On our way South

As I was unable to find another internet connection once I’d left Seahouses, I decided to continue recording our journey and post it up, a day at a time when I got home, finishing up with our Fantastic visit to Shirley. I hope you don’t find this too boring as it’s a bit of self indulgence on my part, so I can remember this holiday in the future.

BTW I'm making my way through the 102 posts I've missed on my Bloglines while away, and I've tried to reply to all those who were kind enough to leave a comment on my posts, so if I've missed anyone I apologise.



This pic was our parting gift from Lindisfarne.

We finally managed to leave Lindisfarne last Friday and start our journey south, even though it was only 20 miles or so.





But before I get on to where we are now I forgot to post up this little chappy that I saw on the back door of Chillingham Castle, and the lovely rusty door decoration.




Anyway onto Friday’s travels. We decided to go to a National Trust house called Crag Side in Morpeth. It’s a wonderful early 20th century house that was the first private dwelling in the world to have electricity, powered by water. The house is furnished in the Art’s and Craft style and has lots of examples of wallpaper, tiles and fabrics of the period, plus gorgeous pre-Raphaelite stained glass.

The restored kitchen looks for all the world like the film set for the film Gosford Park, and gives a wonderful insight into the rigours of running a stately home at this time, even with the latest labour saving devices.


Wallpaper



Unfortunately as this is an NT property there’s not much scope for photography, but I did take a couple of shots of the distillery which was outside the main house and I didn’t see any no photos signs.




I did manage to take quite a few shots in the garden and one of the most striking things I came across was this iron bridge spanning a huge hollow in the garden, imagine having that in your back garden!



I was also quite impressed with this lovely carved chimney.



We ended the day by a lovely river watching the golfers play out their games in the rain, while we had fish and chips with wine in our dry and cosy camper.