The Castles, The Wall and The Angel (Part 1)

If you want to see some freakin' cool castles, go to Northumbria, England. There are other things to see like Hadrian's Wall and The Angel of the North, both worth seeing, but the castles were absolutely phenomenal. Last weekend, I flew over to Newcastle Upon Tyne and had an interesting weekend, which included avoiding a disgruntled convict with a gun.

On Saturday, I did the all-castles-all-the-time tour of Northumbria. The first castle that I saw was on Holy Island, Lindisfarne Castle. Holy Island is an island that you can drive to at low tide. A causeway opens up, just don't get caught trying to drive across when the tide is coming in.

The town was neat and I would have liked to stay a little longer, but I had a tonne (that's the British spelling) of castles to see and only one day to do it! Here is Lindisfarne Castle on Holy Island:


Next it was down the coast toTHE most amazing castle that I have seen to date: Bamburgh Castle. This one deserves two pictures.

From the park:
From the beach:


And, although I have many other pictures of castles, I cut it off after this one as it's a good one to end on. This is Alnwick Castle, but you might know by it's other name: Hogwarts. This castle was the featured backdrop for Harry Potter as Hogwarts in three of the six films already released.


After my tour of the castles of Northumbria, I toured the cities of Newcastle Upon Tyne and Tynemouth. There really isn't anything spectacular about the city other than it attracts stag parties and hen parties from all over the United Kingdom and Ireland. For your reference stag party = bachelor party, hen party = bachellorette party.

I found cheap accommodation staying in a dormitory at the University of Newcastle. I'm such an old fart. I was in bed by 10pm. I first woke when the loud and raucous stag parties returned from the pubs (obviously of the same mind for cheap accommodations) at 2:30 am. I next awoke to my alarm and to extract my revenge, being loud (though not raucous) at 6am when I got up to start my Sunday adventures.

To be continued . . .