Northern road trip

The first stop on our road trip up north was at Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. This is my mum and dad outside the front door of the cottage where Shakespeare lived.


In the backyard:


Next stop was a small town called Widnes, between Liverpool and Chester, where my mum was born. It was great to visit and see the actual house where my mum was born (she hadn't been back for around 40 years).


We'd planned to stay overnight in Liverpool but as Liverpool FC were playing a home game it was impossible to get any accommodation. So instead we stayed over the Mersey in Wirrell in a castle called Leasowe parts of which were buil around 1592. We didn't spend much time in Liverpool but we went to the Slave Museum (recording slave trade over the seventeen and eighteen hundreds - very interesting) and did a lap on the cheesy tourist bus circle so we could see all the main sights in one go. This is outside the Cavern Club where The Beatles played 275 times:


Then, a short skip up the motorway and we were in the Lake District. We based ourselves in Windermere and spent around three days in this beautiful area where there is so much to do. This is my mum and dad a walk we did around the Aira Force waterfall:


My mum at Dove Cottage in Grasmere where William Wordsworth lived:


Then heading over the Penines we made our way east to see Hadrian's Wall. It's hard to imagine that this wall, which was built by the Roman Empire, and other ruins from the Empire remain from as long ago as AD122. The wall was built

This is the wall:

and these are some of the ruins of the buildings where the Roman army lived as they protected the empire from the 'northern barbarians' ie. the ancient Scottish tribes:


Even further east, we stopped at Alnwick to see the castle and Alnwick Gardens. The formal gardens were created in the last 15 years around an amazing fountain. They were pretty expensive to get into so if you are not that into gardens (a bit like me!) it's not really worth it. I did, however, really like the castle. It's the second largest inhabited castle in England, open during the summer and occupied by the Duke or Northumberland. The castle itself is very grand and the collection of art and antiques is quite amazing.

Just behind me, when I took this photo of my mum and dad, is where Harry Potter and his classmates learned to ride their broomsticks - Harry Potter and many other movies and series have been filmed here (Blackadder, Elizabeth etc)


Our last stop in England before Edinburgh was Bamburgh Castle, another castle built by the Normans. While we were too late in the day to go inside and have a look, I really wanted to see the castle from the beach. It's quite spectacular:


We spent three days in Edinburgh and for October it was really cold and so, so windy. I couldn't believe how windy it was. Anyway, I was pretty slack at taking photos by this stage but we did see some great stuff - the Edinburgh castle, Holyrood Palace (which I really liked), the Royal Mile and we also did one of the underground tours to see the now covered places that people used to live at the turn of the last century.

This is a picture of the ruins of the abbey at the back of the royal palace.


After three days we flew back to London which was also starting to get colder but not quite like windy Edinburgh!