We woke up at around 9:30 and headed downstairs for breakfast (and read the paper!) at the Bistro. After that, we wandered across the river to pick up our rental car.
As you can see, Newcastle is devoid of people on a Saturday morning …
Views of the Millenium Bridge at Newcastle
Views of Tyne Bridge and Newcastle
Hadrian’s Wall, near Once Brewed
We drove to the Hadrian’s Wall visitor centre at Once Brewed, and rugged up before setting out for a short walk. We took a wrong gate and ended up squelching about large puddles of boggy, cow-pat riddled grounds, before turning around and finding a second gate. We managed to stop another couple from making the same mistake …
We were greeted by an amazing scenery once we found the right gate and trudged on through …
After managing to wobble up the steep rocky path, and accidentally looking down and remembering my fear of heights … I finally made it to the top.
Once safely at the top, we walked along the wall, taking views of the lush green valleys and hills …
We soon reached the next crag, and could see Crag Lough.
We climbed down to Sycamore Gap and found the "Robin Hood Tree" …
Ahh, the great outdoors! :)
Because there wasn’t much daylight left, we decided to turn back so we could start heading to our next destination.
A Milecastle along Hadrian's Wall
We walked past some furry cows on the way back to the car …
Next, we drove on to the Killhope Lead Mining Museum (which was closed) hoping to catch a glimpse of red squirrels. Alas — there wsa not much light left, which means the squirrels are probably hiding …
Nevertheless, there were lots of mushrooms to keep us busy as we were in a pine forest / plantation …
As it was getting too dark and we were hungry, we decided to head back to town for dinner. But first, we stopped along the stream to wash our muddy boots …
Back in Newcastle, we managed to find free parking and walked to Tyneside Cinema and bought two tickets to The Rum Diary. Then we walked around in search of food. We managed to find a nice non-chain casual Italian Restaurant called Pani’s Cafe for dinner.
We loved Tyneside cinema — ticket prices were so much cheaper, we had a nice sofa to sit on, and Muffin somehow managed to fit in popcorn on top of his dinner …
All in all, a fantastic day!