Days out come in all sort of shapes and sizes, relaxed, cultured, rain or shine, but they all need company. I usually keep a list of days out I want to do (in my head) so I am never stuck if I talk one of my friends into having a mini adventure. There is of course a criteria to whether my friends come – 1) they have to leave their watches at home (I am not good at sticking to time) 2) they don’t mind listening to my ramblings 3) they don’t mind gambling my classic (old banger) car will make the trip. So Instead of ‘Great Expectations’ my friends need ‘No Expectations’ on these days out. They just have to say “what the hell Gillian, I will come with you wherever”. Got to love them.
Today Lady L agreed to come out with me, she has just come back from visiting her relatives in sunny Oz, so as she was at a low ebb she was easy to coax out. After wrestling with Kangaroos and long distant cousins she was ready for some homemade culture.
I suggested a visit to a castle, not any castle, a castle I had never realised was there, Chillingham Castle near Alnwick, such is my lack of local history. As it turned out It’s a really impressive castle including dungeon and torture chamber, that would impress anyone (well it did us, but then again we are women of a certain age!!). Lady L enjoyed operating the Rack and having her head in the Stocks, but was a little more spooked than we expected, jumping when she thought one of the bodies (dummies) moved, admitting it hadn’t – she had!! The Castle was formed on top of a cave which has apparently been there long before Christ (or so the information said, yes I am no history buff) and fortified by the Romans around 2 thousand years ago!
There are wild cattle that still protect the outside. The Castle housed so many famous people from history it was hard to keep up. The current owner Sir Humphry Wakefield and his wife Lady Grey have opened it to the public allowing people to sleep over and experience a ghost tour. Lady L and I spent 3 hours wandering the Castle, gardens and lake feeling very much at home, although Sir Humphry didn’t appear to say Hi to us.
The drive there was just as much fun, as the road there was mostly a series of long narrow lanes, which must be great to drive along in blackberry picking season, as you could stay in the car and pick the fruit, as the bushes are so close (if you are as lazy as us). With the sun shining we meandered along the lanes till we came to a river with no road across! It was impossible to turn around and from the car it looked like we couldn’t drive through it but after careful consideration I sent Lady L out to investigate. Which on reflection wasn’t so clever, her being small, unable to swim with a tendency to put her foot in any puddle she is near. However after peering at this fast moving stream she verified it was just a Ford and we should put our foot down and get the car across fast. So we went for it, until we realised that going too fast would mean we couldn’t get a photo of the experience so we stopped half way across to get the necessary shots. Luckily, the car moved again and our brakes didn’t pack in once we were out of the water. On reflection stopping might not have been such a good idea but hindsight etc etc is not for us.
Luckily the tea room beside the dungeon offers a splendid high tea so before the torture and culture tour we tried one. With prehistoric Elk anglers on the wall from what looks like a mutant animal they were so giant. They are believed to be between 10,000 and 45,000 years old – that’s older than I thought we counted back!!!
We ended the day with a walk around the lake, well not quite around the lake as we got halfway and the path stopped. I made a mental note to suggest to Sir Humphry he get a path all the way around as we agreed it would have been very pretty. So as usual we got stuck in the mud, tried to retrace our steps and got lost!! How, we managed to do it we had no idea, after all it was only one lake, but we did.
Lady L told me over in Oz that lanes off the motorway have signs on for those people who get confused/lost and take the wrong road the sign says ” Wrong Way – Go back!”. We considered that those signs should be put along our lives after all it would be good to have help these days. Unfortunately like our days out, our ability to get lost in life is just as easy and even if these signs did exist we would probably not notice them anyway. But then again we sometimes get to enjoy some of the wrong roads together…..
wherethehellisgillian 