Break from the old routine
Hurrah! Have survived first week back at work following 2 weeks holidays. Usually that first week is exceptionally hellish, but it turned out OK, possibly because our holiday was a wee bit cold, wet and hard work so anything else felt like a rest!
We made it Oop North, tent at the ready, just in time for the severe weather warning for the area where we had been hoping to camp. The Angel of the North was all but blotted out by the driving rain as we trawled past. Still, he stood there with his rusted arms outstretched, though whether it was a gesture of welcome or a plea for someone to relocate him to the south-east, it was difficult to tell. Consequently we kept heading North in the hope that we would run out of weather, which we eventually did, happily before we ran out of land. In Edinburgh, to be precise, which was a very buzzy place to be a week before the start of the Festival.
In all we visited Staffordshire (relatives), the Yorkshire Dales, Durham (old friends), Edinburgh, Lindisfarne (see photo), Alnwick, Northumbria including Hadrian's Wall / Vindolanda, and then spent a week in a cottage near Whitby before trundling back via friends in York and a visit to Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There were days with sunshine (as evidenced by photo), though not the day we booked to horse ride, unfortunately! Above all we loved the freedom of not knowing where we would go or even where we would sleep that first week. Both sets of friends were visited more by luck than judgement, too, and it was a fab opportunity to rehearse some old jokes and to realise why we had become friends in the first place,
Despite the freedom I was still glad to get home to find my own bed, some clean clothes, and a message from the lady who feeds our cats to say that they had brought home 1 frog and a baby squirrel in our absence. Not bad for inner city cats.
We made it Oop North, tent at the ready, just in time for the severe weather warning for the area where we had been hoping to camp. The Angel of the North was all but blotted out by the driving rain as we trawled past. Still, he stood there with his rusted arms outstretched, though whether it was a gesture of welcome or a plea for someone to relocate him to the south-east, it was difficult to tell. Consequently we kept heading North in the hope that we would run out of weather, which we eventually did, happily before we ran out of land. In Edinburgh, to be precise, which was a very buzzy place to be a week before the start of the Festival.
In all we visited Staffordshire (relatives), the Yorkshire Dales, Durham (old friends), Edinburgh, Lindisfarne (see photo), Alnwick, Northumbria including Hadrian's Wall / Vindolanda, and then spent a week in a cottage near Whitby before trundling back via friends in York and a visit to Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There were days with sunshine (as evidenced by photo), though not the day we booked to horse ride, unfortunately! Above all we loved the freedom of not knowing where we would go or even where we would sleep that first week. Both sets of friends were visited more by luck than judgement, too, and it was a fab opportunity to rehearse some old jokes and to realise why we had become friends in the first place,
Despite the freedom I was still glad to get home to find my own bed, some clean clothes, and a message from the lady who feeds our cats to say that they had brought home 1 frog and a baby squirrel in our absence. Not bad for inner city cats.
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