On the way to Iona last year my Mum and I missed the bus across the Isle of Mull (due to a bus replacement service between Glasgow and Oban), and so found a local ex-policeman to take us from Craignure to Fionnphort. He told us quite a bit about the island, and we decided that we should come back and spend some time on Mull itself - although I had crossed it several times going to and from Iona I had never spent any time there. My parents and I therefore decided to spend a week on Mull at the beginning of July. We stayed at Staffa House in Fionnphort, which was a lovely bed and breakfast - very welcoming with tasty home-cooked breakfasts.

We were (relatively) lucky with the weather on our visit, with only two days when there was real rain. Most days we were able to go out walking, with Staffa House provided some helpful written guides for local walks which kept us on track. Mull is generally quite rough walking territory (plenty of boggy ground and well marked paths are relatively scarce), however the beauty of the scenery more than makes up for any roughness underfoot. On two days we took the bus into Bunessan and walked from there, the first time also spending some time at the Ross of Mull Historical Centre waiting for the rain to (more or less) pass over before setting out. This was a chance to find out about the history of the settlements on Mull, and it was interesting to see the changing fashion of names in the old school records going back to the 19th century.

We also went across to Iona on two days, and were proud of successfully navigating the way to the Marble Quarry (which is quite well hidden until you are almost on top of it. We discovered on the way back that there is now a post positioned up on the hill above the Quarry; however there is still a challenge to find the route between the post and the main path.) It was also wonderful to revisit some favourite spots on the island.

We spent one wet day on Mull with a local guide who took us out on a wildlife tour in his minibus, also giving us fascinating information on the geology and history of the island. He found for us seals, red deer, sea eagles - a viewpoint for a nest with two juveniles, and the adult female also flew in while we were watching, - raven, golden eagle and otter (no photos of these, I’m afraid - a telescopic lens would have been needed). Added to these, we also saw a mountain hare on a later walk, plus puffins, razorbills, guillemots and shags on Lunga, which we visited on a tour of the Treshnish Isles on our first day. Lunga was great for puffins, we could see them at very close range and they seemed to be quite undisturbed by people - the guide told us they welcomed visitors as we deterred the black-backed gulls and other predators.

We were lucky that our visit coincided with the ‘Mendelssohn on Mull‘ music festival, in which young professional musicians are given the chance to study and perform with leading chamber musicians. We had actually met a couple of the musicians on the train from Glasgow, and they turned out to be in the group that was performing at Creich church, which was less than a mile from Fionnphort. They played a Mozart quartet, and an early Beethoven quartet and quintet. We also enjoyed a concert in Iona abbey, at which all the groups performed a selection of slow movements.

We were impressed by they way that the local eating places catered for our vegetarian / vegan diets. Staffa House had alerted the Keel Row (the one local pub) to our diets; they rose to the challenge admirably with a variety of dishes, and we ate there most evenings. Besides the Keel Row, there is the Ninth Wave. A small island village may not be where you would expect to find an expensive, Michelin guide caliber restaurant, but there it was and it was well worth visiting. This is the style of restaurant which goes for quality rather than quantity, but what quality it was, and a feast for the eyes as well as the stomach. It advertises itself as a fish restaurant; however, with advance warning of our diets, they devised a sumptuous menu with a choice of at least three dishes for every course, all of which were mouth-wateringly delicious and beautifully presented. Testament to the quality is that, in spite of the price tag, I took my parents back for a return visit on my Mum’s birthday.

Mull and Iona have a special atmosphere, which is partly in the places themselves - their beauty, their remoteness and the way in which they are bound up with the life of the spirit in celtic Christianity - and partly in the people that live there and the tremendous hospitality they offer.

Mull & Iona 2011 Photo Gallery

Around the North East:
A number of updates from visits by my parents in March 2009 (including visits to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, Gibside and the Tanfield Railway), October 2010 (a walk from the Angel of the North back to Chester Le Street) and April 2011 (including the Farne Islands, South Shields and Beamish).

More additions to these galleries from two weeks holiday in June 2009, when I hired a car to continue exploring some of the less accessible places I hadn’t visited before, including Fountains Abbey, Dunstanburgh, Finchale Abbey, and Bede’s World, as well as returning to old favourites including the Farne Islands, Cragside and North York Moors Railway.

Multiple visits to Beamish after purchasing an annual pass on the Easter weekend 2009 (for the same price as a day ticket.) A highlight was the Steam Festival in September, which included a rare opportunity to see the miniature railway in action, and to ride on the footplate of a steam locomotive on the line from the Station. In May this year I discovered that there are now regular steam rides at the Station, hence another steam-focussed update to this gallery for 2011.

Also many day trips, including two outings with students from my college this year, to Hadrian’s Wall and to Lindisfarne and the Farne Islands (in late June, which proved to be an ideal time for puffins if also the height of the season for being dive-bombed by the arctic terns).

Plus two visits to the National Railway Museum at Shildon, which I explored for the first time in June 2010. This was the occasion of the arrival of the record-breaking steam locomotive ‘Mallard’, hauled from York by ‘Tornado’, the steam locomotive completed in 2008, and the first to be built in the UK since 1960.

New additions are

• Fountains Abbey (June 2009)
• Dunstanburgh (June 2009)
• Locomotion (June and September 2010)
• Finchale Priory (June 2009)
• Bede’s World (June 2009)
• Gibside (March 2009)
• Washington Old Hall (May 2009)

Return visits to

• Farne Islands & Lindisfarne (June 2009, April and June 2011)
• Hadrian’s Wall (nos. 11-21 (second visit to Housesteads and walk to Sycamore Gap) - June 2011)
• Cragside (nos. 18-25 - June 2009)
• Belsay (nos. 16-17 (The lake) - August 2010)
• North York Moors Railway (nos. 16-31 - June 2009)
• Whitby (nos. 2-16 - June 2009)
• Beamish (nos. 14-68 - April 2009 to May 2011)
• Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (nos. 11-31 - March and June 2009)
• Tanfield Railway (nos. 20-24 (Cochrane in steam) - March 2009)
• South Shields (nos. 2-4 - April 2011)
• Count Durham, Tyne and Wear (Washington Old Hall - May 2009; Angel of the North (3&4) - October 2010 and June 2011; Weardale Way - April 2011)

In the South:
Pictures from a short holiday on the Kennet and Avon Canal in April 2010, travelling from Bradford on Avon to Bath and back. Also updates from a visit to Surrey in July 2009, when my brother was over from America, including visits to the British Wildlife Centre and my first visit to Marwell Zoo; and a trip to Anglesey Abbey during a visit to my cousin in Norwich in March 2010.

New additions are

• Marwell Zoo (July 2009)
• Anglesey Abbey (March 2010)
• Bath and the Kennet & Avon Canal (April 2010)

Updates to

• British Wildlife Centre (nos. 20 (badger)- 51 - July 2009)

Iona
Two beautiful days on Iona with my Mum in June 2010, including my first visit to Staffa.

• Iona and Staffa June 2010

And finally…:
The Doctor Who Exhibition in Newcastle, July 2010.

I hadn’t seen them live before so can’t compare with other line-ups, but the band worked really well together on stage and there was a good energy to the performance. The only slight hitch - when Bryan Josh suffered a temporary lapse of memory over the words to ‘The Spirit of Autumn Past Pt. 2′ - simply served to lighten the mood.  New lead vocalist Olivia Sparnenn was in good voice and got a great reception for her rendition of  older material, including ‘Evergreen’, as well as the songs from their most recent album, ‘Go Well Diamond Heart’.

They were on stage for close to two and half hours, playing most of the tracks from ‘Go Well Diamond Heart’ - including two songs from the special edition which I hadn’t heard before - as well as a good range of songs from their earlier albums.  There was one other song which was new to me, ‘Questioning Eyes’, which was written by Iain Jennings and Olivia Sparnenn for Breathing Space (the band formed by Iain during a temporary absence from Mostly Autumn).

Seeing them live, though, brought a freshness to all the songs and sent me back to some of the albums with even more enthusiastic ears.  All in all a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

Swan Lake, with Tchaikovsky’s beautiful score, has always been my favourite ballet.  Matthew Bourne’s production is a modern retelling of the story which famously casts male dancers as the swans (though it is not, as sometimes incorrectly stated, an all male Swan Lake).   I had seen it on dvd, and jumped at the chance to see it live.  It is intensely moving (few films will make me cry on repeated viewings, but this production on dvd does every time and the live version was no exception), but nevertheless there are plenty of humourous moments. The dvd is excellent, but the action becomes much clearer on the stage, and there were several bits of background action - often adding to the humour - which aren’t seen by the camera.  The programme noted that there had been a number of changes since the dvd was filmed; these seemed to be in the details and the production in essence remained the same, however there were some moments that were changed and some that I did not remember seeing before.

The new cast also brought a different feel to the piece.  The current run has a number of dancers in the principle roles, at this performance we saw Dominic North as a youthful Prince - he captured the yearning to escape from the dull routine of the court and the longing for affection.  Jonathan Ollivier as the Swan / the Stranger superbly conveyed the power and potential fierceness of the swan tempered by his protectiveness and gentleness towards the prince, as well as the mysterious and almost savage charm of the Stranger.  The Queen (I think we saw Nina Goldman) was also excellent and presented a moving conflict between suppressed love and distaste for physical contact with her son.

It is 14 years since the premiere of this production and, judging by the packed theatre, the revivals should continue for many years yet.  I would certainly recommend seeing it.

More about the show at the official website: http://www.swanlaketour.com/

The new house has a small garden, which brings me to the main subject of this post: the wormery.  I hadn’t previously had any way of recycling kitchen waste - the council doesn’t collect it and I’d had no use for compost before.  With a garden, despite the small size, composting made sense, so my Mum gave me a worm cafe, complete with composting worms.  All well and good, we thought - but for the first week or so the worms seemed to want to be anywhere other than their food tray, and had to be rescued from the sump below, from on top of the lid, and from corners of the shed where I’d put the cafe to keep them out of the cold.  Reassured by Wiggly Wigglers that this was normal behaviour - worms are inquisitive, and are likely to explore their environment thoroughly before deciding that the food tray is the best place to be - my first task on returning from work each day became to check the wormery and restore any roving worms to their proper place.

Having acquired enough bubble-wrap to surround and cover the cafe in order to keep the wind off,  I put it back outside, hoping that daylight would encourage the worms to stay put.  As advised, I gave them plenty of shredded paper to keep the moisture down and all seemed well, until the next crisis arrived in the form of unusually seasonably cold weather and snow: despite the bubble-wrap cover, the moisture blanket inside the cafe froze and the top layer of food looked decidedly frosty.  Strange as it may seem I had grown rather attached to my worms and was rather dismayed by this turn of events, but as I was going away for Christmas I had to put them back in the shed and hope for the best.  On my return there was still ice on the lid and no live worms in sight.  Consulting wiggly wigglers again I brought them just inside, leaving them in the coolest part of the house by the back door to let them defrost slowly.  Within a couple of hours the first worms emerged, and it seems that most have survived the cold.  I’m now wondering what the next mini wormdrama will be - and waiting to see whether the composting is successful.

I spent New Year’s Eve with a box of booja-boojas (yummy organic, dairy-free chocs). Each box has a Boojagram, a short saying which is sometimes witty, sometimes wise, sometimes simply bizarre. I particularly liked the one I got this time:

“All things loved are truly beautiful”

New Year was also a chance to try out some new recipes. I actually enjoy cooking, but recently haven’t ventured much outside a relatively small repertoire of tried and tested favourites. This time I made pea and potato cakes (latkes) from a seasonal recipe book which Mum gave me for Christmas, and a chocolate mousse from another recipe book I got from my cousin. Actually the recipe was for a cappuccino mousse, but as I didn’t have any plain choc I adapted it into a chocolate orange mousse made with Maya Gold choc. Have recently discovered that Maja Gold is no longer completely dairy free (possibly thanks to Cadbury take-over of Green & Blacks, grr) but I still had some left in stock.

Christmas with family was lovely, despite most of the household going down with flu (I’m amazed that so far I’ve stayed healthy).  It did provide an excuse to relax with the latest additions to our dvd collections.

Not much in the way of updates around the site, though I have added some photos from a visit to Rothbury in October, which was a last day out in Northumberland before the Sunday bus from Gateshead stopped running for the winter. We walked up to Sharp’s Folly, which is just a short way out of the town. See blue sky in the first photo!

I’m sure there were other things that I wanted to write about, but now that I am actually typing my mind has gone blank. Just want to show off a pendant which I found while wandering around the Metrocentre on Saturday.  We were there to see the remake of the Day the Earth Stood Still, which gave an environmental twist to the story in place of the original’s cold war setting.  It was interesting to see and had some good moments, but I think I prefer the original.  Back to the pendant - I could not resist the dolphins:

The stone is Andean Opal.

That’s it for now, except to wish you a very merry Christmas / happy holiday, and a happy 2009 - though with two weeks holiday I may even get around to posting again before the new year. Cannot promise anything though, as I am looking forward to being busy with family over Christmas.

Day One (22 Aug): Cragside
There is a bus (Arriva 508) which runs only on Sundays and bank holidays during the summer season, from Gateshead via Belsay and Wallington up to Rothbury in Northumberland. It’s very handy for days out, and we’ve had several trips on it, though this was the first time we’d gone to the end of the line - Cragside House, a National Trust property at Rothbury.

The grounds are beautiful, but as the weather was less than dry, we dived into the house after lunch (good food at the Stables Restaurant). Cragside House was the home of Lord Armstrong, a Victorian inventor, and features among other things an early dishwasher, a hydraulic lift and a Turkish bath suite. The drawing room also boasts possibly the most magnificent chimney piece I have ever seen. As we were going round, we soon discovered that each room had one item tucked away that was out of place, so that visiting children (of any age) could play ’spot the modern object’.

Having explored the house from top to bottom, we ventured out into the still slightly damp grounds, down through the rock garden to walk alongside the river through the woodlands back to the visitor centre. There is much more in the grounds which we didn’t get to see, so well worth another visit - hopefully when the sun is shining.

Day Two (23 Aug): Raby Castle
This was a day of getting used to the hired car, so we decided not to venture too far afield. Raby Castle is a magnificent medieval castle in County Durham. It was built by the Neville family in the 12th century, and it remained in their possession until it was confiscated by the crown following the ‘rising of the north’ - reputedly plotted in the Baron’s Hall at Raby - against Elizabeth I in support of Mary Queen of Scots. It is now the home of Lord Barnard.

We arrived just as the grounds were opening, and spent some time wandering through the extensive and rather lovely walled garden, and then walking through the parkland to see the herds of deer and magnificent views of the castle. Inside the castle are many sumptuous rooms - as well as the less sumptuous servants quarters, though the huge medieval kitchen - little altered and in use for 600 years - is itself very impressive.

Random tit-bit: The guide in the kitchen told us he was reliably informed that the greeny-blue Victorian paintwork in evidence on work surfaces here as in other Victorian kitchens was not simply a fashion, but was identified by the Victorians as a colour which flies did not like to settle on.

Day Three (24 Aug): Holy Island
Lindisfarne is one of the places I had been wanting to visit for a long time, though as it is a fair way away and visiting times are restricted by the tides, it’s not an easy place to get to without a car. This tides on this day meant that we could cross safely in the morning, as the tide was coming in, and were then ‘marooned’ on the island until mid-afternoon. With plenty to see and weather that promised sunshine as the day went on, we had no complaints about that.

We began by exploring the ruined Priory - the site of the monastery established in the 7th century by St Aiden, and settled by monks from Iona. This was a centre of Celtic Christianity, and it is likely that the Lindisfarne Gospels were created here. It is also closely associated with St Cuthbert, who was a monk and later bishop at the Priory.

After lunch and a tiny free sip of the honey-tasting Lindisfarne mead we took the Hopper bus to the Castle. The Castle was built in the 16th Century using stones from the demolished Priory, which was destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries (Henry VIII was into recycling, our bus driver remarked). The interior of the Castle is decorated in the style of an Edwardian country house. The Castle is another National Trust property, and where Cragside had modern objects, Lindisfarne Castle had miniature cellos hidden in each room - a theme commemorating Mme Suggia, a famous cellist who stayed at the castle. Although not as luxurious as Cragside or Raby, of the three houses we visited I think Lindisfarne Castle is where I would most like to live: not too large but with plenty of nooks and crannies, and wonderful sea views - though no doubt rather cold in winter.

From the castle we walked to the tiny walled garden to the north of the castle, by which time it was about time to head back down the A1. We stopped briefly at Bamburgh for a walk along the beach and views of Bamburgh Castle.

Day Four (25 Aug): Ford and Etal
By this time we were trying to ignore the onset of sore throats, but determined to make the most of our last day with the car. The Ford and Etal estates are in north Northumberland, not too far from Lindisfarne. Lots of different things to see and do here - we headed straight for the Heatherslaw Light Railway, a miniature gauge railway which runs two miles from Heatherslaw to Etal. This was my steam train fix for this holiday. At Etal we stopped to visit the ruined Castle, which featured in the border wars with Scotland.

After a cup of tea at the Lavendar tearooms, we headed back by train to Heatherslaw, and then on to Ford to the Lady Waterford Hall. The Hall was commissioned by Louisa Ann, Marchioness of Waterford, and decorated by her with lifesize murals depicting Biblical scenes for which she used local people as her models. The Hall now houses a gallery of her artwork - delightful watercolours and sketches.

I have photos from this week to add to the photo galleries, but I am currently in the process of redoing these pages. This is taking quite a while as I have a backlog of photos which I’d never got around to adding - hopefully another update to follow before too long.