A Perfect Day in Northumberland

This was my entry for a 'Perfect Day in...' competition. The rules allowed either an actual experience or a fictional one.  This is a genuine account of a visit in 2004, save that I actually visited the church on the following day.

My ingredients for a perfect day out, in no particular order, are historic buildings and gardens, bookshops and tea-shops.  The town of Alnwick in Northumberland offers all these and more.  This particular day starts at Barter Books: a huge second-hand bookshop in the former railway station.  As well as books there were comfy chairs, coffee and biscuits, and model trains running around above the bookshelves.  Did I mention that I also like miniature trains?

Alnwick Castle

It is a wrench to tear myself away, but I must see the castle. Alnwick Castle has been in the hands of the Percy family since the fourteenth century, when they acquired it from the Bishop of Durham. I’m interested in medieval history, and have always been intrigued by the story of how the last Vesci lord of Alnwick, who had no legitimate son,  gave the castle to the Bishop of Durham, either in payment for services rendered, or in trust for his illegitimate son, which he later betrayed, according to which version you choose to believe.  I’m inclined to take the bishop’s side.

Although Alnwick Castle is imposing medieval building, it’s still a family home, which is obvious from the table football and beanbags in the library.  It has found more recent fame as a location in the Harry Potter films, as the souvenirs in the gift shop will testify. Resisting the temptation to buy myself a broomstick, I elect to explore the gardens, which the Duchess of Northumberland is developing into a showpiece, complete with an enormous treehouse.

Vesci tomb, Alnwick Church

After a late lunch, it is time to visit the local church.  Probably built on the site of an earlier Saxon church, the Norman church was added to over successive centuries and was substantially rebuilt in the 1460s.  It is fascinating to discover two medieval tomb effigies which have survived the rebuilding.  One is believed to be Lady Isabella, widow of William de Vesci, that same lord of Alnwick who handed the castle over to the bishop.

Emerging from the church, I spend some time exploring the town, deciding that I have earned a cup of tea. In Grannies Tea Shop I can enjoy a slice of caramel and hazelnut cake with my tea whilst admiring the décor – a drying rack complete with ladies’ bloomers. 

Historic buildings and gardens, bookshops and tea-shops? Alnwick has them all.

Making the most of our membership

Shakespeare's Birthplace - we used our Art Passes for free entry

A while ago I wrote about how we managed to get good use out of our various heritage membership passes on our summer holiday last year.

Yesterday I thought it would be interesting to see how many times I had used all my various membership cards in 2015.

The joint 'winners' were the National Trust and the Art Pass, with 10 uses each, closely followed by English Heritage with 9 (though several of those were not for English Heritage properties as such, but a reciprocal arrangement with Manx Heritage).  The Historic Houses Association came fourth with 6. They have definitely all paid for themselves.

I only used my British Museum Friends card for a discount in their restaurant (but it was a very nice meal). I'll try to fix that this year, with a visit to the Sicily: culture and conquest exhibition.

The results in detail:

Art Pass (note that the Art Pass gives either free entry or reduced-price admission)

British Library Magna Carta exhibition

Courtauld Gallery

Dulwich Picture Gallery  Escher Exhibition

Harvard House

Leighton House

National Portrait Gallery William Morris Anarchy and Beauty exhibition

Shakespeare's Birthplace

Torquay Museum

Torre Abbey

National Trust

A La Ronde

Cliveden

Coleton Fishacre

Coughton Court

Great Chalfield Manor

Greenway

Hughenden Manor

Overbecks

Red House

Wordsworth House English Heritage Berry Pomeroy Castle Castle Rushen Eltham Palace House of Mannanan Kenilworth Castle Laxey Wheel Peel Castle Rushen Abbey Totnes Castle Historic Houses Association Cadhay Helmingham Milntown Mirehouse Powderham Castle Stratfield Saye

More Competitions

Bradt Guides are running more of their 'Perfect Day' competitions in order to promote the latest issues in their Slow Guides series.

There are three competitions:

• Perfect Day in Shropshire
• Perfect Day in the Peak District
• Perfect Day in East Devon

To enter, you need to describe a perfect day in no more than 500 words. It can be either a real experience or imagined. The deadline is 31 May.

I'll definitely be having a go.

Destinations

We went to the Destinations Travel Show at Olympia yesterday.

At last year's event, I picked up some information about Hull (not very exotic perhaps, but useful for a weekend event I was, and still am, planning), the Isle of Man and North Korea. I actually managed to visit all three in the course of the year, so it turned out to be time well spent. (My review of last year's show is on Virtual Tourist).

International Friendship Exhibition, Mt Myohyang

This year, we dropped by the Regent Holidays stand to thank their North Korea specialist, Carl, for arranging our Christmas and New Year trip to North Korea. It was a fascinating and very unusual experience. We also bumped into Hilary Bradt at the  Bradt Guides stand. Last year I bought a copy of their North Korea guidebook, so I was able to tell her that we had found it very helpful for pre-trip planning, even though we couldn't actually take it with us.

This year I picked up information about Lake Ohrid and travelling to and around Italy by rail. I hope I get to at least one of them.

I always enjoy looking at the Travel Photo of the Year finalists. There were some really excellent shots, as always, though one of the best was a wildlife of leaping hares shot taken no more than a dozen miles from where I live!

Not quite avoiding Christmas

Well, I'm back from my (un)festive travels.

In retrospect, travelling Finnair via Helsinki may not have been the best move, as far as avoiding Christmas is concerned.  We had no sooner landed in Helskinki, than we were handed a chocolate and a map of the terminal by one of Santa's Little Helpers. We did manage to avoid the opportunity to have our photos taken with the man himself, though.

Whilst my final destination (have you guessed where it was yet) was not in the least Christmassy, I actually spent 25 December on a stopover in Beijing.

Which was in fact quite Christmassy.  There was a a large Christmas tree in the reception area of our hotel. We ate in the hotel's Chinese restaurant, where the staff were dressed in Santa outfits or reindeer antlers, and the background music was a selection of Christmas songs, from Frosty the Snowman to All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth. (I am not making this up).

There were quite a few festive touches in the Wangfujing shopping area as well.

Avoiding Christmas....

Whilst I'm not one of those people who hate Christmas, sometimes I like to take advantage of the long Christmas break from work whilst my office is closed to go travelling.

Ashgabat in December

Precisely because I like Christmas - I love making mince pies, wrapping presents and all the rest of it -  Christmas away from home just isn't the same. So if I do go away I try to make sure that this is somewhere that Christmas isn't celebrated.  This is harder than you might think.  I have so far failed to avoid reminders of Christmas in Egypt, Morocco, and most spectacularly, Turkmenistan.

This year, I think I may have cracked it. I'm pretty sure that my destination is one where there will be nothing Christmassy whatsoever. My tickets arrived this morning, and I'm busy planning my packing list instead of my Christmas menu.* 

Item one: thick-soled boots.  

Item two: a torch.

Item three: sachets of instant coffee.
Item four: a towel.

Can you guess where I'm going yet?

*I might just make some mince pies anyway.  I like mince pies.

A Day in the Lakes

I have never been to the Lake District, so when my husband was spending a few days there for work, I took the opportunity to join him at the weekend.  My work schedule meant that I got to Penrith late on Friday night and had to leave again on Sunday morning, so the idea was to have a leisurely day.

Castlerigg Stone Circle

And so I did. But I still managed to see two historic houses, a pencil museum and a prehistoric stone circle, and browse a couple of secondhand bookshops.

We started with breakfast in a café in Penrith which had a display of knitted tea cosies in the window. We pushed open the door and walked in to find it full of elderly customers who all fell silent and looked at us.  We held our nerve and went in search of the additional seating upstairs, which turned out to be entirely unoccupied until we arrived. The menu here was very traditional: for breakfast the choice was full English, ‘small’ cooked breakfast or toasted teacake.  None of your fancy croissants or hipster-pleasing porridge here. The ‘small’cooked breakfast included a fried egg, two sausages, two rashers of bacon and two hash browns, so I dread to think what the full version was like. But their filter coffee was delicious, and at £1.20 a mug, half the price it would be in London (or the trendier place we later found for lunch).

We explored the town a little. St Andrew’s church is surrounded by attractive Georgian houses, but the church itself, which was rebuilt in 1720-22, incorporating a medieval tower, has something faintly reminiscent of a Victorian factory about it. We found an excellent secondhand bookshop nearby. Luckily, I had no room in my suitcase for excessive book purchases.

Kitchen, The Wordsworth House

We drove along the A66 to Cockermouth in order to visit the Wordsworth House and Garden, the birthplace and childhood home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, presented by the National Trust as it would have been in the 1770s when they lived here with their parents.  The dining table was set with typical dishes, and in the kitchen a costumed maid was bustling about and offering samples of Cumberland Rum Butter to try.  Upstairs, in one room there was an outbreak of the painting of quotations on walls that has broken out in the heritage industry recently. This took the form of poetry on the subject of ‘home’, with excerpts from the poems of Wordsworth, Neil Simon and McFly among others!  Outside was a very impressive kitchen garden – with free samples of apples to take away. 

Cumberland Pencil Museum

Exploring Cockermouth afterwards we found another excellent second hand bookshop, before deciding to drive back to Keswick for lunch. We parked in a car park by the former Cumberland Pencil Factory, where the world’s only pencil museum is located.  After a lunch of a meat platter (smoked duck, scotch egg, beef, sausage and pickles) at Treeby’s Café and Gallery we decided to investigate. Pencil production began in the Keswick area in 1832 because of local source of graphite in the Borrowdale Valley. We paid our £4.50 and were handed our ‘tickets’, which doubled as complimentary pencils.  It’s a small museum explaining about discovery of graphite and the invention of the pencil (by the French), modern production methods and the history of the Cumberland factory and products. During World War II some of the managers did extra secret shifts at night in order  to produce special pencils with a secret compartment just large enough to contain a tightly-rolled map and tiny compass.

St Bega's churchyard

Having come to the Lake District, we felt that we really needed to see a lake (or mere or water), so drove around Bassenthwaite Lake and came across Mirehouse, a historic house which happened to be open, so we decided to visit. The house was built in 1666 by the 8^th Earl of Derby. He sold it to his agent Robert Gregg in 1688  - the only time it has been sold.  It has been passed on through inheritance ever since, and has been in the hands of the Spedding family since 1802.  James Spedding (1808-81) was a scholar who devoted most of his life to the study of Bacon and whose friends included Tennyson, Thackeray, Carlyle and other literary figures of the period. It’s a beautiful house. We didn’t much time to explore the grounds, but did manage to dash down to the 10^th century St Bega’s church by the lake. There was just time for tea in the Old Sawmill Tea Room, where I can thoroughly recommend the carrot cake.

On our way back to Penrith we stopped at Castlerigg stone circle, which was very atmospheric as the sun was setting.