G & J away from home

Tuesday, 2 June

Actually two castles in Northumbria, but I don't have a book title for that so we'll go with the singular castle.

Here is the photo taken of Warkworth Castle from the car park outside the hotel.  We pretty much had this view from our hotel room last night (except through old window glass covered in rain).  This morning there were bitterly cold gale force winds but at least the sky was clear for the photos.  Even as I was taking the photo I thought it looked unreal - little green hill, castle, unbroken blue sky.  But real it was ... and also really, really cold!

Warkworth Castle

We drove to Alnwick and (step 1) found a car park.  We popped into the tourist information office to buy a 'disc' for the car parking and get a map to the castle.  We could also buy tickets there, which we did.  Most importantly I found this sign above some hedgehog-related items for sale:

Hedgehogs in danger of extinction

It's hard to believe that any population could drop from 30 million to 1 million in 65 years, but that it should be my beloved hedgehogs is awful - and this in a country where they belong and are not the introduced pests they are in New Zealand!  Only the night before I had been watching the excellent 'Springwatch' programme on tv which had been talking about hedgehogs becoming extinct.  What a tragedy.

But off to castle!  Getting in was a ridiculously slow process as the attendant had to scan and replace our tourist office issued tickets with identical ones from her own roll of them, as well as print a receipt to staple onto the tourist information office tickets.  This took three or four minutes and we were arriving early on a very cold and windy Tuesday morning - I can't imagine how slow this made entering the castle on a busy weekend day.

The keep

The castle is a huge place, beautifully kept everywhere and, amazingly, it is still the (winter) home of the Duke of Northumberland and his family.  (Not a summer home because of all us tourists milling around! ;o)

The other side of the keep

Gary went up and down stairs all over the place but absolutely refused to go into the gardens since we were very slightly sheltered from the wind in the bailey.  I followed him upstairs into the museum and we went on a tour of the state rooms but I didn't bother climbing up onto the walls.

Constable's Tower and walls

The museum was quite interesting in itself, with more Roman glass-ware, the sort of things that had surprised me so much back at the beginning of our travels in the museum in Constanta.  (That seems so long ago now!)

Additionally there was a display of Samian ware which is also Roman but pottery and very beautiful, According to the label it was difficult to fire and often made in moulds which has enabled archaeologists to match items produced in one place despite being shipped all over the Roman world. (My photo doesn't do it justice, making it look rather flatter than it is.)

Samian-ware detail

In the courtyard in the keep as we headed for the state rooms tour I was able to get a photo of this impressive light for my lamps and lights collection.  The only problem was that it didn't photograph well as it was quite high up and very tall so not able to take advantage of zooming in in landscape orientation.  Nevertheless, here it is:

Lamps & Lights: Alnwick Castle Keep

Sadly there were 'no photograph' rules for the state rooms.  Such a pity as the ceilings were absolutely beautiful - ornate but not so much that they looked gaudy.  If I'd had some time I would have liked to see if they had postcards of them but by the time the very interesting tour was over we had to race back to the car because our parking disc had done its dash.

In the state rooms were a whole raft of paintings, most interesting to me were the Canalettos.  I know very little about art and artists but I found these all rather recognisable, and especially liked the one of 'London seen through an arch of Westminster Bridge' which can be seen here.

And that was the end of our visit to Alnwick.  Off we went but almost immediately were sent on yet another diversion as the slip road onto the A1 was under repair.  The signs diverting us off the main road are always clear and unambiguous, but after that drivers are pretty much on their own.  In this case we drove and drove and then reached a T-intersection with absolutely no clue in which direction the diverted traffic should head.  I think on our whole drive back to the A1 we saw only two signs reassuring us that we were on the diverted traffic route, and they weren't on corners or intersections, but on long straights!  It is all very exciting.

And that wasn't the only area of roadworks - later on the A1(M) we ran into another long section.

More roadworks

Sadly the roadworks (and, I'll admit, my very casual attitude to researching this trip) meant that this drive-by was as close as I got to seeing the Angel of the North which I would liked to have seen.

A peek at Angel of the North

As we left the A1 the off ramp we should have taken was closed so we went off on another detour to get to Leyburn, but at least we were familiar with the area.  By mid-afternoon we had made it to Joan and Carl's where we had spent four months in a house-swap in January - May 2004.

Before tea we headed down to Joan and Carl's allotment down at the school and here they are:

Joan and Carl at the school allotment

Then while we were sitting in conservatory (my favourite room where I had spent much of our winter in Leyburn reading with a view of the snow and birds) a visitor turned up outside - a blue colourpoint Ragdoll.  Naturally I had to go out and say hello.  (Okay, and get a cuddle, too!)

Getting a Ragdoll fix!

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