Holiday news

[Mickwhitt 4,621]

Hi all.

Been pretty busy here of late with all kinds of things needing my time.

The good lady wanted to have a little holiday here in England while we still could with the upswing in covid AGAIN! 

So we went on a road trip to Northumberland, on the north east coast, just below the Scottish border. 

We stayed at Bamburgh where there is a castle, before moving on to the Holy Island where there is a castle, then to Tynemouth where there is a castle and took a side trip to a little place they call Whittingham, where  you guessed it they also have a castle. 

Long story short, we've been arguing with our neighbours over in Scotland for so long we needed a shed load of castles to keep us safe.

Whittingham was very interesting as its my family name and was once a very important little town on the Newcastle to Edinburgh mail road, by the way both those places have castles too, you can see a pattern here...

The village is pretty old, having been started in around 700 AD which is quite sobering. It had its own court house, post office, railway station and as I mentioned before a castle. 

I say castle, its more of a Pele (peel) tower built to house the villagers when the Scots hordes descended on them to nick everything not nailed down. 

It was quite surreal wandering round and seeing my name all over the shop, and even stranger to talk to a local who assured me I had been pronouncing my name all wrong. They say it as Whittenjam,  the old style of it apparently. 

We also took a trip to Beamish open air museum which has collected thousands of artifacts of normal northern life and made them into a huge series of rebuilt streets, farms and houses.

A great place to visit but I found a lot of my childhood reproduced as a cute bygone era which modern school kids thought of as ancient history... YES I DID GET BATHED ONCE A WEEK IN A TIN TUB WHICH WE USED TO HANG ON A NAIL IN THE BACK DOOR!  Sasser frassen, bricker bracken kids!

Anyways, I thought some of you might like to see a few images of pornography I managed to snap while visiting there....

 

 

 

 

 

 

That tram was originally from Sheffield,  where my family passed through as steel workers on their way to work in the coal mines of Barnsley. 

Also visited one of if not the biggest book store in Britain and bought the history of Whittingham. 

Got lots more pics of castles and canons and stuff. 

Hope it was of interest. 

 

[ri702bill 8,316]

Nothing wrong with tractor "porn"... BTW, several of my former co-workers called it that - I would get on the Forum during lunch - to turn off the brain and eat at my desk.

Bill

[c-series don 8,690]

I believe that area is known to have many castles, or did you mention the castles already? If not we should talk about the castles, have more pictures of the castles. You know general castle talk about castles!!!! 😂😂

[Mickwhitt 4,621]

I must admit I was all castled out pretty quick, two we visited had been bought and converted as smart country retreats by wealthy folk in the 1800s. One of them is still home to the Armstrong family who made lots of moolah making and selling military gear from battleships to field guns. 

We stayed on night in a hotel (an hotel) which was blasted into the cliffs by a clever guy in the 1700s. He didn't like paying rent and built a shed against the cliffs to live in, no rent as its not crown land or some such.  He started digging through the back wall and blasting out rock until he had a huge home. The authorities didn't like it much (mainly because he was a smuggler and all round cad) and he had all sorts of grief, but its now a full sized underground hotel and restaurant.  

 

The view from our room was pretty neat, even though we were there at the height of storm Arwen which was pretty frisky...

The sea came in all the way to the terrace at night, we almost slept with our wellies on.