TO THE NORTH !!! LIVERPOOL, SCOTLAND, HADRIAN'S WALL & DURHAM.

Sit back, have a cup of something and be patient. This will take a while!  Our three week trip to Scotland at Easter this year has taken a while to post. We did a lot - taking almost 1,800 photos.

If you can't read the whole thing then at least have a look at the bits on Glasgow, Dunnard, The Whale, The Dolphins and The Needles, Hogwart's Castle and Hadrian's Wall!

We had intended to go to Ireland with a side trip to Scotland for the 3 week Easter break. Mark started planning and sorting the various ferry and accommodation options but we realised it would be too hard to squeeze both in, so we opted to make Ireland a separate trip later - possibly without Sally as she had been there years before but had never been to Scotland. 

In the weeks prior to Easter the weather in the UK grew colder and bleaker with yet another snowfall - not as much as in February though (see the end of our post on that snowfall). We ended up with some very curious footprints on our flat roof. We aren't sure what they came from - the neighbours, James & Helen, think it was William; we think it was their dog Finn! The prints look almost as if they were made by a one footed kangaroo or perhaps it was The Beast of East Finchley....

The weather stayed very cold, warming to a few degrees during the day. As the snow melted then refroze, icicles developed on our glass roof section of our verandah. They lasted for a couple of weeks. It now turns out that spring 2013 was officially the coldest in 50 years following the wettest summer in 100 years.

This was a bit of a portent of the weather to come. You possibly saw some of the reports of the snow in Scotland which dominated the news for the weeks before Easter. It seemed as if the whole of the northern UK was beneath metres of snowdrifts, as the Internet photos below suggest. As reports of closed motorways and stranded motorists persisted, we seriously considered cancelling.

We contacted some of the hotels we had booked with and found that, while the snow was bad, it was only in very specific parts of western Scotland. We decided to go on with the trip but packed some 'emergency' provisions - sleeping bags, ski trousers and big boots, just in case!

But before we left for Scotland, 'Hotel Strutty' (or Struttingham Palace) gladly opened again for more visitors.

A long time ago, back in 1990 BS (Before Sally), while Mark was a carefree young(ish) traveller in Syria, he met a couple of young Germans in Aleppo and travelled with them for a few days down to Damascus. Mark kept in touch with them and visited both on a later trip to Germany in 1992. In the end though he lost touch with one but kept in touch with the other. In 2011 Sabine, now mother of 3, tried to organise a family holiday to the UK but it didn't come off. Late in 2012 she tried again, but this time just for herself and eldest daughter.

The week before we left for Scotland Sabine and Martha came to stay. The weather was still bleak, with snow on the ground in our backyard. Sabine and Martha came prepared for the weather and luckily ended up with a couple of sunny days. They went on the London Eye, visited various museums and saw a performance of our favourite theatre show 'Matilda'. Mark was able to add to his extensive German phrase repertoire and Martha advanced in her English. We cooked traditional Australian pavlova and made them try Vegemite, which they they liked. At least that is what they said.

Yummy........

LIVERPOOL.
We headed off to Scotland leaving Sabine in charge of locking up the house. Our first stop was Liverpool and the Beatles. What can we say? It was amazing going into Paul McCartney's childhood home and then John Lennon's. In Paul's place Aisha played the piano while in John's Will played a guitar. The contrast between the two houses was marked. Paul's was very much a council house, small and simple, while John's Aunt Mime's house was much grander. Unfortunately photos weren't allowed inside either. The ones below are from the Internet. The lounge room at Paul's house was where he and John got together and wrote a number of their hits. One of the early ones was 'She loves you, yeah yeah yeah'. Apparently Paul's father disliked the Americanism 'yeah' and tried to persuade them to make it 'Yes yes yes'.

Paul's lounge room.

It was a little strange being in John's bedroom with some of his childhood drawings and books on display. It was amusing reading the school reports that said John lacked focus, made little effort and would be unlikely to amount to anything! Internet photos of John's house below.

Outside Paul's house. 

John's front door.

John's house.

We went to the original barber shop on Penny Lane where William got a haircut,

then to Eleanor Rigby's grave at St. Peter's Parish Church, Woolton on Merseyside. Across the road is the church hall where Paul and John first met and where the Quarry men, as the Beatles were originally called, first played.

Strawberry Fields was a bit of a let down as it is now just a set of graffiti covered gates in front of a weed infested vacant  lot.

On the way out of Liverpool we saw an English bush fire. We were later to realise that many parts of Scotland had been in drought conditions since January. In some of the towns we went to the local whisky distilleries had ceased production due to lack of spring water.

We drove up to Carlisle and saw the castle which, given its proximity to the border between England and Scotland, has been the centre of many battles and is apparently the most besieged castle in England. In the castle cells are 500 year old rock 'doodles' carved apparently by prison guards.

Caerlaverock Castle.
After staying the night in Dumfries we headed south around the Solway Firth taking in great views of snow capped Lakes District fels (which we'd climbed at the same time of year 2 years ago, see our post  on that here) & stopped at Caerlaverock Castle, an amazing triangular shaped castle. First built in the 13th century to control cross border raids, parts of the inside of the castle reminded us very much of the ruins of Petra in Jordan.

Red rock and shapes
just like Petra.

From there we spent the next few days exploring Dunfries/Galloway. We dropped into Threave Estate which, like many other National Trust/English Heritage properties, was having an Easter egg hunt and special events. Threave also had an owl display.  

Spring was slow to start in most of Northern Europe and the UK in particular had a very prolonged winter. Looking through the photos in this post, you'll notice we rarely get out of woolly hats and jackets. Every so often we saw glimpses of what we might have expected to see if the weather had been more normal. 

AILSA CRAIG. 
We also stopped in at Culzean castle. This impressive clifftop castle on the Ayrshire coast of Scotland is the former home of the Marquess of Ailsa, the chief of Clan Kennedy. Now owned by the National Trust for Scotland, it once gave its top wing to Dwight D Eisenhower as his official holiday home in appreciation of his wartime contribution. 

More significant for us, Culzean has views out to Ailsa Craig. Ailsa is the name of a very long time family friend of Mark's, Ailsa Blackman, who sadly died in early July last year.

Formed from the volcanic plug of an extinct volcano, the now uninhabited island has been up for sale since March this year, asking price a mere £1.5 million! It was a haven for Catholics during the Scottish Reformation in the 16th century while today is a bird sanctuary. Ailsa Craig consists mostly of 'blue hone' granite which is used to make curling stones. Our guide told us that the very best curling stones made from the very best blue hone granite are known simply as 'an Ailsa'. 

Ailsa Craig.

Heading out of Carlisle and across the border we encountered some of the snow drifts that we had seen on the news. They were quite confined and we wondered whether they would get worse as we headed north. Fortunately this was the most we saw on the roads. The snow throughout Scotland gave a wonderful backdrop to the stunning highland scenery that lay ahead.

GLASGOW.
On Easter Monday evening we dropped Sally off at Glasgow airport for her flight back to London. She had to work the following four days before flying back to join us again and continue for the next two weeks. Mark & the kids stayed five nights in Glasgow. We did a bit of looking around, a bit of mindless shopping and waited for Aisha to get over a bout of something or other that laid her low for 24 hours.

Realising we had more than two weeks of 'Full English' breakfasts and 'eat out' dinners ahead of us, we decided to make the most of a very friendly and well stocked deli counter at the Glasgow Marks & Spencer's. We had already availed ourselves of their generous samples of Scottish smoked salmon and decided to spoil ourselves on healthier and less expensive dinners. Apart from the food, the kids enjoyed the novelty of watching TV in the hotel room during dinner.

Aisha says 'Nom, nom, nom'.

Glasgow has not always had the best of reputations and we did wonder if we would get bored after a few days. It was actually pretty good. We found the People's Palace museum documenting the social /workers' history of the city particularly interesting & poignant. While Glasgow is by no means a struggling city, it does still have areas that hint at former glories that now are 'awaiting development'.

It seemed the Glaswegians have a bit of a sense of humour when it comes to some of their monuments and museums.

We saw Salvador Dali's Christ of Saint John on the cross at Glasgow's Kenilworth museum.

The Clyde river was where Sally's Grandpa, Bill Worsfold, spent time on the gunship Arethusa along with many other ships gathering in advance of the D-Day landings. The ship was part of the Eastern Task Force, sailing from the Clyde on 2nd of June and arriving off the beaches at 0455 on the 6th. She was part of Bombarding Force D which included three battleships, four other cruisers and thirteen destroyers. They provided gunfire support for Force S landing at Sword Beach. On 16th June The Arethusa returned to Portsmouth to collect King George VI and take him across to inspect the landings at Juno Beach. 

The family story goes that when Bill was taking the King's chair up to the bridge for the king to use, he harried a man out of his way as he negotiated the stairs with the chair held in front of him. It was the King himself who stepped aside to give Bill the right of way! A week later, on 25 June, Bill and the Arethusa were steaming off the beaches when she was attacked by an aircraft which dropped a mine that exploded in her wake and she suffered internal damage.

The Clyde River in Glasgow.

Near the centre of the city, on a hill giving excellent views, is the Glasgow Necropolis. It reminded us very much of the Highgate Cemetery here in London with its impressive memorials and mausoleums. Amongst its famous residents is a memorial to William Miller, the man who wrote 'Wee Willie Winkie'. Miller was a Glaswegian who was a part time poet and story writer as well as being a wood turner and cabinet maker. He died in 1872 aged 62. Despite having achieved a degree of fame in his lifetime, he was destitute at the time of his death.

Loch Lomond.

Loch Lomond is only 30 minutes drive from Glasgow. The well developed visitors' centre - with many car parks just waiting for what must be a massive summer influx of tourists -  gives a superb view up the Loch. The kids did the first of their many 'stone skimmings'. William collected, and still has, a bag full of what became known as 'The Sacred Stones of Skim'.

As we headed away from Loch Lomond to our first Scottish B&B at the top of Loch Long, we encountered some amazing scenery not just on the way but outside our bedroom window. 

The view from our room.

It was at this B&B that we tried haggis for the first time. It was a bit like the Arabic fried meatball dish called 'Kibbeh'. It wasn't bad at all. The Scots also do Haggis chips, which were surprisingly OK too.

Aisha tries haggis while Will isn't so sure.

Being Tasmanian, Sally is very fond of long walks up steep hills in less than ideal weather. For years she has been trying to convince Mark this is in fact a very good way to spend one's leisure time. Being in Scotland was an excellent opportunity to indulge her. The views were spectacular and the weather held on until we were literally two minutes from the car park when it started to rain...and hail.

Throughout a lot of Scotland, and the UK in general, are dry stone walls. During our Loch Lomond walk we followed a particularly good, long example.

As we headed north west through Argyle we stopped at Cairndow to see the tallest tree in Britain, just under 64.5 metres tall. 

Stonehenge is the most famous of the UK's 1,300 standing stone circles. Dating from around 3,00BC and found mostly on the European Atlantic fringe. Scotland has around 200 of them. There are even some in France. We saw two separate sites with smallish, very accessible stones. The teddies, who accompany us on all our trips but rarely choose to leave the hotels,  joined the kids to see the stones near Kilmartin, while Sally is with some stones on Mull. 

Dunadd iron age fort, now sitting above flat fields, was once an island and the seat of Scottish kings. It is known for its unique stone carvings, including a footprint and basin thought to have formed part of coronation rituals of the kingdom of Dalriada. In the late 6th and early 7th century Dalriada covered what is now Argyle and Bute and Lochaber in Scotland as well as County Antrim in Northern Ireland. 

According to legend, all Scots kings were crowned here by placing their foot in the footprint carved into the rock. As did Aisha.

Aisha, King of the Britons !

( & Scots too.)

OBAN & THE WHALE.
We spent the night in the youth hostel in Oban taking the 'apartment' rooms that allowed us to do some more self catering. We wished we had more time there as, like many of the Scottish harbour towns, it was very picturesque.

Unlike the other towns though, Oban has its own Colosseum.

The Colosseum was built between 1897 and 1902 at a cost of £5,000 (£500,000 in today's money) by the local banker John McCaig. It was supposed to be a monument to his family as well as a means for him to provide work for the unemployed local stonemasons. His slightly grandiose plans included a museum and art gallery, all with a central tower. Inside the tower he planned to commission statues of himself and his family. His death in 1902 brought an end to construction with only the outer walls completed.

Getting around the inner Hebrides islands involves catching a variety of ferries, some large and others quite small. As we waited to board the car ferry to Mull, we saw the sperm whale that had decided to visit Oban for the previous few weeks. Along with many others, we went up on the outside deck so we could see the whale if it re-surfaced. We realised that we had left the binoculars in the car and Will offered to go back below to the car deck to get them.

We only got a little worried when he hadn't come back up 15 minutes later. He missed the whale surfacing as he ended up being locked in the car decks. Mark did try and get him back but was assured by the purser that no-one was below. Well Mark said that means he has jumped overboard because he isn't with us. An announcement for 'Mr William Strutt' to report had no effect. The purser sent someone below to have a look. No William could be found. Again Mark assured him that we didn't have him and that he must therefore be in the water. This prompted the purser to go below himself. Will was eventually found in the car, waiting. He had realised he was locked below and, being only slightly worried, decided the most sensible and comfortable place to be was in the car. The purser blamed our tinted windows for him not being spotted!  Below is a video of the whale.

On Mull we went to Duart Castle. The castle is the seat of the Clan MacLean, & dates back to the 13th century when it was given as part of a dowry. The castle has been attacked, defended, partly destroyed and rebuilt several times. Today it is the home of Sir Fitzroy Donald Maclean. It has been used in several movies including the recent Pixar movie Brave as well as the 1999 film Entrapment, starring Sean Connery - who has MacLean ancestry. Most impressively though it served as the base for Buffy Summers in the first half of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight.

It was a really windy, cold day which gave us an insight into just how uncomfortable castles must have been to actually live in.

The British are very apologetic about many things. The Scots seem to have caught it too. We liked this sign about the very narrow steep stairs in the castle.

The harbour town of Tobermorey is beautiful with multi-coloured house fronts lining the harbour. We had booked an apartment for three nights. There were spectacular views from the upstairs lounge room.

Sunset across Tobermorey bay.

STAFFA & THE DOLHINS.
On Mull we went out to the isle of Staffa to see puffins and Fingal's Cave. We saw the cave, some dolphins, a sea eagle but no puffins. We were lucky with the weather - it was cool, not too windy and surprisingly clear. The snow capped Ben More provided an unlikely backdrop for  the dolphins. We were told that, apart from having snow on the Ben, we were lucky that we could see it at all given it is often shrouded in mist. The video below is of the dolphins.

Staffa island was named by the Vikings and means stave or pillar in Norse. Apparently the pillar like rock formations reminded the Vikings of the log homes they built back in Viking land. Joseph Banks, of Captain Cook and Endeavour fame, visited the island and brought it to public attention. As a result, people such as Queen Victoria and Felix Mendelssohn visited it. Inspired by what he saw on the island and in Scotland generally, Mendelssohn composed The Hebrides overture. Click here to listen.

The clifftops on Staffa.

Tobermorey has several very good sea food restaurants. We enjoyed a meal at Cafe Fish which serves up amazing seafood straight off its own boat. William, not a great fan of seafood, enjoyed the dessert.

Will's dessert glass.

The UK has a ridiculous number of castles (possibly around 800 !?) and Scotland has many of the more impressively located ones with stunning scenery. The one below is the very picturesque Eilean Donan castle on Loch Duich.

A postcard photo.

From Mull we headed 'across the sea to Skye' and stayed at a nice B&B in Portree. The views from the dining room to the British Alps were pretty impressive.

In Skye we went to 'The Kilt' a waterfall that drops off dramatic cliff tops directly into the sea. With the comparative lack of rain in Scotland, the falls weren't as spectacular as they usually are.

THE NEEDLE WALK.

Although we did not think it possible, the scenery was even more spectacular on Skye. We decided to do a walk on the stunning Trotternish Peninsula. It was supposed to be a 3 hour walk but we took detours and it ended up being just a tad longer at around 5 hours. It was more demanding than we had thought and we were very mindful of a walker we had been told about who had been missing for several days. As far as we know he was not found.

We climbed to the top of the ark shaped formation 

.....then decided to go up to The Needle (the column formation below) and then to climb up to The Table which sits behind The Needle.

The Needle.

Aisha eating snow.

On top of The Table.

We made it to The Table !
Now lets go to ..........

Getting to The Table was a little tricky, particularly with the snow obscuring the path at times. Getting down and around it was even trickier. 

Heading down sometimes meant sliding. 

There was quite a bit of scampering down hill, 

.....some steady clear flat sections

.....and some very long, steady uphill tracks ... 

........which were much harder than they looked. 

Fortunately the walk from the the top was comparatively short and gently downhill. The views made it worthwhile.

We all had a bit of a lie in the next day but did a few hours in the car and another shorter walk up a beautiful river in the Cuilin Hills with "Fairy Pools".  They were more impressive in reality than they seem in these photos, particularly with the snow capped hills as a backdrop.

We toured a whisky distillery, stopped in for fresh oysters and then headed back to the main land. Although we didn't plan to, we made a small detour to the southern end of Loch Ness after Sally noticed on the map how close we were to it.

Looking, looking at Loch Ness.

DUNDEE.

We had a long drive through to Dundee where Mark wanted to have a look for some family history. Back in the mid 1800s his maternal Great-Great Grandmother left Ireland with her sons to settle in Dundee. She left her daughters behind to look after their father and the farm. One of the sons, Henry Sheridan, married Mary Christie. Mary had two sisters, Margaret & Isabel. Isabel married late in life to James Smith, in his 50s, who had returned from trading in India. He set up a billiard room on Princes Street with money from his trading. They had no children but helped Isabel's sister Mary and her children into businesses. Sorry about the detail here but one of the purposes of the blog to is to document for Aisha & William and their kids not only our travels but any family history we uncover. 

We found the street and the building. Princes street is a short street with one side (the one with the billiard hall), largely derelict, while the other side seems to have had its former warehouses gentrified into apartments. According to the local petrol station attendant, the hall was running up until the 90s and was the largest and most popular in the city. Exactly why it closed is a mystery. 

It was ours !!!

The only open building on the left side of Princes Street.  

Derelict with smashed windows 
on the left, apartments on the right. 

St Andrew's.

Sally had wanted to go to St Andrew's, not to play golf thank heavens but to re-create the running scene from Chariots of Fire filmed along the beach there. 

Da da da da da DA.

St Andrew's is a far prettier town than we had thought it would be. We were there on a Sunday and saw the under graduates from St Andrew's University, the oldest university in Scotland, the third oldest in the English speaking world and the uni where Prince William and Kate went, doing their weekly Pier Walk after chapel, a tradition they have upheld for centuries. The origins of the Pier Walk is thought to have started to commemorate the heroism of John Honey, a student of the university. In 1800 he rescued five men from a ship sinking in St Andrews Bay. Five times he swam out and each time he returned with a rescued man. For some reason one of the young men went for a skinny dip the day we were there, much to the amusement of our children. It was quite windy and cold and, tempted as we might have been, we did not join him.

Just too much history.

History that is not always nice
This refers to the pavement below.

Stirling Castle.
From Dundee and St Andrew's we went to Stirling to see the castle. It was a long day. The area around Stirling castle features large in the Scottish struggle for independence. The battle between the English and William Wallace made famous in Braveheart was fought on what is now a football field bordered by a river below Stirling Castle. It should be noted that Braveheart has been described as one of the most historically inaccurate movies ever produced. Sharon Krossa, an expert on Scottish Medieval history, has written on Braveheart that "The events aren't accurate, the dates aren't accurate, the characters aren't accurate, the names aren't accurate, the clothes aren't accurate — in short, just about nothing is accurate."

One of the highlights of the Castle is the Great Hall. The Great banqueting hall is the largest ever built in Scotland. It was completed by James IV in 1503. Warmed by five enormous fireplaces, the King & Queen sat on a dais to be entertained by minstrels and trumpeters in their own galleries. The hall hosted two great royal celebrations sounding more like something from the heydays of Caligula's Rome.

At Christmas 1566, Mary Queen of Scots hosted a three-day baptism spectacle for her only child, the future James VI. The entertainment culminated in a banquet in the Great Hall. The guests sat at a round table, in imitation of King Arthur and his knights, while food was brought in on a mobile stage drawn by satyrs and nymphs. A child dressed as an angel was lowered in a giant globe from the ceiling and gave a recitation. The banquet ended with a great fireworks display – the first ever witnessed in Scotland.

Thirty years later, in 1594 that child, now King James VI, gave a similar banquet for his son, Henry. The fish course was served from a huge model ship, over 5m long and more than 12m high, which floated in on an artificial sea. As it sailed around the hall‚ 36 brass guns on board fired off salvos.

Their Majesties. 

The most impressive part of the hall is the restored replica Hammerbeam roof. The original roof was removed in the 1800s when the hall was used as a barracks. Once the military left in 1965 the roof was replaced in a 35 year restoration project where original 1500s materials and techniques were used. There are no nails in it at all.

Stirling Castle also had the world's oldest football. The 400 year old leather and pigs bladder ball was found behind a wood panelled wall.

EDINBURGH.
Edinburgh Castle sits on top of an extinct volcano. There is evidence of habitation there from 9th century BC and the rock has been a site of royal residences since the 12th century. With its dominating position above the city and Arthur's Seat as a backdrop, the rock was a natural choice for a castle.

Arthur's Seat.

Edinburgh Castle holds the Scottish Crown Jewels and The Stone of Scone. Mark should have paid more attention to the low doorway. There is also the room where Mary Queen of Scots gave birth to the future King James VI of Scotland and I of England, who was then lowered out of a very high window to be spirited away.

Ouch.

As with any castle, there are impressive displays of armour and armoury. 

Edinburgh has some impressive stone architecture, while some have some interesting new additions. 

Queen Mary's bath house,
mid 1500s

There was also a dungeon where prisoners from various wars were housed. There were even prisoners from the American civil war. Some of the prisoners left reminders of their time there.

Edinburgh was displaying one of three versions of Rodin's The Kiss. We made the kids look at it.

They were more impressed with the deep fried Mars bar we had. It actually wasn't too bad at all.

THE ROYAL YACHT BRITANNIA.
We stayed at a chain hotel down at Leith in the south of the city. The now decommissioned Royal Yacht Britannia is moored nearby and we spent one of the increasingly windy days on her. The wind was so strong that at times we had trouble simply walking.

We were able to gawp at things royal, including,.... the Queen and Prince Philip's separate bedrooms and the bedroom where Charles and Di honeymooned using the double bed acquired just for them.

ER's 

HRH's 

A double bed !!!!

While most of the private sections of the ship were quite simple with a style and fixtures firmly lodged in the 1960s, the state rooms were impressive. They can now be hired for corporate entertaining.

The crew bar was set up as a bit of a dress up. Will seemed far too at ease behind the bar.

The week we were there was the lead up to the 60th birthday celebrations for the boat. There was free cake and teeny tiny tots of rum. Mark & Will decided that the delightful young lady dishing out the freebies might not recognise them if they came into the ward room again and spoke to her in a different accent. Sure enough, it worked and they got quite a few 'issues' of cake and rum. 

The cake for the official celebration.

HOLYROOD PALACE.
The Queen's Scottish residence is Holyrood Palace, just down the Royal Mile from Edinburgh Castle. She spends one week here each summer when she carries out a range of official engagements and ceremonies.

The word Holyrood means 'Holy Rood'  - where rood refers to an old style of Christian cross. It was used as a result of either the vision seen by King David referred to below or possibly to a relic of the true cross kept at the palace by King David's mother Queen Margaret.

Holyrood Palace has served as the principal residence of the Kings and Queens of Scots since the 16th century. The palace began as an official guest house for visitors to the Abbey. A Papal legate was received here in 1177 and in 1189 a council of nobles met to discuss a ransom for the captive king, William the Lion. Robert the Bruce held a parliament at the abbey in 1326. By 1329 the guest house may already have been in use as a royal residence.

 

Holyrood Abbey is adjacent to the palace and was founded in 1128 by King David I after he was thrown from his horse while hunting. According to variations of the story, the king was saved from being gored by a charging stag when it was startled either by the miraculous appearance of a holy cross descending from the skies, or by sunlight reflected from a crucifix which suddenly appeared between the hart's antlers while the king attempted to grasp them in self-defence. As an act of thanksgiving for his escape, David I founded Holyrood Abbey on the site in 1128. 

During the 16th century, the abbey was damaged by invading English forces - lead was stripped from the roof, its bells were taken and valuable relics stolen. It was further damaged and looted during the Scottish reformation of 1559. 

The abbey was able to be used as a parish church until the 17th century but has been ruined since the 18th century. It reminded us a lot of Whitby Abbey,(click here to see the very short post on it) which we visited back in April 2011.

NORTH BERWICK.

After almost two weeks, we left Scotland and headed down the north east coast of England. Just 30 minutes or so out of Edinburgh is the small coastal town of North Berwick. Sally's maternal Grandfather Bill Worsfold, referred to earlier in this post in regards to the Arethusa, was born in one of the coast guard cottages adjacent to the beach. Bill, aged just one or two, left Berwick with his family and moved up to Leith, where we had just come from. Unfortunately we had only skimmed an email from Sally's mum and didn't realise that fact until we got to Berwick, but we keep with us memories of a rainbow on two mornings over the Firth of Forth at Leith and an appreciation for a song Sally's Glaswegian colleague Adrian told her about - Sunshine over Leith, by the Proclaimers.

BANBURGH CASTLE.

From Berwick we headed towards Bamburgh castle just 40 minutes away. The castle was bathed in early evening sunlight when we approached the town. We stayed in a small family B&B and went to the castle the next day.

Almost on the beach, Bamburgh castle was built by the Normans on a site which, around the early 400s, was the location of a fort for the local native British tribe, the Din Guarie. 

In 1464 during the Wars of the Roses, at the end of a nine-month siege by Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, it became the first castle in England to be defeated by artillery. Having been restored numerous times, most recently in the 18th &19th centuries by it's owner the castle is well preserved and has an eclectic collection of 'stuff' on display. 

A man trap.

An early vacuum cleaner.

Without Mark realising what was going on, Will positioned him for this photo. ' Back a bit, left a bit.....Now pull a face and hold the umbrella ......'

He is a very sneaky boy.

LINDISFARNE.
We headed back up the coast to catch low tide which allowed access onto the island of Lindisfarne and it's priory, long a pilgrim site celebrating the beginnings of Christianity in England. 

The Irish monk Saint Aidan, who had been sent from Iona, founded the monastery of Lindisfarne around 635. He came at the request of King Oswald who wanted to promote the spread of Christianity in Northumbria. Lindisfarne soon became an important base for Christian evangelising in the North of England and later further south into Mercia - now the Midlands. Northumberland's patron saint, Sanit Cuthbert was a monk and later Abbot of the monastery. He went on to become bishop of Lindisfarne and his miracles and life were recorded by the Venerable Bede. Cuthbert died in March 687 and was buried in the grounds of the Abbey. 

At some point in the early 700s an illustrated Latin copy of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were made. Now known as the Lindisfarne Gospels they are the earliest surviving Old English copies of the Gospels.

In 793, a Viking raid on Lindisfarne marked the beginning of the Viking Age. This raid caused much consternation throughout the Christian west. Alcuin, a Northumbrian scholar in Charlemagne's court at the time, wrote:  
Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race. . . .
The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets.

Further Viking raids in 875 led to the monks' abandoning the island with St. Cuthbert's bones, which are now buried at the Cathedral in Durham. The priory was re-established in Norman times in 1093 as a Benedictine house and continued until its suppression in 1536 under Henry VIII.

HARRY POTTER CASTLE !
The last castle we were to visit was perhaps the best of all. Alnwick ( pronounced Annick) castle has been the ancestral home of the Percy family and the Duke of Northumberland since 1309. It is perhaps the quintessential English castle and has featured in many movies and TV series, including Black Adder, Elizabeth and Robin Hood, Prince of thieves. Most famously, it is the castle in the Harry Potter films. It is the second largest inhabited castle in England, after Windsor Castle. We visited it on another very windy day. 

Begun in 1096, the castle was to guard a crossing of the river Aln and to protect England's northern borders from the Scotts. Through his successful support of the monarchy against the Scots, Henry Percy, 1st Baron Percy was able to buy the barony of Alnwick and the castle. The Percy family have owned the Barony ever since. The castle that originally stood on the site was basic but was quickly remodelled and expanded by Henry making Alnwick a major fortress along the Anglo-Scottish border. 

The next section is very long ( it was longer !) BUT it is actually very interesting giving, as it does, the real history behind what for many of us is the familiar stories of Shakespeare - particularly Henry IV and 'hostpur'. It took Mark a long time to pull it all together from a variety of sources. 

The son of that particular Henry, and there are quite a few in this section of the blog, was Sir Henry Percy KG, more well known now as 'Hotspur' from Shakespeare's Henry IV part 1. The name Hotspur was Scottish, 'Haatspore', bestowed by the Scots in recognition of his speed and preparedness to attack (them) on the borders.

Hotspur was perhaps the most famous soldier of his day. His military career was wide ranging and glittering. late in 1394 he went as a diplomat to Cyprus, returning a few years later in to take part in Richard's expedition to Ireland to quell rebellion there. In the summer of 1396 he was again back in Calais fighting. Reading about his exploits makes him sound a bit like a 14th century Bruce Willis. In appreciation of his many military endeavours, King Richard II made him a Knight of the newly made Order of the Garter, the highest English order of chivalry. 

His military and diplomatic service brought him and his family substantial royal favour in the form of grants and appointments. Despite this, and most likely as a result of Richard granting Percy's rival Ralph Neville to the position of Earl of Westmorland in 1397, the Percys stood against Richard in favour of Henry Bolingbroke on his return from exile in 1399. Richard was still in Ireland with most of his household and supporters when Bolingbroke gathered forces, including Hotspur, against him. Richard met with Percy at Conwy in Wales and a week later, after gaining assurance he would not be killed, he surrendered to Bolingbroke. Richard was made to ride behind the two men and their entourage all the way to London where he was imprisoned in the Tower. He was later taken to Pontefract castle in Wakefield. 

In London, to justify his actions, Bolingbroke argued that Richard, through his tyranny and misgovernment, was unworthy of being king. Bolingbroke had claims to the throne but not as strong as Edmund Mortimer's, the Earl of March, who descended from the previous King Edward III's second son, Lionel of Antwerp. Bolingbroke's father, John of Gaunt, was Edward's third son. Henry Bolingbroke emphasised his descent through a direct male line, whereas March's descent was through his grandmother. Henry was crowned King Henry IV on 13 October 1399.

Although Bolingbroke, now King Henry, might have been happy letting Richard live, this all changed when it was revealed that a collection of earls, all demoted from the ranks they had been given by Richard – were planning to murder the new king and restore Richard. They were betrayed, allowing Henry to raise an army against them. The conspirators fled to the western counties where they raised the standard of rebellion. They got little local support and were quickly apprehended. All were beheaded or hung, some summarily by the mobs who apprehended them.

The failed plot highlighted the danger of allowing Richard to live. He is thought to have starved to death in the Gascogne Tower around 14 February 1400, although there is some doubt over both the date and exactly how he died.  Shakespeare recounts his death in Richard III:

Pomfret, Pomfret! O thou bloody prison,

Fatal and ominous to noble peers!

Within the guilty closure of thy walls

Richard the second here was hack'd to death;

And, for more slander to thy dismal seat,

We give thee up our guiltless blood to drink.

Whatever the manner of his death, Richard was buried at Kings Langley Church in Hertfordshire, but only after being displayed in the old St Paul's Cathedral in London to prove he was dead. 

The Percys went from success to success under the new King. Percy and his father were 'lavishly rewarded' with lands and offices. They continued their successful campaigns against the Scots, notably the battle of Hombildon Hill in 1402 which is described in Henry IV part 1, and the rebellious Welsh. Despite this, the Percy's became unhappy with the crown. Amongst their many grievances against the King was the non payment of wages for their defence of the realm against the Scots and the King's refusal to ransom Percy's brother-in-law held by the Welsh. 

In 1403 they rebelled and took up arms against the King. Percy issued proclamations in Cheshire accusing the King of 'tyrannical government' and, joined by his uncle Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester, he marched to Shrewsbury to confront the King's armies under the command of the KIng's son, Henry the Prince of Wales. Hotspur's father's army, supposed to support his son and brother, was slow to move south. Percy and Worcester then met the Prince of Wales' larger army. The battle, the first in which English archers fought each other on English soil and demonstrating "the deadliness of the longbow", was fierce with heavy losses on both sides. Henry 'Hotspur' Percy was killed, on 21 July 1403 aged 39, apparently being shot in the face when he opened his visor. 

His death was initially not realised by his men. At some point soon afterwards the Northumbria knights mistakenly hailed the death of Henry IV and acclaimed 'Henry Percy King!'. Henry IV, who was very much alive retaliated by shouting 'Henry Percy is dead'. The absence of a reply confirmed that Henry Percy was indeed dead. At this point the battle came to an end and it was recorded that many left not knowing who had won. Hotspur's uncle was captured and later executed and their forces dispersed.

The King's forces sustained greater losses than the rebels, in fact Henry IV very nearly lost both his life and his throne.

Prince Henry, son of the King, is reported to have wept when Percy's body was brought to him after the battle. Prince Henry, like Hotspur, was also shot in the face at the battle of Shrewsbury but recovered due to skilled treatment using honey, alcohol and a specially designed surgical instrument. 

Hotspur's body was taken to Whitchurch for burial. Rumours persisted that Percy was still alive so the King had the body exhumed and displayed, propped upright between two millstones, in the market place at Shrewsbury. After that, the King sent Percy's head to York, where it was impaled on one of the city's gates. His body was then quartered  and one quarter each sent to London, Newcastle upon Tyne, Bristol and Chester before they were finally delivered to his widow. She had him buried in York Minster in November of that year.

Henry IV died in March 1413. He had spent much of his reign defending himself against plots, rebellions and assassination attempts. The Percys were involved in another of those rebellions, this one failed, in 1405 participating in a force of some 8,000 men on Shipton Moor. The latter years of his reign were marked by serious health problems. He had a disfiguring skin disease and, more seriously, suffered acute & recurring attacks of some acute but unidentified illness - possibly epilepsy or some kind of cardio-vascular disease. 

Contemporary writers saw this as divine punishment- particularly for Henry's role in the execution of Richard le Scrope, Archbishop of York, in 1405 for his participation, along with the Percys, in the Northern Rising against King Henry IV. 

Henry V succeeded his father and was crowned on 9 April 1413 at Westminster Abbey. The ceremony was marked by a terrible snowstorm and people were undecided as to whether it was a good or bad omen.

In 1413, Henry V – in an effort both to address his father's widely presumed act of murder as well as to finally silence the rumours of Richard II's survival – decided to have Richard's body at King's Langley moved to its final resting place in Westminster Abbey.

Well done for reading this far ! Now, rest your brain. Here are some funny picy's for you to look at.

As mentioned earlier, Alnwick castle was used in the Harry Potter movies as the place where Quidditch was learned and played. The castle has incorporated this into its appeal to the public by offering broom stick riding lessons. We arrived too late for the lessons but a member of staff went and found us a broomstick and taught the kids how to ride!

Sally, never much of a domestic goddess and always a bit of a techno-phobe, just didn't know what to do with the broom and couldn't get it to work.

Oh why can't I get it to work ?????

Yes, but what is it for ?

The castle interiors were spectacular. Only a few rooms were on show but they were magnificent and were rooms clearly that were used by the family. To have that sort of family history and that place to live in is almost impossible to imagine. 

With just a few days left before we had to be back in London to pick up our New York exchange student Pablo, (click here to see that post) don't forget all this happened back in the three weeks before April 20th, we still had to 'do' Hadrian's Wall and try to see something of Newcastle and Durham. 

HADRIAN'S WALL.

Hadrian's wall, as is well known, is a Roman wall built from coast to coast across the top of England. Begun in AD 122, during the rule of emperor Hadrian (most likely born in Italica, Spain - which we visited on our trip to Seville in 2011) construction of the 117.5 km wall started in the east and went west taking just six years to finish. The exact purpose of the wall is debated. While it was the most heavily fortified border in the Empire, it was not designed to keep the Scots out. It may have been a statement of power, a marker of the northern most boundaries of the empire or, as it had 80 gates which were known as milecastles, the wall may have had more of a trading / customs/ taxation purpose.

Whatever its purpose, once its construction was finished, it is thought to have been covered in plaster and then white-washed, its shining surface reflecting the sunlight and be visible for miles around.

The fact that the wall still exists today is a testament not only to its builders but also to John Clayton, a 19th century antiquarian and town clerk of Newcastle upon Tyne. He became alarmed at the destruction of the wall by quarrying, and bought a number of sections. Today it is the most popular tourist attraction in Northern England. It was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. English Heritage, describes it as "the most important monument built by the Romans in Britain".

Along and around the wall are various remains of some of the 25 forts and numerous Roman villas and encampments. Vindolanda, a Roman axillary fort is the most well known site along the wall. It is famous for the The Vindolanda tablets and the large public toilets.

The very public loos !

The tablets are the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. They are also probably the best source of information about life on the wall. Dating from around the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, they were written in ink on fragments of thin, post-card sized wooden leaf-tablets. They record official military matters as well as personal messages to and from members of the garrison, their families and their slaves. A couple of tablets refer to soldiers being sent items from home. This tablet, #346, says 

I have sent you ... pairs of socks from Sattua, two pairs of sandals and two pairs of underpants, two pairs of sandals.

Other highlights of the tablets include an invitation to a birthday party held in about 100 AD, possibly the oldest surviving Latin document written by a woman. The texts of around 752 tablets have been transcribed, translated and published. The tablets remained buried in the mud until 1973, when archaeologist Robin Birley discovered them. Tablets continue to be found at Vindolanda. The tablets are able to be seen online here.

The wind that had sprung up a few days ago while we were in Scotland intensified. Fortunately we were able to walk the wall from west to east and therefore have the wind at our backs pushing us along. There were parts of the wall which were very impressive and, if you look carefully in the photos, you can see the wall snaking off into the distance.

Remains of one of the mile castles.

From Hadrian's we backtracked slightly to Newcastle where we saw the Tyne Bridge and marvelled at how familiar it looked. Clearly it had been the inspiration for the Sydney Harbour Bridge we thought. In preparing this blog we learned that The Sydney Harbour Bridge was built indeed by the very same company, Dorman Long and Co Ltd, of Middlesbrough, that designed the Tyne Bridge. Interestingly, construction on the Sydney bridge started in 1923 while the The Tyne bridge started in 1923. So maybe it can be said the Tyne Bridge really is a copy of the Sydney Bridge .....

Whatever the case the similarities are ridiculous.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Approaching the Tyne Bridge.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge.

The Tyne Bridge.

One unique structure in Newcastle was this. At the time we had no idea what it was.  

Looking a bit like a metallic cloud, the Sage Gateshead, a centre for musical education, performance and conferences, opened in 2004 in Gateshead on the south bank of the River Tyne. 

On our way to Durham we stopped at The Angel of The North, a steel sculpture of an angel, 20 metres tall with 54 metre wings. The wings do not stand straight sideways, but are angled 3.5 degrees forward; the designer, Antony Gormley, says this was to create "a sense of embrace". Finished in 1998 it took 4 years to create costing around £1million, with most of the project funding being provided by the National Lottery. 

Due to its exposed location, the sculpture was built to withstand winds of over 160 km/h. The angel is set into foundations containing 600 tonnes of concrete which anchor the sculpture to the rock bed 21 metres below ground. Thankfully, the winds that had buffeted us for days had eased considerably when we were there. 

Our Aisha angel !!!

According to the designer, the significance of the angel was three-fold: first, to signify that beneath the site coal miners worked and in many cases died for two centuries; second, to grasp the transition from an industrial to information age and third, to serve as a focus for our evolving hopes and fears

Durham Cathedral was the last stop on this three week odyssey. Formally known as The Cathedral Church of Christ, Blessed Mary the Virgin and St Cuthbert of Durham, The present cathedral was founded in 1093 and is regarded as one of the finest examples of Norman architecture and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The present cathedral replaced the 10th century "White Church", built as part of a monastic foundation to house the shrine of Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. The treasures of Durham Cathedral include relics of St Cuthbert, the head of St Oswald of Northumbria and the remains of the Venerable Bede. Its Durham Dean and Chapter Library contains one of the most complete sets of early printed books in England, the pre-Dissolution monastic accounts and three copies of the Magna Carta. 

Cuthbert's tomb was destroyed on the orders of Henry VIII in 1538 and the monastery's wealth handed over to the king. The body of the saint was exhumed and, according to the Rites of Durham, was discovered to be uncorrupted. It was reburied under a plain stone slab, but the ancient paving around it remains intact, worn by the knees of pilgrims. Two years later, on December 31, 1540, the Benedictine monastery at Durham was dissolved. Happy New Year 1541 !

From Durham it was a remarkably quick four hour trip home to Shakespeare Gardens.

Thankyou for getting to the end.