15 September 2023 – Rain Almost Stops Play
Miles driven today = 14
Total Miles to date = 519
I've no idea what time it started raining last night but I'm guessing it wasn't much after midnight and it didn't even start to ease until after midday. So we hunkered down in the van until after lunch, by which time we were feeling a bit cabin feverish. The rain had at least reduced to a light drizzle so we decided to take a drive up to the car park nearest to Sycamore Gap and do the shortish walk to the famous viewpoint from there.
We got there to find no spaces big enough to accomodate us so we backtracked to the B road and pulled in at a Visitor Centre called the Sill, so called after the Whin Sill, a local rocky outcrop.
Inside we found a great little exhibition which covered all manner of environmental matters.
It was predominantly geared towards youngsters but was presented with sufficient imagination to be of interest to bigger kids too.
I loved this! It's basically a small sand pit. You move the sand around with your hands and a projector above automatically adjusts the colours and contour lines to create a topograohical map from the shapes you have created. Very clever!
This collection of glass fused art and accompanying poetry was entitled "A Sense of Place" and was created by students at 2 Northumberland schools in collaboration with Newcastle University and a local glassworks.
Next door to The Sill is the Twice Brewed Inn, which has its own brewery. We are running low on booze in the van so we popped in for a few bottles to sample.
It had almost stopped raining so we headed back past the campsite and a few miles in the opposite direction to the Walltown Quarry Country Park so that we could stretch our legs for a bit. Despite the murk there were some great views.
There was a "Peace Labyrinth" so we went in for a look.My sister Carol loves these things but it quickly became apparant that it was very soggy so we quickly made an about turn and found our way back out.
The path lead us uphill to this rocky crag and shortly afterwards we joined another path leading us to Hadrian's Wall.
And after a bit more uphill, there it was. We thought we had probably missed out on our chance to walk on the wall for this trip so this was a real bonus.
The drizzle had started again so the views weren't particularly great but it couldn't spoil the feeling of connection with something which was built 1900 years ago.
We start to make our way back home tomorrow. We need to be back in Suffolk by next Wednesday and we want to pop in at Lisa's place in West Yorkshire en-route to check on building work progress, so we are making our way in that direction first, but not before an overnight pub stopover in Ingleton on the way.
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