In my blog post last week I shared a little of our recent camping trip to the North of England. In this post I’ll share a little more of the creative inspirations from that trip as it wasn’t just about sea glass hunting…
We stayed 3 nights in Alnwick a lovely market town. There’s a fantastic second hand book shop there called Barter Books It’s one of the largest second hand book shops in the country, based in an old railway station.
Here are suggestions in the book for a dining area, child’s room and even a teenager’s room! The teenage room made my own teenagers laugh!! 🙂 🙂
But I do love my vintage books…
Near to Alnwick is Alnmouth and from there we caught the train across the border into Scotland to visit Edinburgh for the day and what a wonderful day it was…
I’ve never been to Edinburgh although I’ve wanted to go for a while. I’m sure many of you may have been – isn’t it the most wonderful city! Something about our day there has made me see Edinburgh as one of my very favourite cities!
Maybe it’s because you can climb a mountain from the city centre- Arthur’s Seat was well worth the climb for the fantastic views and sense of achievement when you get to the top…
Maybe it’s because there are some gorgeous yarn shops (my family are used to me having little detours to pop by local yarn shops and surprisingly don’t seem to mind! 😉 )
There was the fabulous Ginger Twist Studio -what an amazing and gorgeous shop with a delightful owner. It’s small but every corner of that shop is used and organised so incredibly well that the amount of yarns available are staggering! The owner was happy for me to take some photos and we had a great yarn related chat…
I treated myself to these gorgeous yarns…
I also managed to pop into McAree Brothers a well known more conventional yarn shop…
And of course it was great to see some Tartan colours…
Whatever it is about Edinburgh, we loved it!
Back across the border in England on our return I saw this sign for a Wool Festival being held in Alnmouth…it’s tomorrow! Such a shame I won’t be able to go…
We visited Holy Island. Inside St Mary’s church was this alter with a sea and fishing theme, an obvious tribute to the fishing communities over the centuries…
It was quite a bleak and grey day when we visited Holy Island which rather suited the exposed setting but the colours in the Gertrude Jekyll Garden which the National Trust look after were enough to lift anyone’s spirits…
Further down the coast was Bamburgh…
…and we could see the Farne Islands in the distance which gradually became clearer as the weather turned for the better before our eyes!
As always we enjoyed some time on the beach (two of my children swam in the North Sea!)…
And then we moved on for our last 3 nights to the Northumberland National Park How beautiful and vast this area is…
The colours of the heather really struck me and reminded me of Lucy from Attic 24 who often writes in her blog about the heathers and has taken inspiration from the colours for her blankets…
My own crochet seemed to match the scenery that day…
We stayed in an area designated an ‘International Dark Skies Park’ and oh my word the stars! We were so fortunate to experience a clear night and there was a star gazing pavilion next to the campsite which we sat back in and gazed upwards to see stars like I’ve never seen them before. It really was special…
Finally we felt we just had to visit Hadrian’s Wall…
…and we enjoyed a walk around the area which I won’t write anymore about- I’ll let the beautiful photos of the views speak for themselves…
It took us 10 and a half hours to drive home… it really is a very long way away from our corner on the south coast!
But oh it was worth it… 🙂 🙂