Vacation

A little trip up the coast in tribute to Dire Straits. We had Fish & Chips lunch in Cullercoats, then visited what is left of the Spanish City; it’s long gone now (there wasn’t much remaining when we lived in Newcastle in the 1990s) but the city has eventually recognized history and saved the domed building (above) and plans to create more pedestrian areas between the building and the beach …

Also at Spanish City was a curious Mars exhibit; a basically static image projected on the wall, with some tiny movements indicating that long abandoned Mars explorer vehicles are still attempting to complete their exploration tasks ands transmit data to perhaps a long dead Earth. Luckily, the exhibit was free!

Established at least as long ago as the seventh century, and destroyed after the dissolution, what remains is anyway spectacular and well worth our trip to the coast this morning!

Some history details can be read here

Another fabulous weather day enjoying England, at Cragside today with our friends Sheila & Paul and their children. Cragside House itself is impressive, built in the mid 1800s by William Armstrong and sitting in vast spectacular grounds:

We first headed to the hilltop lakes, man-made also in the 1800s to create a head of water for Armstrong’s inventions such as a hydraulically powered lift in the house and, eventually, hydro-electric generation! But before all that, a picnic and walk around the lakes:

 

Later, we toured the house, set up still as it would have been back in the late 1800s:

 

We also found repeats of our trip a few times – this Olympic flower decoration for example:

Finally, we learned that it was Armstrong that supplied the equipment that operated Tower Bridge, that we visited a while ago: