Temperature: Min 8°C; Max 19°C.
Weather: Stunning one moment; perfect the next.
After the hotel breakfast, we spent a few moments exploring the hotel’s garden and checking out Chollerford Bridge. It moved Eskil to choreographing a new dance.
Chollerford is right on Hadrian’s Wall, and we were soon at Housestead’s Roman Fort. The fort is a small distance from the road, but because of mum’s disabled parking pass we could drive up almost to it. We still got our share of sheep poo on our shoes, so it was still an authentic experience. My mum and I had come here years ago, and it’s one of the few places I enjoyed more this time then that time. There were probably more people than at our last visit, but with so much space to wander and fabulous weather it was a great visit.
Our next destination for the day was a drive through The Lakes. Even before we’d gotten into the hills, you could tell it was going to be stunning!
It was stunning weather and a Saturday, so Windermere was one big traffic jam – but a lovely one. We headed out of the Lake District through the Dales.
After experiencing a bit of GRRHH Tour de France traffic jam, we stopped at The Fat Lamb near Kirkby Stephen for a coffee break.
Back on the road, we unfortunately kept coming across these signs:
We headed through Barnard Castle, where my friend Miranda went to school.
We eventually made it through the traffic and to our accommodation at Yarm rather later than usual. The B&B owner gave us a few suggestions for dinner, so we first headed to The Crown Hotel. It wasn’t welcoming – in fact it was hard to even find someone we could ask for a table – and they had no room. Hrumph. So we headed off to The Ship Inn, and we were glad there was no room at The Crown. It was a busy evening (beautiful weekend, Tour de France, etc), but they found a spot for us first on comfy couches then at a gigantic table, served great food and beer, and – essential when it was a late evening for him – had a whole world of toys for Eskil to play in.
I chatted with the bar staff, and it didn’t sound good for attempting to see York the next day. In fact, it was out of the question. Oh dear.
More photos can be viewed at https://www.flickr.com/photos/cragg-ohlsson/archives/date-taken/2014/07/05/ and at https://www.flickr.com/photos/cragg-ohlsson/archives/date-taken/2014/07/06/ however the order is all over the place as unfortunately I had left my camera time set to Australia and my phone had reset the time to UK time.