Home and away

My Bank Holiday weekend in brief, spent showing friends the sights back home in Northumberland:

Number of castles seen/visited: 5 (Warkworth, Dunstanburgh, Bamburgh, Lindisfarne and Alnwick). More if you include the rather older Housesteads fort on Hadrian's Wall. And Newcastle.

Best view: Bamburgh Castle, across the water from Lindisfarne.

Length of time for which I was tempted to dip my toes in the sea, in minutes: 2. Not sure it was actually that cold, but standing in the wind at Dunstanburgh was punishing.


Gastronomic highlights: Pollo pizza at the relatively newly uber-swish Marco Polo in Newcastle, garnished with thinly sliced potato and lots of rosemary (slightly more sophisticated than the Geordie take on the pizza - toppings on half a stottie at the Jolly Fisherman in Craster...). Closely followed by a Sunday roast at the Ridley Arms in Stannington.

Gastronomic lowlights: Dalchini's in Alnwick, not so much for the food (which was pretty decent) as for the service. More than a half-hour wait for food to come (including poppadoms) only for the dishes to arrive one-by-one and be served onto stone-cold plates? Not good.


Best pub: Ye Olde Tanners Arms in Alnwick - mini-beer festival, comically cupboardy toilets, friendly drunk Poles and youthful locals sporting early 80s Metallica-style bumfluff 'taches, lock-in from 1am signalled by the curtains being drawn and the Smash Hits channel being turned on on the TV. What wasn't to like?! Runners-up prizes for the Twice Brewed Inn on the Wall and the Crown Posada on the Quayside.


Pictures I wish I'd taken: The game of cricket taking place beneath Bamburgh Castle; groups of re-enacters in full Viking garb wandering through Lindisfarne Village swigging from cans of lager.

Lessons learned: 1. Morpeth on a Bank Holiday Sunday can be an intimidating prospect to outsiders. 2. Shearer's Bar at St James' Park hosts a singles night called Plenty More Fish, which is popular with devil-horned, matching-stilettoed hen parties. 3. Superstition once dictated that Holy Islanders could only bring themselves to refer to pigs as "things". How exactly did I spend a whole week there on a school field trip? 4. There's an annual Bank Holiday scarecrow village at Rennington, as recommended by the bloke in charge of camping at Alnwick Rugby Club. We didn't go. 5. Northumberland's a wonderful part of the world. Not so much a lesson, that, as a reminder.