Morpeth

We planned this trip for last Saturday, unfortunately tummy bug decided to be Dom's guest and we had to stay at home. Dom is though cookie and clear out this uninvited nasty guest from his body in few days, so... today we went to Morpeth :)

We can clearly say that Morpeth is our faved town in Northumberland to visit and is just less then one hour bus journey from our town. This place changed since we were there first time. Some changes - specially near the river Wansbeck were dictated by floods from 2008 and 2012.

What you can find in Morpeth? Look at the pics - all today's :)

St George's Church near Wansbeck River

Morpeth Town Centre

Clock Tower

Morpeth Chantry, Bagpipes Museum and Tourist Information Centre.

Morpeth Castle - private property if I' not wrong..

Morpeth Court House - built in 1821 - ex prison, ex -magistrates Court, ex - police station - at the moment luxury self-catering apartments for tourists.

Carlisle Park

William Turner's Gardens - part of Carlisle Park.

Plus we were in our fave foodie place - The Old Bakehouse Coffee Shop - this is hidden place with yummy breakfasts, lunches, dinners and scrumptious cakes :) Just near Coffee shop you can find Old Bakehouse Millenium Green - little hidden garden in the town centre - http://www.millenniumgreenmorpeth.org.uk/.

For Theresa - castles & other nice places :)

I know Theresa wants to come to the UK and see some castles and other nice historical sites here. I'm living in Northumberland, county in northeast England, near border with Scotland. So we have here lots of castles, manors, halls etc.

Every time we had a chance to see anything we were just going for trip - bus, train, we didn't bother weather, we just wanted to know country we choose to live in and we still going for trips every time weather allows us :)

The nearest historical building for us except churches in town we live in is Seaton Delaval Hall - beautiful architecture and very nice gardens :)

Next is Tynemouth with castle and priory remains.

Hylton Castle in Sunderland - not massive, more like a tower.

Then Morpeth with whole town centre and amazing Turner's Gardens. Gardens on pic - castle is situated on the hill above it.

Warkworth with Castle and Hermitage (we didn't saw hermitage as yet ).

Bamburgh Castle - we saw it from Holy Island, but weren't there yet.

Dunstanburgh Castle near Craster, Northumberland.

Lindisfarne Castle on Holy Island - view from Lindisfarne Priory.

Lindisfarne Castle - view from the road.

View from remains of Berwick Castle - Berwick upon Tweed

Tower you can find in Berwick upon Tweed :)

Carlisle Castle - big with dark history.

Skipton Castle - Yorkshire

Fountain Abbey - Yorkshire - never saw sooo big abbey - building remains are enormous! Plus gardens - great place for 1-day trip.

Model of Peveril Castle  - Derbyshire

View from its remain tower.

Roman forts on Hadrians Wall are for whole trip - we were in Birdoswald and Vindolanda. I also saw Arbeia - near South Shields. We planning to visit Arbeia and Segedunum Fort ( Newcastle area) soon. So new pics soon :) 

We also were twice in Belsay Hall, Castle and Gardens - unfortunately cannot find pics from there on my laptop (possibly I have them on one of CD :)

We were few times in Alnwick Castle ( beautiful gardens) - Harry Potter movies were filmed there - cannot find my pics, ehhh....

Also don't have decent pics of Castle Keep in Newcastle upon Tyne :(

And we still have lots to see around North East of England.

If you want to know more about places you can visit in the UK check English Heritage web: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/ or National Trust web: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ or Historic Scotland web: https://members.historic-scotland.gov.uk/.

Cullercoast and Tynemouth

We had beautiful Saturday - amazing weather, nice trip, yummy food :)

Some people can take us for some kind of crazies, cause we don't have a car, not even single driving licence and we are pretty much limited with places we are going to not specially huge area, but belive me walking or using buses is not that bad really :)

North East of England has lots of places you can reach on feet or by bus if you want to :)

We are living in the middle between Newcastle and Morpeth I can say, cause we spend exactly the same amount of time in bus to those places which are for us in opposite directions :)

So... last Saturday we caught 308 bus and left it in Whitley Bay - whole 15-20 minutes in the bus :)
Then we just went along promenade near sea to Cullercoast - with Dom this nice distance took us about 45minutes, maybe less.

We reached the beach just half an hour before Harbour Day fun start there.

Dom has his time on the sand, playing with his tank, checking boats, eating cupcakes and bouncing on bouncy castle :). Then we decided to move :)

View from street level - Cullercoast beach 

We were still on feet, using route near sea to reach our next destination of the day - Tynemouth, another 30-40 minutes.

We past Tynemouth beach and directed ourselves to Tynemouth Castle & Priory when Dom decided he's hungry :) We stopped in The Gibraltar Rock pub for gorgeous carvery and chocolate ice creams.

Then we went to castle :)

Dom was climbing everything he could :) And I was taking pics of castle and priory remains :)

Weather was fab and pics are sooo crisp if I can use this word :)

Then we just use the same route to back home - on feet to Whitley Bay and then bus to home :)

Cullercoast beach was packed with people when we were in our way to Whitley Bay as you can see on pic above.

We are little bit sunburned, but we loved every minute of our Saturday :)

Transition week

Yeah... Transition week no 1 :)

Funny, specially that this whole transition will take 1.5 week and is connected with my little boy :)

Not so little now anyway - last Friday they had 'bye-bye party' at nursery and on Monday they were all moved to Reception Class, so last 1.5 week at school before Summer holiday for Dom will be not at Nursery class but in Reception.

We were on nice Bparty last Saturday - kids had lots of fun :) Meantime Dom was invited for another Bparty and he decided what he wants on his friend bracelet:

Only Libby can decide now she will wear it as bracelet or as necklace :)

Now Dom and I need to decide what kind of card we will make for her - nice stamp or cute ready made animal image.

I finished:

Great book! Now need to check if can have anything else of Mr Becker from library :)

As you see, I already started next book from 'The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles'. I love Remic's style and I'm not surprised my man loves it too - he's finishing last book from these serie and is eager to find something else written by Andy Remic.

These funny looking pair I made yesterday - ear sweeps - for non pierced girls who love earrings :)

That's all for today ;) Till next post!

What I read lately

I'm reading as much as possible every single day :) Guilty of almost eating books!!!

During last week I managed to read The First Apostle and The Moses Stone by James Becker ( started The Messiah Secret) and just finished Kell's Legend - first cook of The Clockwork Vampire Chronicles by Andy Remic (second book is laying near my hand :).

Have also 3 books of Agatha Christie waiting for my attention :)

Books by James Becker are like compilation of action, crime, history and thriller in one. Main characters Chris Bronson and his ex - wife Angela have no easy life. He's policeman, she's working for British Museum.

Relics, religion, politics, mafia.... You can find all these in here. Interesting plot which really can make you think.

Religious artifacts, crime, egoistic historians, Mossad - all these and more in 'The Moses Stone'. Want to know a bit about Ark of Covenant (Mr Becker is keeping known facts in place and rest of his story is fiction) - great book to read.

Hmmm... fantasy, steampunk, vampires.... Yeah! :) But I need to warn you - if you have weak stomach this book can be bit too much for you. As my man told me - action on every page plus no point to be attached to characters, you don't know what happens few sentences, pages later.

Interesting world, great plot, fantastic story and all happening very fast! Cannot wait to put my hands on next book from the trilogy :)

Cards, cards needed :)

Yeah, cards are needed :) Or to be more precise I needed to make more cards and still need more anyway :)

Fact 1
I sold all cards listed in my shop - garage sales is good :) Thank you Sandi!

Fact 2
Dom was invited for Birthday Party.

Fact 3
School will finish soon so Dom needs 'Thank You' cards for his teachers.

Fact 4
Cardmaker of the Year competition starts and I want to try again.

So....

I catch a bit of time yesterday and made Birthday card for Dom's school mate.

Hope Logan will like this cute image from Lili of the Valley :)

Plus I decided to use one stamp (free gift with one of papercrafting mags) for Teachers cards. I also played with spotlight technique again :)

Dom really likes his teachers, Ladies are very nice. Fingers crossed they will like their cards.

Now is time to think about more cards for my shop and nice 3 cards for competition. Keep your fingers crossed for me guys!!!

Sunday and Tall Ship

We cannot wait for Tall Ship Regatta :) They'll be here last weekend of August...

But this not mean we have no ships coming into our port...

We saw Stavros S Niarchos today :) She's brig-rigged tall ship owned by Tall Ship Youth Trust. She was leaving Port of Blyth today and we were happy to see her - she was here few days, but just today we had enough good weather to go and see her.

Isn't she beautiful?

But she wasn't only ship in port today ( except lifeguard boats ), we had also chance to see HMS Blyth - minehunter belongs to Royal Navy. 

She's visiting Blyth from time to time, but is based in Scotland.

We're hoping that during three days of Tall Ship Regatta we will have a chance to be on decks as many ships as possible, specially Dar Mlodziezy - I saw her here in 2005. We are sure that will be not easy with all visitors expected here for this big event, but we'll try our best :)