June 4, Monday Blueberry Cottage Alndyke Farm, Alnwick, Northumberland, England. A day in town.

June 4, Monday Blueberry Cottage Alndyke Farm, Alnwick, Northumberland, England. A day in town.

We took the long walk (1.5 miles uphill both ways) into town this morning and spent the day horsing around in the town of Alnwick. Hannah wanted to get her hair done so we spent the morning looking for a salon and then shopping. We saw the dirty bottles which legend says are cursed and no one has touched them for hundreds of years upon pain of death, then ended the morning with a hairy lemon. Lunch was in a bar that we decided must be a pretty hopping place in the evenings and everyone had beef and onions on a baguette while I went for the Yorkshire Pudding with roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy and a couple of John Smith ales each (Hannah had coke).

Satisfied, we wandered through the grounds of the Alnwick castle before settling in for a long walk through the gardens. It was really beautiful. Not quite as striking as the spectacular Buchart gardens in Victoria, BC but beautiful nonetheless. The showstoppers in my eyes were the dinner plate sized clemantis blooms, amazing lupines, roses, and peonies. There were a number of interesting trained trees as well. One was a huge arched walkway that went all the way up one hill where small ash trees were trained along a series of arbors so that they arched over the walkway providing shade. Another was a rectangle of flowering crabs (not currently in bloom) that was trained along a trellis like grape vines.

Wisdom for the day etched in a rock was the quote - "The only fish that swims downstream is a dead fish". Don't know what that means exactly but it certainly sounded profound.

There was a garden of fountains that used all sorts of physical principles of water as their main feature. There was one that Terry said defied all the laws of plumbing by both having a vortex and overflowing. Another filled three plexiglas (lexan, whatever) tubes and when they reached the top it let loose and shot 90 jets of water straight in the air. There were two or three little kids there playing in the water. I thought it would have been a little too cold but the kids didn't seem to mind.

The central feature of the gardens is a huge course of steps that runs down the side of a hill for what must be almost 100 yards. At the bottom of the fountain there were a mass of John Deer front loading tractors - pedal powered - and the kids riding them rode over to the wall that overflowed from the fountain, filled the buckets with water then dumped them.

We also took the tour of the poison garden which was interesting if a somewhat bunk tainted presentation. The presenter had some excellent information on certain toxic plants and also told some tall tales about others that even managed to work in stories from the bible and a load of hooey about mandrake root that was based on the Harry Potter series of books by JK Rowling. For those of you who don't know, Alnwick castle is the castle that inspired the Harry Potter books.

We left just after 5pm and headed back into town to pick up another bottle of single malt and a few odds and ends then walked back to the cottage where I suggested we engage in the ceremonial burning of the sneakers as my feet were definitely feeling the 9 hours I spent on them.

Meg made a wonderful dinner for us and then I settled in to finish a book I had started. I've been fighting sleep for probably two hours now.

All in all it was a fun day. Tomorrow we plan to hit the used book store, the post office to see about shipping stuff home, and maybe stick around to have dinner then see "An Inconvenient Truth". Meg and Terry have seen it but neither Hannah or I have so we thought it would be fun to watch it at the Alnwick playhouse with a bunch of brits. Hannah's hair appointment is tomorrow too so it should be a full and entertaining day.

Lovely, Thank you very much...gj