26th June 2005 – York + planned route for week3

It was another glorious and sunny morning, so it was time to top up on the tan. At around 11am, we decided to move on and explore York. I wasn’t expecting too much as it was a Sunday (closed shops and few people), but whilst driving towards it, there were a number of cyclists on the road. Nav remembered hearing something about a cycle around the city of York, and as we got further in there were many more. In fact, there were a number of pedestrians too and a lot of the shops were open too. Turns out that York has two Saturdays and that nobody has a restful Sunday. We managed to park quite away from the town centre, but as we walked we found this:

Did Judi really walk down here?

The town was very pleasant with a number of streets containing modern shops, yet the streets still having their old quality about them. We found York Minister without a problem what with it probably being the tallest and largest building in town. We had a quick look inside but it didn’t seem like anything special. Next, we walked some more around town and, with help from the TIC, found the Guildhall. Today, it was being used for a craft fair and that didn’t look particularly interesting either.

York Minister – looks good on the outside, not so on the inside. It is huuuuuuugggggeeeeeeeeeee though

York Guildhall – not all that impressive

Walking down the street, we encountered a street performer. It was a kind of human puppet show with the artist using a kazoo-type instrument to make accompanying sounds with his movements. I think that we all found it pretty entertaining and there was a small round of applause after he had finished.

Human puppeteer – was pretty funny indeed

We also found another street performer who, like that in Carlisle, was pretending to be some sort of statue. Except that this one was crap because he didn’t keep still and was still standing on the podium whilst he was chatting to some people. Utter rubbish.

He may look like he’s standing still (although he’s supposed to be acting as if walking against the wind…

…but look, he’s moved!! Carp!! Crap, even!! He didn’t get any respect or money from us

Because of the long drive to Lincoln, we thought it best to leave, so at around 3:30pm, we headed on back to the car. Along the way, Nav bought himself a scanner to OCR his work and that was about it really. Nothing exciting happened, but that’s not to say York is uninteresting. Altogether, it’s a very nice place to visit and probably live, full of young and old people, and hardly any (if any at all, as I did see any) young scally-wags.

The planned route can be found at:
planned route for week 3


-- steven

25th June 2005 – Newcastle (Angel of the North) and Durham

The rain must have let up during the night, as waking up at 5am I heard no sounds of rain hitting the tent. 5am?! That’s right, but then I fell asleep again and woke up at 7am, 8am and then finally got up at around 9am. We finished packing the tent, and referring back to the days when the tent was too hot to stay in, Nav commented: “For all this, I’d prefer it to be sunny instead.”

We drove out of Northumberland toward Newcastle-upon-Tyne. We didn’t plan to stop so drove through and past it, over the River Tyne. Our next stop was York and as we headed south, Nav spotted the Angel of the North. Spur of the moment and we drove and parked up to have a look. Nav commented that it looked smaller (than originally thought) – I agreed, as I only remember seeing it on TV and it looked pretty huge from the helicopter views (although they do say that the television adds 3lbs).

Angel of the North – it’s smaller than they make it out to be, but is still awesome

Angel of the North – looking up, it is pretty big

Hmm, looking at that picture, maybe it is pretty big – but I think that I was expected something even bigger. We left and continued the journey. Because we were driving through Durham, we decided to stop and have a look around the city. Although it is a university city, it still has style and culture. We visited the castle and cathedral, finding that the university were setting up the cathedral and a marquee for graduation which begins on the upcoming Monday.

The cathedral was enormous, probably the biggest that I have seen so far on the trip. Inside, it wasn’t as impressive as it could have been, seemingly a bit empty for the size that it was. The design on the pillars and arches were nice, and also a number of columns were made of smaller marble and stone columns.

Durham Cathedral – absolutely enormous, just look at those tiny people and cars!

The castle was closed so we couldn’t investigate (although it didn’t look like much of a castle anyway). We did find, however, that students may well have been living within certain parts of the castle (as halls of residence) but can’t be too sure of this. It looked like a lovely city to be educated in and the town centre was nice too. Morton told of a single street of shops, but that has now expanded to a number of streets plus a small shopping centre. It was nice to see that there were more people out on the streets than in the shopping centre, and being a Saturday it was pretty busy.

Durham market, and in the building in the background is a large indoor market

I’ve not said anything about this before, but maybe it’s about time. Of course, during the trip we have to make stops to get food but there have been many an occasion where we decide that we can’t be bothered to move on and take a break for a while. This usually means that we have lunch (or a late or second lunch) in the car park and it’s quite good because it wakes up both up for the rest of the journey. So here is us at Tesco (York branch), Nav making the ‘fish-onion-and-homous’ sandwich. It’s nice to have a sit down and look at people looking at us (in disgust, probably).

We are off to Tesco, where will buy all out best food, la-lah lah lah…

After Durham, we continued to and finally reached York. We drove into (and quickly out of) a few more heinous caravan and camping sites. I wish I took a photo of one of them – it was pure evil and would have made me physically sick I got out the car - there was a middle green area just for tents, where stood a boy who stopped playing and starred at us as we drove past… shudder… We finally found one that seemed nice, although contained a lot of caravans and very, very few tents (about 3 including ours). I think that we’d both given up at that point and wanted to stop. York and Lincoln are on tomorrow’s agenda.


-- steven

24th June 2005 – Lake District, Carlisle, Gretna Green and Hadrian’s Wall

It was Friday and already we had made it to the north-east of England, two days ahead of schedule. Things were going well indeed. We took a couple of hours to have a look around the nearly Lake Windermere (the largest of all the Lakes in the District), managing to find a pathway that led down to the lakeside. For a lake, the water was extremely calm and that was great – you could see the light up and down movement, the reflections of the opposite hillside. A few boats passed and only after a few minutes did their waves and wake reach us – and when they did, they seemed quite dramatic compared with the lake’s usual calmness. Nav was trying to step-stones, but failed on a couple of occasions.

The calmness of Lake Windermere (looking westwards)

Nav not quite making the step

Leaving the Lakes, we headed north to leave England behind and enter Scotland to visit Gretna Green. However, we made a stop-off at Carlisle – parked up outside of town and walked the rest. We looked around the street we had parked – the houses were derelict and next to nobody walking around. It turns out that only last month, Carlisle had suffered a flooding and many, many house surrounding the river (and even some further away) had gotten flooded or experienced the damp that comes with it. It was a sorry site but some of the houses had decorators and builders refurbishing them – I’d imagine that a lot of such workers would have moved up north to get a bit of business.

A local B&B effected by the flooding – some houses had windows boarded up – some cheeky burglars?

Whilst in town, we encountered a jobless person doing things you find in Covent Garden in London. Nav said that he respected him because of his lack of trying of finding a proper job. I juxtaposed him against David Blane (as both stand on podium and get attention and money), but Nav argued that “If he [Blane] didn’t go around saying ‘Hi, I’m a cock’ (acting as Blane on TV), then I would respect him” – I suppose he has a point.

Man standing on podium with (fake) birds crapping on him

We left Carlisle and headed off to Scotland. Gretna Green is one of the closest towns to the England-Scotland border. We found the blacksmiths noted in Morton’s book, had a visit and found it to be a tourist attraction – in fact, it was one when Morton visited so we weren’t expecting too much. Shops, restaurants and the rest of it were dotted around in this small area of attraction and nothing else of interest. I did, however, manage to hear the Scottish accent through the sentence “Ach, this bloody machine” as said by a cashier person in one of the shops selling picnic hampers.

Apparently, this blacksmith is famous, but I’ve never heard of it since Morton’s book

It had started to drizzle – our first experience of rain during the day since we started (the only other time was at night in Weymoutth). We left Gretna and drove back towards Carlisle and then towards a campsite near the Hadrian’s Wall. However, on a spur of the moment, Nav decided to head towards Hadrian’s Wall and we drove into Walltown car park.

It was coming up to 7pm and the car park was near empty. We headed in some random direction and manage to find nothing of interest, so we found a map in one of the leaflets and knew where to go. We found a part of Hadrian’s Wall on a hill edge (half of the hill had fallen away over the years) and we walked on top of it. It varied in height at times but was about a metre high – it originally stood at between 2 to 3 metres – and when we reached the end of the partial Wall, we fully understood why they took the effort to build it up a hill and along an edge: you could see for miles. The enemy would have had no chance at all of sneaking up to the wall, and if they did they had the Wall to contend with.

Hadrian’s Wall, well, what’s left of it anyway

We walked back to the car and headed east towards Hexham (Northumberland) in search of a campsite. Driving out of the Northumberland National Park, Nav manage to reach the fastest speed he had ever driven before on a B-road, and boy, was it fast. And was the road hilly too, as we climbed and jumped, feeling the G-forces (or the lack of). It was good fun, but kids, don’t try this at home – reckless driving is bad (for the car, at least).

I had found one campsite in a booklet (from an info-box at Walltown) but we couldn’t find it, and when we drove into a Caravan Rally (those sad, sad people) and spoke with one of the people, he said that he had never heard of it. He told us of another campsite in his strong Northern accent (it made sense at the time, but trying to remember anything he said just repeated in my head as white noise…) and so we set off south to this site. We found it and talked to the proprietor but he told us that his tent site was full (he also seemed incredibly moody, too).

I thought we’d be a bit buggered at that point, but he told us that we could camp in the village green for one night only. Ah-ha!! This confirmed Nav’s suspicion that people can camp in public/common grounds. So we headed back north to Wall (a town, not Hadrian’s Wall) and found the green. Ever since Gretna, the rain had not let off so slowly, all the ground was getting wet – it was going to get messy.

Once we arrived and parked up, we saw a group of ramblers seeking out a good spot on the green also. I chatted with them about the rules of camping on common ground (allowed to camp for 24hrs only and then you must move on) – they sounded southern, telling me that they weren’t from these parts. They seemed like a jolly group.

The rain kept going as we tented up under the partial cover of some trees. “This is what it’s all about” said Nav, and I suppose he was right – camping for 12 rainless nights was taken for granted, but I think that we learn something each time we camp. Tonight’s lesson could have been costly: Nav threw his bag into the porch of the tent and after a long while, I opened the porch door and found his bag lying in a small pool of rain water – his laptop was inside! Luckily, it still worked and I found out the reason for the pool; the porch portion of the outer tent overhang the porch and so the rain dripped down onto the porch, Nav’s bag made the well for the rain to fall into. A tip for everyone, enjoy.


-- steven

23rd June 2005 – Chester, Warrington and Wigan

We got to Chester around about 10:45am and decided to have a stroll around town, taking in the scenes and finding the places that Morton visited. We found the town centre to be is surrounded by (the still standing) old city walls built back in Roman times. Also, the centre itself was extremely pleasant and was able to mix tourism into its settings without the general commercialisation you might find in other places. The centre was made up of four streets meeting together to form a cross, and the entire layout called the Chester Rows. Each row consisted of street level shops above which were balconies and even more shops – essentially, a shopping parade on top of another. A lot of the houses still bore the Tudor-style fronts, whilst some had been slightly modernised.

One of the four Chester Rows streets

Chester City Walls

It seemed that we came into Chester on the same day that a number of schools decided to have school trips into town – there must have been 4 or 5 groups of school kids with teachers. What I bet was great for the kids though, was that they were guided by someone (dressed up) from the Roman Army who seemed to present the historical information in an enjoyable manner.

MJ Fox brings Back to the Future a Roman guide

We took to the library in search of wireless internet access but couldn’t find any, so as I was still trying, Nav decided that he go outside and try again. I walked out the library and looked up and down but seemed to have lost him. Luckily, it was a sunny day so I decided to wait outside and grab a sandwich. I gave up waiting and walked off towards the tower where King Charles once stood whilst watching his army get a beating. Walking back towards the library, I get a call from Nav’s Dad telling me that Nav has lost me and is waiting at the TIC.

King Charles’ front tower seat from where he saw his army get a kicking

I meet up with him and we wander off southwards to see the River Dee and the Wishing Steps. The river was like any other, and the Wishing Steps were unsigned (which was quite odd). Legend has it that if you are able to run up and down the steps without drawing breath, then your wishes come true. Nav made it look easy:

Go Nav! Go!

The River Dee

There were other Roman remains dotted around Chester; theatres, gardens, baths, etc, all seemingly well preserved and have become a part of Chester. After a final look around, we left Chester and headed towards Warrington.

For some reason, we stayed there much longer than we should have (seeing as Morton made little comment about the town). We looked around the town, did some shopping and manage to end up on the other side of town, so there was as long trek back to the car before we set off again. An interesting town, sort of, but nothing special to write home about.

Warrington town centre – strange ‘fish-like’ objects, as described by Nav

Our final stop was Wigan, where Morton spoke of the old joke ‘Wigan Pier’ (Wigan being an inland town, how would it have a pier), which we didn’t find funny at all. It was getting quite late and we planned to stay in a campsite in the Lake District, so we made a flying visit through the town. We got slightly lost and parked up in a back entrance driveway of some shops and houses. Nav took a photo:

Where in Wigan are we? Name that place, and win a prize

Leaving Wigan behind us, we drove the many miles up towards the Lake District. It must have been around 9:30pm as the sun was setting and we were driving up and down the hills in search of a campsite. The views of the hills to the west (over Lake Windermere) were phenomenal and I urge anyone who hasn’t, to go seek out this spectacle. Purple-blue sky with wisps of thin clouds and the outline of the hill tops standing silhouette against this backdrop. We didn’t get to see it properly for we were driving, but those few seconds (with both our eyes off the road) were enough to whet the appetite – it was outstanding. After much faffing about with driving up and down the road looking for a decent campsite, we found one at around 10pm and settled for it. The price took us by surprise (£18 in total) but I suppose that it would be that price in any of the others as we are right next to Lake Windermere. The tenting area was pretty full up, but we found some open space on what seemed a slight slope. Tenting up and going inside, it turned out to be quite steep – in fact, if you slept head point downhill, your heart would be above you head (in terms of altitude) which isn’t a good thing – so we decided to both sleep in the same direction (as we usually sleep head-to-toe, i.e. head at opposite ends). Mind, this didn’t really do much as I kept sliding down the slope. Oh well, that’ll teach us to mess about in Warrington for too long.


-- steven