A weekend in the countryside

The Old Lodge

The Bowes Museum

High Force

During the summer a friend had the excellent idea of a group of us hiring somewhere in the countryside for a few days and now here we (seven of us) are. We are staying at The Old Lodge in Staindrop, which is near Barnard Castle in County Durham. The Old Lodge dates from the 14th Century and feels like a rather grand home, not a holiday let. Careful attention has been paid to every detail. Not only do we have wireless Internet access, but nice little touches like a wireless printer and Bose docking station for our ipods. I will do a separate post, soon about our wonderful base for the weekend.

We arrived on Friday and toasted the beginning of our long weekend with some fizz. We ate an excellent fish pie and washed it down with white wine, followed by more wine and conversation. We teased the person who has organised the weekend for suggesting we bring two bottles of wine each and we will continue to do so. It is fair to say that we went over our suggested four glass ration on Friday, but we didn't stay up that late or drink that much, even so I felt decidedly 'fragile' this morning. The breakfast buffet task, which was allocated to me was completed, but took great effort.

Today we split into two groups, the hikers and strollers/ gallery goers. I opted to stroll. We did a short walk to High Force, which is a waterfall on land owned by the Raby Castle estate. We had to pay to park and walk on the trail and were surprised that they didn't extract money for us to have a pee as well. Times must be hard for the aristocracy. We were amused by the many signs on the trail with detailed instructions about what we could and could not do. Basically they were saying if you kill or injure yourself, its your fault.

Later we went to the Bowes Museum (more detail about this in a later post). It is a palatial setting with many fine art works. We loved the clockwork silver swan which moved around so smoothly it looked as though it was computer generated.

We then went into Barnard Castle, an archetypal English market town. We had a lovely traditional lunch at a cafe.

After eating we decided to call into a gallery I had spotted on our way to the Cafe called Mouncey Fine Art. We were delighted with the impressive range range of ceramics and paintings. I purchased a humorous dog by Marie Prett and was tempted to buy a piece by Christine Cummings (another dog). We came back to the Lodge and met up with the hikers. We shared stories of our day and decided on a name for my ceramic dog. He will be called Barnard.

We have had an enjoyable evening in. Delicious Jambalaya, great choice of music, stimulating conversation and good fun.