After recovering from our long flights a bit in Glasgow, we rented a car and headed south with Amy. Vernon got the honor of driving since Alison is the much better navigator.
We stopped for lunch in Carlisle, and ate at an Italian restaurant in a nice town square (more of a town trapezoid really). Across the way was the Crown & Mitre Hotel. This was actually taken at 9pm at night - the high latitude gives the same super-long days as you'd have in, say, Edmonton.
Then it was more driving... on to Tynemouth, land of 1000 roundabouts (thanks, GPS voice).
We spent a couple of days in Tynemouth. It turns out to be a bit of a party town - the street leading down to the water from our hotel was lined with college student-bait bars with large patios in front. The first night we slept there there was some loudness, which we decided was correlated with the ongoing World Cup, since some of the games were played at 11pm local time.
When there's no World Cup going on, it's still a nice place to spend a weekend, as it's right on the water - the picture below was taken a short walk from our hotel. Tynemouth is on Whitley Bay, facing the North Sea. That's St. Mary's Lighthouse in the background.
The beach was more of treacherous maze of slippery, mossy rocks. Very pretty, though!
Despite Amy's best efforts, Eero did manage to slip and get a whole pant leg wet, which he did not take well (grumpiness lasted until about dessert time).
Cielo created some stone art while we were there - the rocks were very colorful (this may remind me of Cielo's rock art in Kenai, Alaska):
And where there are rocks, and water, Eero is throwing the former into the latter. If you look closely in the upper left you can see the stone he's just unleashed at the defenseless Bay.
A view of the walkway down by the water.
If you do go to Tynemouth, be sure to take the second floor restaurants into account. As mentioned above, we did have dessert later:
While staying in Tynemouth the five of us (Vernon, Alison, Amy, Cielo and Eero) were sharing a 'family room' with a queen bed and two twins. So there was some sleeping on the floor involved.
Tynemouth's famous landmark is the site of the ruins of the Tynemouth Priory and Castle. It has a long history as a fortification, and includes when it was a coastal defense site with some big guns and an armoury that are still on display. There are also older weapons:
This is looking to the south from the castle grounds:
In the priory part, there was also a little museum that talked about the monks, complete with some dress-up robes:
Eero, having seen the Holy Grail just before we left for the trip, knew what to do:
