Alnwick Gardens and Barter Books
Travel Location: Alnwick,United-Kingdom
We hadn’t really known what to do today, the weather was poor and buses not as frequent because it’s a Sunday, but our host came to the rescue. He is going into Alnwick today to feed his daughter’s fish, so offers us a lift! This saves us calling a taxi and means we can have a good look round before catching the last bus home.
In the end it turns into more of a guided tour of the area, including a photo opportunity across the river from Alnwick Castle. The sun even comes out so that we can take a lovely photograph. Then we cross the river by a bridge guarded by an amazingly straight tailed lion.
Children … can play with toy diggers, filling the buckets with water and racing round the paths with it.
Our guide dropped us off just outside the gates to Alnwick Gardens, a wonderful modern garden created by the Duchess of Northumberland. It’s still a work in progress and she needs millions to complete it, but is currently doing her best to earn a bit more back in Newbury. Apparently she is giving a talk at Cheam School at £30 a head!
Our first stop is the fantastical tree house. It’s designed to look like a castle in the trees, something more at home in the ‘Lord of the Rings’. In fact it’s a restaurant, and a popular one at that. We popped in to take a look, before bouncing off on the rope bridges.
You enter the garden after having your ticket zapped, just like a library ticket. Then you walk through a modern structure that reminds me a bit of the Eden Project domes, before being confronted by an incredible cascade. Everyone make a b-line for it and the fountains are in full flow as we approach. At the bottom water overflows down the walls, so in the right weather children could play in it. As it is they can play with toy diggers, filling the buckets with water and racing round the paths with it.
We walk up the steps beside the cascade, snatching views into the hornbeam corridor that runs alongside it. At the top we found a restored walled garden full of beautiful flowerbeds and gentle pools and fountains. We are just admiring one of these when one of the water engineers appears. He’s checking the fountains to see what needs working on. We can’t see anything wrong with the one we are looking at, until he points out a few blocked nozzles – that’s what we like to see, a perfectionist!
After looking at the top of the garden we find ourselves taking a tour of the Poison Garden. Here are plants that are toxic to eat, touch and even smell. Some I recognise, some I know by reputation only. The favourite for all children has to be the mandrake, made famous by Harry Potter books. Apparently we could pull it up without it screaming. There are a couple of plants that warrant their own iron cages. They have a special license to grow hemp (from which we get cannabis), coco (heroin) and opium poppies (which they told us how extract!). Worryingly at the hemp and coco cages appeared to be empty – had someone beaten us to it?
Time for a quick break and we headed back into the pavilion. Apparently in the summer water is circulated through the double skinned plastic roof to cool it. We have coffee and cakes whilst watching a local BBC radio gardening programme being recorded.
Fully refreshed we take a look round a bamboo maze, which gives three of us no problem at all. After finding the centre and getting back out again we were working out where to go next when we realised Y was missing. She was well and truly lost inside and we had to go back in to get her. Must make a mental note never to go to Hampton Court with her!
The last element of the garden contains a series of water sculptures, demonstrating some of the properties and science of water. It’s wonderful and gives us all the opportunity to thoroughly wet.
Eventually we take a walk around the town, visiting those shops that are open – not many as it happens. First we make sure we can find the bus station and check the time of the last bus, then we head back to the old railway station that is now a Mecca for book lovers, Barter Books. Imagine the most fantastic second-hand book shop you can. Now forget it because this place is so much better! They quote a newspaper article that describes it as “the British Library of second-hand book shops”.
It really is special and makes full use of the wonderful Victorian station that it fills. Once you find your book on the bulging shelves you can help yourself to a cup of tea or coffee and a slice of cake, putting your money in the nearby honesty box. Then you can wander into the old waiting room where a roaring fire and deep leather armchairs await. What breaks our heart is that we only have half an hour before we have to leave! We are definitely coming back.
Once you have found your book and reach the till, you can admire the magnificent mural that fills the roof space. It depicts a two tier gallery in a library and from it you are watched by some of our greatest literary authors. Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemmingway, Virginia Wolfe, to name just a few.
Eventually we have to leave and make our way back to the bus station. We arrive in plenty of time and provide some entertainment for a group of teenagers who are hanging out there. It’s a strange experience, back home they’d probably be hurling four lettered abuse at us. Here they genuinely seem to be interested in who we are, where we come from and why we are here. They aren’t angels, Y gently tells them off for littering, but my goodness what a difference.
The bus ride is very enjoyable and gives us a good look at the local countryside. It also give the others to show me where they walked yesterday and indeed calls at Caster, before heading back to Seahouses.
After a wander around in Seahouses we head for the Ship Inn on the seafront for dinner. I’m not convinced by this overcrowded pub, but evidently it’s busy because it’s good. I ordered steak (very rare) and chips and amazingly that’s exactly what I get. I’m always disappointed that no one seems prepared to cook steak properly any more. If you request a rare or blue steak it inevitably appears to be medium or medium rare. Presumably this is an over active Health and Safety reaction. From that moment the Ship had completely won me over and we had a wonderful evening. In a few months time it will be absolutely perfect, when smoking is finally banned in public places!
