Easter in the north and the scent of gorse

Finally some time to catch up on the blog. How are we all then?
Time to seems to eddy and pool in ways that I'm not used to lately and in looking back at the last time I posted more time has passed than I intended between blog posts. Since last I wrote I got back from Scotland, headed back to work for a bit and then off to Newcastle to see the family for Easter. I've been up to Newcastle a bunch of times so that's nothing new I'd always had this feeling of coming home in a strange way whenever I've seen the Angel of the North but this time it was slightly different. I'm feeling much more at home in London now and so for the first time when I saw that giant rusty angel I thought of London instead. I did have a great break up there though. A bit of shopping at the Royal Quays to get stupidly cheap name brand runners. I bought a pair there at Christmas but with all the walking I've been doing I wore them out. Did some caching down that way as well and found a geo coin and a travel bug that wanted to go back to West London.
One of the highlights of this particular trip was getting to meet up with my cousin Phil and his wife Gill for the first time. They live just outside of Newcastle in a place called Warkworth which is nice and green and away from the city in the Northumberland countryside. I shall take a moment here to extol the virtues of Northumberland water, when I went to the icehotel I raved about the water, I am a lover of water, I can taste the difference when I travel from place to place and I drink a lot of the stuff, its good for you, you should try it. So anyway, my last benchmark for fantastic water had to be the icehotel, it was the water by which all other waters are measured and to be honest with you I was dubious that I would ever find something that tasted as sweet until I drank Northumberland water. Dear god, tis a mighty drop. Clean and clear and genuinely refreshing, London, I love you but your water tastes like a mixture of shame, bile and decomposition.
So Phil and Gill came by my Aunty Mary's to pick me up and took me to their local which is an amazing little place called The Cook and Barker. I had the best starter I think I've ever had anywhere which was a Craster kipper with a horseradish cream on a bed of new potatoes with a little leafy salad. I cant remember the last time I ever had a kipper let alone some fresh horseradish. I was used to the stuff that's weak and comes in jars actually so when I had my firsts hit of horseradish I felt it explode through my head in a rush. Cleared my nose though, I've never breathed so freely. Kippers I had as a kid, my Dad would make them for his breakfast and then let me have some, they are smoky and salty and beautiful if they're properly smoked and not dyed. I tried to send some back to Australia but apparently the quarantine laws prevent it now, was going to surprise Dad with them. My main was a lamb shank and dessert was crème brulee, I love cracking through the tops of them and can never pass one over on a menu. We headed home after dinner and then up the next day early so that we could head out to Holy Island also known as Lindesfarne, its the site of an ancient monastery as well as a little village and a castle. To reach it you have to cross a causeway that floods twice a day, Sir Walter Scot had this to say about it:

For with the flow and ebb, its style
Varies from continent to isle;
Dry shood o'er sands, twice every day,
The pilgrims to the shrine find way;
Twice every day the waves efface
Of staves and sandelled feet the trace.

On Good Friday pilgrims walk the few miles of causeway over to Holy Island as a devotional thing and as you cross it you pass what looks like little sheds on stilts with steps up to them, those are the shelters that you have to run up if you get caught by the tide, it comes in pretty quick. They make mead there as well, you better believe I got me some of that. Well, technically I got it for Dad actually I should post it back to him before I drink it. We walked all over the ruins of the monastery and then a little way around the village before walking up to the castle. It was originally built in the 1500's but was bought in 1901 by the guy who owned Country Life magazine and renovated as his summer house. When you look around inside you can see photos of the well to do's hanging around the front of the castle in their cricket whites and such. All very Pimms and Cucumber sandwiches don't you know. After making good our escape from Holy Island before the sea reclaimed the causeway we headed down the coast towards Bamburgh, another lovely place with a castle. It was packed out because it was Holy Thursday and kids were off from school so we ended up stopping for a picnic in the sand dunes between Bamburgh and Seahouses which was beautiful. It was a really windy day but in the shelter of the long grass, nestled in the dunes we happily picnicked then wandered down on to the beach for a little after lunch walk. We were passed by people riding horses on the waters edge and I looked for seashells, which for some reason you never seem to find that many of now days, why is that? We headed back to the car and then on to Craster where my previous evenings kippers came from, its a pretty little harbour village which consists mostly of the smoke house, a pub and a handful of shops. You pass through it on your way to another castle called Dunstanburgh which is mostly a ruin, even in the 1600's it was a ruin, it was built in the 1300's after all. We walked about a mile to get to it over rolling Northumbrian coast line dotted with both gorse and sheep, I fell in love with gorse. Phil told me it smelled like coconut but I didn't believe him, why would something out there naturally smell like coconut. But I swear to god he was right, now when I own a house I want to plant some, every time the wind blew over it you got this amazing waft of coconut and its such a cheery yellow.
We were all wrecked after so much walking and so went home and had a quiet dinner before relaxing in front of the fire. The next day was Warkworth Castle which is actually mentioned in Shakespeare's Henry the 8th part 2

this worm-eaten hold of ragged stone,
Where Hotspur's father, old Northumberland,
Lies crafty-sick.

More walking and taking photos, two of my favourite things. The weather held out for us all weekend and the second we got back from Warkworth it started to barrel down but by then we were in the car and heading back to Mary's in Percy Main.
I had a few days back there before heading home to London, we went to a brilliant fish and chips place called Christian's, its right on the fish quay. I wanted to get pictures but my camera had other ideas.
So now I'm back at work and busying myself with plans for the trip to Italy, the flights and accommodation are all booked and I've decided to spend 3 days in Rome and then 3 days in Venice. I might see less places but I'll see more of the places I do see, if that makes sense. I'm practising ordering gelato in Italian. Finally I shall get to see all the places that Ms Hayes talked about in Unit 3 and 4 Renaissance History. My trusty lap top Bruce will probably be coming with me on that trip so hopefully I can blog in bits rather than having one giant mega blog about it all.
At least this one has been educational I've quoted Sir Walter Scot and Shakespeare at you, highbrow indeed. Ciao a tutti.