, but decided against going in after we flicked through one of the books in the shop and figured it wouldn’t be worth the admission (we’ve seen enough palaces and castles to last a lifetime, so there has to be something special to attract us). Instead we headed around it and came to the base of a big hill we had seen from our room and had thought might be cool t climb. So we did. It was pretty long and parts were very steep, but the views we got over the city were worth it.

We headed back up the Royal Mile, stopping to get some fudge and then headed to Parliament Square where we sat on one of the big stone fence-rail-type things, watched some performers and ate some fudge (yum). Once we, along with about 10 others, got told we weren’t allowed to sit there for some ‘public safety’ reason, the place kind of lost its appeal (it was just ridiculous because the day before the place was constantly occupied by people, being the only thing anything like a place to sit in the area, but since it was now officially festival time, some power-tripping volunteer decided no-one could sit there). So we headed away from the festival and down into the park, which we wandered through for awhile. Running out of things to do, we decided to head for the shops in the hope of finding something to occupy us and maybe some food. We had lunch at TGI Fridays and then wandered along looking at the shops. Once we were sick of the crowds in all the shops, we headed to the park where we sat for awhile before going in search of some sandwiches to take on the train and then heading to the station where we caught the train back to London.