Hang on to your hats..........

Just planning a holiday in this household is similar to organising a military operation so we don't actually do it more than once a year. By Friday night I was teetering on the edge of committing murder, it was tipping it down with rain and I was definitely talking through gritted teeth because my jaw was aching. In the end I gave up and went to bed figuring out that what wasn't done simply wasn't going to get done and basically I didn't actually care....

Saturday we had agreed that we would be up and out, on the road and heading North by 7.30am and we were! Wonders will never cease!

Our first ever sights of Northumberland as we left Carlisle and headed East along the A69 were of rolling moorland, woodland and Hadrian's Wall. Flocks of Swaledale sheep nestled beneath the stone as no doubt they had always done for centuries. We skimmed by place names of Once Brewed and Half Whistle and down towards Newcastle where we skirted the city, collected the A1 and we were off North again on the last leg of our journey.

We found Spitalford, easily recognisable from the photographs I had seen. It is simply beautiful. For the whole time we were there I never tired of either gazing out through the bedroom windows at the fields of corn turning slowly gold under the summer sun or just wandering around in the lovely garden looking at the cottage and the terracotta pantiled roof. This is where i undoubtedly shoot myself in the foot because if you look in the visitors book in the cottage EVERYONE says they are coming back, if you lot get in on the act as well......get the drift? Anyway it is lovely and the interpretation and restoration of it has been so tastefully done with such loving care and attention to detail.

We had to go out just to be able to come 'home' and our first foray was towards Seahouses on a Saturday afternoon, to gather provisions and explore. As soon as cupboards filled we were off again on foot to 'The most beautiful beach in the world' ...she is not kidding! It was dusk as we wandered back around leafy lanes, honeysuckle perfume heavy in the air. A deer heard us talking and bolted across the field in front of us ..I thought I was seeing things. Then as Gary wandered across an old stone bridge he looked down into the undergrowth and long fringed doe eyes stared back at him ...he motioned to us to join him ...too late. We just saw the movement as she disappeared.

And so to bed.........hells teeth ...it's got by far the biggest bed I have EVER slept in and you dont just go to sleep because it doesn't actually get dark... just an amazing iridescent green, and it is silent, not just basic quiet...oh no.. totally and absolutely silent! By 4.30am a thrush decides enough is enough and shatters the silence into a million shards, the sun comes up and glitters on the sea across the gently waving cornfields and another day is born in Spitalford...

By 6am I was barefoot in the garden, a heavenly thick plush lawn...eat your heart out Mr Axminster, never in a million years could you replicate that! I found the pigs snoring away in their little shelter, then took him upstairs a cuppa and remarked at the similarity. A car scratched onto the gravel by the gate, a 'coooeeee' and a vision breezed in, all long hair and lip gloss and I'm thinking 'does your mother know you're out at this hour?' There's me with jaw hitting the floor, uncombed hair and old ....VERY old, kaftan thingy worn especially for wandering around gardens in the early morning.

When Purple people meet there is this instant chattering without pausing for breath coz there's no need to bother with formalities because we all 'know' each other, about families, warts and all and so it was that the shepherd remarked later ...'sounded more like a chicken run at feed time down there...all that squawking, yakking and giggling......'

Sunday is always a walking day after so much travelling the day before. We set out across Embleton Bay negotiated the burn with much hilarity as mother couldn't quite jump the dratted thing and got a wet foot, past the fisherman's sea houses at Low Newton and across the nature reserve to High Newton. The panoramic views were magnificent but for me it was the huge sky above me ...I felt like a newly released battery hen with its head on one side looking up and thinking ...'crikey what IS all that space?' We marvelled at old stone buildings, walls, butterflies, orchids, a little tin Church, more fishermen's cottages and suddenly it rained. As we made our way across the edge of a golf course the sky opened and we were soaked to the skin!

After hot showers the shepherd tentatively mentioned food ...or rather the requirement for. His idea being to venture down to a local hostelry .......'Noooooooooooooo I want to play in this delightful kitchen.......' his turn to be gobsmacked, what would normally happen at such a suggestion would be a gust of wind as I hurtle to the car before he changes his mind. I would be in there and seat belt buckled before he could utter another word....you can tell we dont get out much........