Newcastle ~September 2019 ~ Elmer edition

Categories: Adventures · art · Fuji · FujiX-T2 · photographyTags: · · · · · · · · · 33 Comments

St.Oswalds Hospice in Newcastle cares for both adults, children and babies who have terminal illnesses.  It is a registered charitable trust, and whilst the NHS regulates it, it does not fund it. The childrens hospice has to raise over £7.5 million each year to keep its doors open and its service free to those who need it, and relies a fair bit on volunteers, (who’s equivalent salary comes to around £180 million a year, if they were paid minimum contract wages). It is well run and very well thought of by those who have been unfortunate enough to need its…

Newcastle Upon Tyne ~ September 2019 ~ 2

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Part 1 HERE After our somewhat disappointing ‘tour’ around All Saints, Sophie and I went off to find an interesting building Sophie had spotted from a train. According to Sophie it wasn’t too far away, so we left All Saints and headed down to the quayside. We walked down the quayside and I was amused to see that a temporary beach had been set up for summer. You may notice an elephant in the middle of the picture, this is something that happens every year in the North East, and will have a post of it’s own next time.  In…

Bamburgh Castle ~ August 2019 ~ 3

Categories: Adventures · architecture · castles & ruins · Fuji · FujiX-T2 · people · photographyTags: · · · · · · · · 37 Comments

Part 1 HERE . Part 2 HERE Onwards into the castle itself. The Library Built on the site of the medieval Great Hall, the Kings Hall is a Victorian masterpiece. The magnificent false hammer beam ceiling is made with teak from Thailand. They were playing music in the Kings Hall, and we saw the lovely French man and his wife dancing to it The Cross Hall, which crosses the Kings Hall, has a vast Tudor style fireplace and intricate stone carvings representing ship building across the ages along with large tapestries and a copy of Theodore Rombout’s The Card Players….

Bamburgh Castle Revisted ~ August 2019 ~ 2

Categories: Adventures · Anglo~Saxon · castles & ruins · Fuji · FujiX-T2 · History · medieval · museum · photography · Victorian era · WW2Tags: · · · · · · · · 18 Comments

Part 1 HERE After a good wander around the grounds we went to visit the museums. The first museum we got to was the Armstrong & Aviation museum, which houses some of the stuff that Armstrong produced for WW2, and some stuff from WW1. I’m sorry to say I didn’t take notes or many photo’s in this museum, I’m not sure why it didn’t float my boat,  however there was a really nice vintage car that I liked. We also visited the Archaeology Museum and saw some nice bling that they had dug up. The pieces were incredibly small, but…

Bamburgh Castle Revisted ~ August 2019 2019 ~1

Categories: Adventures · architecture · castles & ruins · Fuji · FujiX-T2 · History · landscape · medieval · people · photographyTags: · · · · · · · · · 26 Comments

Sophie and I last visited Bamburgh on a rainy day in June 2016, when our planned boat trip to the Farne Islands got called off due to the rotten weather, and it was the nearest place to hand. In summer this year Sophie’s chap came over from Spain and he got to choose our destination, so back we went to Bamburgh and spent a sunny day there. For readers who were not followers back then, here is the history of the castle, the rest of you can scroll down 🙂 THE HISTORY BIT, mostly from wiki with added extras There…

Staindrop and St.Mary’s Church – August 2019

Categories: Adventures · architecture · Church · Fuji · FujiX-T2 · Graves · History · photography · UncategorizedTags: · · · · · · · · · 35 Comments

After Sophie and I had finished photographing the butterflies at Raby Castle, we decided to go and have lunch in the nearby village of Staindrop, and visit the church there. Staindrops earliest history begins in Neolithic times, though there is little left to see of that as the current village is built on top of it. Nearby roads and settlements bear evidence of it’s expansion in Roman times. The History Bit It is known that the first church in Staindrop was a saxon building made around 771 when Alhred was the King of Northumberland, but not much else is known…

Dunston Staiths – July 2019

Categories: Adventures · B&W · Fuji · Fujifilm X100F · History · industry · people · photography · uncategorised · UncategorizedTags: · · · · · · · · · 37 Comments

On a wet day in July Sophie and I went to the outdoor market held once a month on Dunston Staiths.   The History Bit  The Staiths are believed to be the largest timber structure in Europe, maybe the world, but who knows?  It is also a Grade II listed scheduled monument and is owned by registered charity Tyne and Wear Building Preservation Trust (TWBPT).  The structure is made of North American pitch pine timber, no longer available, from the once unlimited forest. Most of the timber used was 20 metres long, 14 inches deep and 14 inches wide. The total weight…

Aln Valley Railway – July 2019 – part 3

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Part 1 HERE   Part 2 HERE There was plenty of interesting train and WW2 paraphenalia to look at and photograph   I thought this would make a nice biscuit tin! There was also a concert and these ladies were called the Seatones and did a cracking job of singing 40’s songs This chap was a bit of a character and I had to get a shot of the rear parcel shelf of his car So that’s the end of our day out at the Aln Valley Railway. All pictures by me and embiggenable with a click. Full album can be…