All Points North

With Saturday lost to a bit of shopping and not much else we decided to try and make a go of what remained of the weekend. Early Sunday morning we drove up the empty M1 to Scotch Corner and then on the the deadly A66 for a short while till we turned right to cut through to Barnard Castle and then up towards Hexham. We stopped for breakfast at the excellent Parkhead Station It sits at the 100 mile point on the C2C cycle route so the place was full of people getting ready to go or people taking their first stop of the day. The food was excellent and plentiful. It’s one of those ‘why the hell is this here’ places with an isolated feel and sheep lazily grazing their way across every available patch of green.

There was an interesting moment when a cyclist told the waitress that the telescope provided free of charge was in fact not a telescope but a spotting scope. She just took his order and told him she’d pass his comments on to the owner (who was stood in the kitchen doorway shaking his head) and this seemed to salve his need to be an arse.

On through some beautiful and deserted roads to our fist stop.

Housesteads

This is a fantastic part of the world with spectacular views of the Hadrian’s Wall. You can trace it back for miles and having walked the full length not long back it brings back some very good memories of heavy backpacks and sore feet. After an hour milling around we went on to try and sort out a B&B.

The Howard Arms

It being the Bank Holiday weekend the Tourist information at Haltwhistle was closed as was the one at Brampton. Without the assistance of the national tourist board we found somewhere to stay by wandering into a pub that had a sign outside claiming that Charles Dickens had stayed there and, more importantly, that they had en-suite rooms. recently re-furbished rooms at that. I often think that Charles Dickens must have spent his entire life freeloading at houses, pubs and hotels the entire length an breadth of the country as you don’t seem to be able to go far without seeing this claim made. Either some establishments aren’t telling the whole truth or Dickens was pissed and stumbling from one pub to the next his entire life.

I couldn’t find out who Gordon Smales was.

Lanercost Priory

Lanercost has little to do with Hadrian’s Wall other than being close to the last section that you can see before it turns into a glorified grass bank. However, it’s in a great deal of the wall leaflets and posters at forts along the way so we went for a nosy as we’d ignored it when we walked the wall due to a need for food and drink that outweighed a need for expanding our knowledge of priories. It’s had an interesting history that’s not really explained by the audio guide. The reason it’s there is glossed over a bit. The area is now and has always been a little out of the way place and why it’s got the very large remains of what was once a huge complex of buildings isn’t clear. Still the place itself is interesting if only because it continues to be used as a parish church.

We went back to Brampton for dinner to find the pub we’d had a fantastic meal at less than two years ago had downgraded its menu from the likes of roast rack of lamb with raspberry jus £14.95 to pie and chips £3.95 and a free half of larger The atmosphere, welcome and service was decidedly £3.95 in value as well. Though it has to be said listening to a woman in the corner fill every sentence with fuck, shit, arse, bollocks was entertaining. If there’s a lesson here it’s try not to be so British and don’t stay till you’ve finished your drinks just to be polite.
If you’re not British then you might not understand our reticence to leave a screaming shit hole. If you are British then you’ve likely been in a similar situation or you’re just very rude.* We ended up eating at the Howard Arms which was very nice though I was a bit miffed that the ‘Pineapple Surprise’ was sold out. There was no explanation of what it might be other than a confused looking waitress who told me “it’s a bit like stuffed peppers but with pineapple” When I asked her what it was stuffed with she shrugged her shoulders and said “I know the Steak and Ale pie is good, try that.” I did. She was right.

Birdoswald Roman Fort

On Monday we went to the fort at Birdoswald where they were having a display of Roman guff. I’ve been to one of these before on the south coast and it was fairly impressive with about 200 people dressed in costume pretending to be Roman warriors, cooks, doctors and builders. Here they’d tried the same thing only with about 30 people. The effect, no matter how hard they were trying, was not quite as impressive. Still the Owl they’d brought for the display had amazing orange eyes.