Newcastle - 21st June

Went to visit Newcastle, city of bridges.
On the way we passed the Angel of the north, it is 20 metres high and has a wing span of 54 metres. The Angel is firstly a historical reminder of the people who worked in the dark under the ground in the mines for two hundred years. Secondly to look to the future where Newcastle has transformed from industrial to technology. Thirdly to focus on our hopes and fears. Great, looked like a big metal Angel to us.
When Steven sees art and is asked 'what do you think of when you look at that?' his usual answer is 'what's for tea?".

 
On to Newcastle, home of Newcastle Brown Ale and The Animals. Got to be a great place based on just those two things. We drove around the city centre, through a student protest, 'No fossil fuels' they shouted, we quickly hid our embarrassing Australian flags.
Our camper is good but it has a roof boot making it 2.6 metres high which excludes us from all multistory car parks. We found a free parking space on the river bank next to the rotting carcass of some long dead smelly animal, felt quite at home.
We walked along the river past all of the bridges ending up at the Gateshead Millenium Bridge. We crossed over and then heard all the horn blasts to announce it was tipping over to allow a boat through.

Here are some more Bridges over the river Tyne, you can see one that looks like the Sydney Harbour Bridge in there. It was designed by the same company and opened in 1928, until The Sydney harbour Bridge was built a few years later, Sydney Harbour Bridge was the longest single span steel bridge up until 2012 when a bigger one was built in Vancouver.









We went to the Museum of contemporary art and played in the lift for a while, used the toilet and went to the shop.

Walked back along the river to the car and headed off towards Leeds Via the Yorkshire Dales National Park where we stopped to take a photo of this pretty scene, unfortunately Steven's glasses fell out of the car at this point. We noticed them missing half an hour later and retraced our steps. We found them where they fell out of the car, sadly Steven drove over them. Expensive photo. 



We dropped into the town of Banard Castle, it was very busy as they were preparing for a 1940's themed weekend. All the shops were decorated and the windows were taped up in criss crosses.
We parked and walked around the town, lovely old buildings and winding roads. Had a quick look at the 12th century castle ruins. The castle is high up on the bank of the The River Tees. 

  

Made it to Leeds and Mark, Michelle and Matilda's house. They had prepared a lovely meal of Shepherds pie and apple crumble for us. 
We sat down and chatted over a couple of quiet Ales.