{"id":5534,"date":"2024-10-29T20:24:22","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T20:24:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=5534"},"modified":"2025-12-24T22:26:46","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T22:26:46","slug":"4-northumberlands-ghosts-and-shoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=5534","title":{"rendered":"4. NORTHUMBERLAND’S GHOSTS – AND SHOES."},"content":{"rendered":"

So, the good weather continues – as do the good restaurants!\u00a0 The Three Wheatheads is a favourite for Sunday lunch.\u00a0 Twice!\u00a0 This time with John and Maralyn.<\/p>\n

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Beach walks continued even when Glenda was shopping.\u00a0 Here I am on Cresswell beach while Glenda is bothering the shop assistants in Morpeth!<\/p>\n

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We visited “Pleased To Meet You”<\/p>\n

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at cocktail hour…<\/p>\n

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This is the modern-day incarnation of Morpeth’s Queen’s Hotel.\u00a0 The hotel where Glenda and I had our wedding reception!\u00a0 The manager gave us a tour of the function room upstairs.\u00a0 Very different now.\u00a0 Very sentimental!<\/p>\n

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Well, I think that completes the set – apart from St Cuthbert’s Church in Blyth…<\/p>\n

Oh well…\u00a0 On our actual wedding anniversary we had planned to have a celebratory lunch at the French restaurant in Hexham.\u00a0 The Bouchon Bistro.\u00a0 Having set off surprisingly early, we had plenty of time to visit Wallington Hall, a lovely National Trust property.\u00a0 \u00a0One of our favourites.<\/p>\n

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The clock tower over the main entrance.\u00a0 Last time we were here, it had been covered in scaffolding.\u00a0 The clock had been laid out in bits in the conservation room.\u00a0 Now all well restored.<\/p>\n

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Glenda admiring the view over the ha ha at the front of the house.\u00a0 The front door is cunningly located on the side of the building just out of sight.<\/p>\n

As we walked in the front door we were met by two guides.\u00a0 One of them quietly explained our route through the house and gave us the backup leaflet.\u00a0 The other lady started talking about the resident ghosts – at least that’s how I think we started our conversation (I may have mentioned ghosts in passing)!\u00a0 The conversation\u00a0went on for ages.\u00a0 Let’s call her Debbie to protect her husband’s reputation!\u00a0 Debbie was charming and very, very demonstrative.\u00a0 Once we got past her ghost stories and ours from Flyford (see earlier post).\u00a0 We got on to geography.\u00a0 Devon, Wales (she’s had two Welsh husbands), Northumberland and Scotland.\u00a0 Then shopping.\u00a0 I may have mentioned my aversion to retail therapy.\u00a0 Which is quite significant!<\/p>\n

Well, Debbie’s husband, (we will rename him John) has similar feelings about shopping.\u00a0 But his shoes were literally falling to bits.\u00a0 Debbie marches him into a shoe shop.\u00a0 He tries on two pairs and gives up.\u00a0 At this point, Debbie asks the salesperson to bring every pair of brown shoes size 10 that the shop has in stock.\u00a0 At this point Debbie acts out the poor girl returning with 20 boxes stacked high.\u00a0 She’s staggering across the entrance foyer in front of 10 American tourists.\u00a0 Needless to say, they are rather bewildered.\u00a0 The house guide lurching across the entrance hallway, pretending to carry 20 pretend boxes of pretend shoes!<\/p>\n

But John has vapourised!\u00a0 He’s left the shoe shop!\u00a0 A risky move!\u00a0 He was later located in the pub down the street with a treble G&T in hand.\u00a0 Debbie is now looking for a third Welsh man called John to marry!<\/p>\n

Well this banter was still in progress as the Americans left the building having toured the entire house.\u00a0 And we still had 23 rooms to inspect.<\/p>\n

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By the time we got to the dining room for a final look, Debbie had rotated to that room…<\/p>\n

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… so the chit chat continued largely about the lady who makes all the “stuff” for the “seasonal table”.\u00a0 Amazing the range of substitute “foodstuffs” contribute to the display!<\/p>\n

So we were very late leaving.\u00a0 Far too late to get to Hexham for lunch.\u00a0 You may recall that that was the planned highlight of the day.\u00a0 So we celebrated with a quiche and salad at the Blacksmithy at Belsay.\u00a0 And Debbie was the new highlight of the day – and, incidentally, we were officially classified as her most interesting visitors of the day, no, the week, no, the year!<\/p>\n

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We had another celebratory lunch another day at the Wittling House in Alnmouth with Bruce and Angela.\u00a0 This was followed by tea and crumpets at Foxton Golf Club.\u00a0 Except there were no crumpets to be had!<\/p>\n

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Another lovely sunny day – albeit rather nippy!<\/p>\n

Our tour of Northumberland continues …<\/p>\n

(Sorry about the time-lag!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, the good weather continues – as do the good restaurants!\u00a0 The Three Wheatheads is a favourite for Sunday lunch.\u00a0 Twice!\u00a0 This time with John and Maralyn. Beach walks continued even when Glenda was shopping.\u00a0 Here I am on Cresswell… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-country-tour-2024"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5534"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5565,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5534\/revisions\/5565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}