Northumberland is BRILLIANT!

It's probably a combination of my new outlook on life and the fact that I haven't been there for bloody ages, but I seem to have only just realized quite how brilliant (it's Arthur-Sheppy-style "brilliant", so the italics are mandatory) the place is. The fact that I've been there once or twice a year every year for as long as I can remember and probably longer might make it seem boring.

Not so.

Day 1: "Ow, my legs"
Most of Thursday was spent in the car, listening through all of the good music in our pooled CD collection and a little bit of the bad music. Most of the rest of Thursday was spent in service stations. Stop 1 was notable for my discovery of, in the normally-bland magazine rack in one of those boring-service-station-WHSmiths', a copy of the new-to-uk release of WIRED, with an interesting CGI Future-Scape of London. Out of interest we bought it. I had a look through, and found one of those "future-timelines". This one bore a shocking resemblance to the back-story of Shadowrun, except without the magic. But then, the creative development teams of Shadowrun do seem rather bright.
Amusement was had when Mum glanced through WIRED's "credits" page. Chief Editor: David Rowan. This started off a car conversation about our various people with the same names as us who we found on Google.
Eventually arrived at Gran's house, where there was the infamous tea of "Oh, you've arrived" mince and tatties. After this, we brought our stuff in from the car and there was a brief and confusing debate about who was going to sleep where. To omit further fuss, and because I know what the Northumbrian sky is like, I took the tent out in the garden.

Day 2: Seven Stories
This was probably, for me at least, the least interesting full day. We went to Newcastle in order to revisit the Seven Stories building. For me, the only real point of interest was the model boat they have adhered to the riverside wall... I want to either nick that boat or make a water-worthy replica of it, and then in it I shall sail around the Philippines. That boat is pretty brilliant, but not brilliant. I didn’t even manage to get some proper exploring done due to a sudden attack of weather

Day 3: Pretty!
Yet more scenic driving was to be had as we visited Belsay Hall, an English Heritage property that includes a (sadly unfurnished) big house, a small castle, and a garden in between…
The garden is brilliant! It’s situated in this sort of ravine thingy, and the rocky precipices on either side add to the atmosphere of all the exotic plants and the trees with their curly roots and some absolutely stunning flower bushes.

Another article of great interest lay in the tower room of the castle: “Lucky Spot”, a sculpture of a horse, made entirely from beads of Swarovski crystal, whatever that is, dangling on threads in amazingly precise arrangements.
That was brilliant too.

Day 4: Alnwick

As always, Alnwick Gardens are brilliant. At some point I really want to visit in the summer when the trees are in full leaf and the rose garden is in bloom, but until then I have to content myself with spring. The whole place was crowded with people visiting for Easter, which meant it was a wee bit crowded. The water features were as interesting as ever, and there’s even a new one that can cause all sorts of silliness.
Also, on the way back, we stopped off at Barter Books and I managed to find three new books, including a new Katherine Kerr book, another by Robin Hobb, and Chimeras, which turned out to be jolly interesting and strangely relevant to my course.
More stargazing was had for about an hour and a half, and then I fell asleep.

The trip back was a bit dull, other than finding a rather nice coffee shop at the second service station, and now I’m back here, with a couple of brilliant ideas for my coursework and lots of new books to read.