{"id":6538,"date":"2025-09-25T21:37:05","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T21:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=6538"},"modified":"2025-12-24T21:49:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T21:49:29","slug":"4-northernmost-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=6538","title":{"rendered":"4. NORTHERNMOST ENGLAND!"},"content":{"rendered":"

On our anniversary this year, we did make it to the Bouchon Bistrot in Hexham (not like last year!).\u00a0 An excellent “prix fixe” meal.<\/p>\n

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Hexham is another of these northern towns which attract visitors and businesses by providing free parking.\u00a0 Keeping the streets weed-free is another bonus.\u00a0 The southwest of England seems to have lost the plot on both counts.\u00a0 The lack of free (or at least reasonably priced) parking is killing off town centres.\u00a0 You would really think that someone in authority would have noticed by now!<\/p>\n

There’s plenty of history about in Hexham.\u00a0 While the town is medieval – not Roman – there’s lots of Roman stuff nearby.\u00a0 Hadrian\u2019s Wall is just a few miles north of the Tyne valley and we are camped very close to it.\u00a0 Possibly the largest historical remnant of Roman life in Northern Europe.\u00a0 It stretches 80 Roman miles from coast to coast.\u00a0 In modern money, the wall is actually only 73 miles long.\u00a0 The Roman mile was defined by Agrippa in BC 29 as 1000 paces (mille passum – hence the name “mile”).\u00a0 Each “pace” was two “steps” for a total of five “Roman feet”.\u00a0 While I couldn’t find any pictures of Romans with five feet, I did find this picture…<\/p>\n

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In town, Hexham Old Gaol…<\/p>\n

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… is the earliest known, surviving, purpose-built prison in England.\u00a0 It was built in 1333 using stone nicked from the Corebridge Roman site just three miles away.\u00a0 Prisoners were kept mainly in the basement below ground level.\u00a0 The upper three floors were, apparently, occupied by the admin staff.\u00a0 Prisoners were housed here awaiting trial at the nearby Moot Hall on the edge of the market square …<\/p>\n

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(Not my photo)<\/p>\n

At the moment, the market square is being re-furbished and largely fenced off for the work.<\/p>\n

… AND I discover that Hexham also has pants!\u00a0 However, in this town the word appears to apply interchangeably with drinking fountains for people as well at to drinking troughs for livestock.\u00a0 There are two “famous” pants in town\u00a0 The massive Temperley Memorial PANT in market square …<\/p>\n

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(Clearly not my photo, because this area is fenced off for restoration!\u00a0 Thank you Andrew Curtis.)<\/p>\n

The second is the Glover’s Pant on Gilesgate.\u00a0 This one is linked to Hexham’s significant glove-making industry.\u00a0 The town became famous for its fine, coloured gloves, known as “Hexham Tans”.\u00a0 Using locally tanned hides and coloured with “Dutch Ochre”, these gloves were hand stitched.\u00a0 At the peak, in about 1820, more than 23,000 dozen pairs of gloves were produced annually and exported worldwide.\u00a0 That’s a lot of fingers and thumbs to be stitched – more than 2.7 million a year – possibly 10,000 per day.\u00a0 Clearly a major employer of the region.<\/p>\n

It’s time for another relocation.\u00a0 We are off to a bran new site just south of Powburn.\u00a0 Thrunton Lowfield.\u00a0 This is the fourth tow of the caravan this trip and the third to be complicated by a major traffic accident.\u00a0 This one was north of Morpeth on the notoriously horrible stretch of the A1.\u00a0 Our sat nav was telling us all the way to turn off into the boondocks.\u00a0 \u00a0But we’ve been there before and we’ve got the T-shirt!\u00a0 So we persist on the A1 until things start grinding to a halt.\u00a0 We just managed to scrape into the slip road for Jedburgh (the road we wanted!) before the car park extended another car’s length and totally closed off our exit.\u00a0 So that’s three accidents in four trips.\u00a0 Let’s hope prangs come in threes and that we remain clear for future drives.<\/p>\n

Harry Vickers has opened a lovely little site a few\u00a0months ago.\u00a0 Too recently to be in the guide books.\u00a0 So, for most of our stay, it was just us and Christine-from-Morpeth in her twee little Bare Foot caravanette.<\/p>\n

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Very much little and large!\u00a0 Christine retired from a career in biochemistry in London and relocated to Morpeth.\u00a0 She supports Newcastle United – well, someone has to!!!\u00a0 The night she went to St James’ Park to watch the magpies play Barcelona, her team didn’t win – although they did come second.\u00a0 And while that was happening, we were treated to the twilight invasion of a murmurating flock of black birds, which may or may not have been jackdaws.\u00a0 In this country, I’ve only ever seen this behaviour in starlings and possibly the term is specific to that species.\u00a0 Anyway, it was spectacular as the birds came in to roost.<\/p>\n

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An early visit to Rothbury Golf Club for our non-member bacon bap breakfast with Yvonne was required.\u00a0 Followed by a walk along the bank of the River Coquet …<\/p>\n

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… and in the afternoon,\u00a0 another visit to Wallington Hall.\u00a0 One of our favourite National Trust properties.<\/p>\n

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Glenda posing in the entrance as if she owns the place!\u00a0 And me in a reflective mood.<\/p>\n

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Upstairs we meet “Debbie” again.\u00a0 Famous for her acting skills pretending to carry a pile of pretend boxes containing pretend shoes for a pretend person pretending to be called John.\u00a0 (You will have to refer back to last year’s reporting of the event!)<\/p>\n

Glenda’s brother is also called John.\u00a0 A very common, or should I say popular, name.\u00a0 There was one spectacular occasion many years ago when a group of us were travelling in Australia in a minibus.\u00a0 We came to a sign which said we were about to arrive at Johns River – a village in New South Wales, situated on the Stewarts River (to add to the confusion!) about 350 km north of Sydney.\u00a0 John, John, John, John, and Ron tumbled out of the bus for a photo in front of the sign.\u00a0 Taken by Ron – obviously!\u00a0 But I digress – that was over forty years ago!<\/p>\n

Recently, brother John has been spending a lot of time in hospital in Bangkok, but is currently in Glasgow.\u00a0 We haven’t seen him for ages.\u00a0 We arrange to meet half way at East Fortune, near North Berwick.\u00a0 The home of Scotland’s National Museum of Flight.\u00a0 So, we are off abroad!<\/p>\n

The museum consists of a number of hangars on a war-time airfield.\u00a0 These house a range of displays of old and very old planes.\u00a0 There’s one display of interactive exhibits to teach the fundamentals of aviation.\u00a0 Another cavernous building (only open for about 30 minutes a day) houses a lot of bits of planes in various states of repair.\u00a0 (Well, we are in the conservation and reconstruction department!)<\/p>\n

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And there’s a Vulcan bomber parked outside …<\/p>\n

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But the best building – which we visited first – houses Scotland’s very own Concorde.\u00a0 Only seven British Concordes actually flew commercially.\u00a0 This one, identification sign G-BOAA, first flew in 1975, and flew the inaugural service to Bahrain in 1976.<\/p>\n

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It’s impossible to get far enough away to get a photo of the whole plane!<\/p>\n

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Here the front wheels are being inspected.\u00a0 John was pointing out the flap which was designed to prevent objects being flung up and rupturing fuel tanks AND which, allegedly, had NOT been fitted to the French plane which crashed for that very reason.<\/p>\n

The cockpit might have been state of the art when the planes were built half a century ago.\u00a0 But today it looks antiquated.<\/p>\n

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In modern planes, the information on all those analogue dials plus a similar number on the flight engineers panel is displayed on three large “i-pads”!<\/p>\n

After the crash of the Air France flight 4590 in July 2000 all Concordes were grounded.\u00a0 G-BOAA never flew again.\u00a0 To get to its current home it was treated to a nose, wing and tail reduction job.\u00a0 Then towed through the streets from London Heathrow to a barge waiting in the Thames.\u00a0 Then by boat to Edinburgh and back on a truck to East Fortune.<\/p>\n

Brother John was a pilot and could occasionally get standby tickets.\u00a0 But he could only get them for himself, Glenda and their mum.\u00a0 Back in 2000, he managed to pick up three standby tickets to New York on Concorde.\u00a0 I wasn’t going to be left out, so I paid quite a bit of money for a full ticket.\u00a0 When we checked in, the plane was full.\u00a0 No standby seats!\u00a0 The three of them were going to have to take the next plane – a 747!\u00a0 \u00a0But I WAS going supersonic!\u00a0 \u00a0At the last minute, there were three no-shows – so we all got on.\u00a0 And arrived in NY before we left London!!!\u00a0 Fabulous.\u00a0 We think we actually flew on G-BOAA.\u00a0 The style of upholstery matches our old photos of the trip!<\/p>\n

Then …<\/p>\n

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…\u00a0 and now …<\/p>\n

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A transatlantic flight required the high-maintenance aircraft to gulp jet fuel at the rate of one ton per seat, and the average round-trip price was listed as $12,000.\u00a0 Fortunately, we only went one way on Concorde and didn’t pay anything like that!<\/p>\n

A good day’s visit.\u00a0 We tried to find sensibly priced accommodation for the night in North Berwick and again in Dunbar.\u00a0 Not only was there no sensibly priced hotel room to be had, there were almost no rooms available at all.\u00a0 Competitors at a big golfing competition had, seemingly, mopped them all up.\u00a0 So we drove home!<\/span><\/p>\n

The following day we lunched at the Cook and Barker at Newton-on-the-Moor and visited Walkworth afterwards.<\/p>\n

The next day we were off – even further north.\u00a0 No accidents, but we did establish a new towing record that day!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On our anniversary this year, we did make it to the Bouchon Bistrot in Hexham (not like last year!).\u00a0 An excellent “prix fixe” meal. Hexham is another of these northern towns which attract visitors and businesses by providing free parking.\u00a0… <\/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":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yorkshire-and-northumberland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6538","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=6538"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6571,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6538\/revisions\/6571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}