“Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot”.
So runs the old children’s rhyme concerning the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 when Guy aka Guido Fawkes and others attempted to blow up the King and Parliament. I once had a friend who was affectionately known as “Mad Katie” who wore a T-shirt with the legend “Guy Fawkes – the only man ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions” which always amused me. So here I was, 415 years later, waking up in a very comfy bed in the Castle Hotel in Berwick-upon-Tweed and, to be honest, attempted regicide was not really on my mind.
What was more on my mind was the weather as I had a day’s sightseeing planned come Hell or high water and a glance out the window confirmed that the latter was much more likely than fire and brimstone as the weather was disgusting. If you have read my earlier entries you will know that the day before had been appalling and it showed no signs of letting up. Still, it was November, where was this year going? It is a cliché, and like most clichés it is based in truth, that time goes faster the older you get and I had really noticed it in 2019 but I wasn’t going to let it get to me.
I was having a brilliant trip to Northumberland, I had a whole new historic town to explore and, best of all, a Regimental Museum to visit. I love military history and the Museum of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers was going to be added to my list of similar establishments already visited.
I had arisen with the lark, having unusually set my alarm clock as I wanted an early start to my explorations and also because there was breakfast on offer. I thought if I had good feed now I could do with a quick bite at lunchtime or perhaps skip it completely and so have more time to look round. I don’t normally eat for a few hours after I wake but it seemed to make sense.
When I got to the breakfast room I was obviously the last arrival as they had most of the chairs on the tables, presumably to clean the floor although it looked spotless to me. Thankfully there was a table still in operation and so I parked myself there, ignoring the cereals on offer although I did have a glass of orange juice. A friendly lady came out and took my order for a full English which was indeed full, full on that is.
If you have read other posts of mine from my time back in Northern Ireland you will know that I cook and eat the most monstrous fry-ups but that is when my stomach has had a few hours to wake up. The breakfast was gorgeous, with special mention for the bacon which was first rate, but it defeated me and I just could not finish it which annoyed me as I hate food waste.
More than full up, it was time to hit the road, downpour or no. I had looked briefly online and decided to head down towards the sea to take in the Bell Tower and the Lord’s Mount before going round by town walls which would bring me to the Barracks which house the Museum I was so keen to see. A walk along the High Greens and the Low Greens brought me to the Bell Tower and I noted the pleasant looking Pilot Inn for later investigation.
There was a reasonable path to the Tower but couldn’t really explore properly as I still had only those silly white training shoes which I mentioned before. Memo to self – bring walking boots to Northumberland in November!
The Bell Tower was built in 1577 on an earlier 14th century base and formed part of the medieval defensive walls which are amongst the best preserved in Europe and were begun by Edward I who reigned from 1272 to 1307. He was known as “Malleus Scotorum” or “Hammer of the Scots” and herein lies a clue as to much of what Berwick represents.
Although it is now in England it is only a bit over 50 miles from Edinburgh and was for centuries the front line between the warring English and Scots. It has changed hands no less than 13 times over the years which in some ways defines the place. For example, I found the accent here much more akin to Scots than to that of their fellow Northumbrians in Newcastle.
The 1502 Treaty of Everlasting Peace between the two nations stated that Berwick was “of England but not in England” and for centuries was mentioned separately in all Acts of Parliament and this gives rise to a story you may have heard of relating to to the town, if you have heard of it at all.
It is popularly believed that an administrative oversight during the drafting of the 1856 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Crimean war between Russia and the United Kingdom, omitted to mention Berwick and so the town had technically remained at war with the Russians until a peace treaty was signed in the 1960’s. Sadly, like so many great stories it is completely false and probably arose out of a talk given by a local cleric in the early 20th century. True or not, I doubt the Russians were ever too worried about the 12,000 or so residents of Berwick taking up arms and marching on the Kremlin.
My plans to visit the Lord’s Mount foundered on the rock of my pristine footwear and the prospect of a very soggy route underfoot so I stayed on the solid pavement of the charmingly named Low Greens until I came upon the delightful sight you see above albeit that it undoubtedly looks a whole lot better on a sunny day. If this is the green referred to in the street name then it is certainly one of the smaller ones I have seen but they have made the most of it and the excellent information board gives a fascinating insight into the area.
This part of town is generically known as Greenses Harbour although I saw no evidence of fishing except for this decorative little dinghy. It is so named for a natural harbour here which was once home to a thriving fleet with herring being a popular catch, along with cod and haddock. Illegally poached salmon also provided a good proportion of the local’s diet.
The locals were so swarthy and weather-beaten from their hard, outdoor life that they were known as “Greenses Arabs” which was partly due, in addition to the climate, by virtue of the fact that some were of Flemish, Spanish, Portuguese and French extraction although I am unsure how such a varied bunch found themselves washed up here. Perhaps that is the reason, they were all shipwrecked mariners. When I was later to catch sight of the wild North Sea battering the coast, that is perhaps not such a fanciful notion.
Walking further along Low Greens took me back in the direction of the town where I knew I was bound to come to the town walls sooner or later. On the way, I saw what I initially thought was a Church / Community Hall by it’s appearance but turned out to be a charity shop for the local hospice although I stick by my idea of what the building was originally. I am a sucker for charity shops to the extent that I literally cannot remember the last time I bought book in a conventional bookshop and I read a lot. What passes for my wardrobe, and I am certainly no fashion victim as some of you know, was similarly sourced.
Having just read on the information board about the very hard and impoverished conditions of the Greenses Harbour fishermen I came to the conclusion that it was very changed times round there as the items for sale were all top of the range, designer labelled and obviously priced at a fraction of what they had gone for initially. In the event I didn’t find anything I fancied but I did have a great chat with the lovely ladies in there. They were incredulous when I told them how and why I was in Berwick and wandering about on day like this but they wished me well for my sightseeing and I took off back into the teeth of the howling onshore wind.
I came to the walls soon enough and was again amazed at how well they were preserved given their age. The next thing to do was find a way either onto or through them. As you can see, they are still fairly formidable and there was no way I could have scaled them. To think of having to have assaulted them a few hundred years ago under enfilading fire, which was how they were designed, is a fairly daunting prospect.
I eventually found a gate behind which I could see the barracks which pleased me as the image shows just how much the terrible weather had deteriorated by this point.
Passing through the gate gave a very good illustration of just how solid these walls were, they must be a minimum of 25 feet thick and it would have taken a serious naval barrage to even put a scratch in it. The gates are still intact as well and they look like a pretty tough proposition as well.
Immediately on passing through the gate I took the external image of the barracks which you can see and immediately I saw that something was wrong. I hadn’t checked on opening times and perhaps this was the one day a week it closed or perhaps there was another entrance round the corner or………. What I hadn’t expected, when I checked the information board was that it was seasonal and had closed for the winter the previous weekend. My main reason for visiting the town and I had missed it by two days. Sod that for a game of soldiers (pun absolutely intended).
I took an image or two of the now-closed barracks by threading my camera through the bars of the locked gate and it is a fine structure indeed which is no surprise as it was built by Nicholas Hawksmoor and brings me back to something I say often here which is that everything to do with my travelling and my life seems to connect and come round in circles. I’ll make this brief or we will be here all day.
Nicholas Hawksmoor (c.1661 – 1736) was a famous architect who worked with Sir Christopher Wren, notably on St. Paul’s Cathedral in London as well as Hampton Court Palace and the Hospitals of Greenwich and Chelsea. Churches were very much his stock-in-trade and he was the beneficiary of an Act of Parliament of 1711 to build 50 new churches in and around the City of London.
As it turned out, only twelve churches were built with six of these to Hawksmoor’s designs along with two collaborations where he took a minor role. Three of them (St. Anne’s Limehouse, St. George in the East, Wapping and the grandest, Christ Church, Spitalfields) are all within 30 minutes brisk walk of my home. These three, along with some of his other designs were all places I wrote about on Virtual Tourist and I may well dig out the text and do a piece here if I ever get up to date! Hawksmoor and I go back a long way and my piece on St. George in the East was one of the first I ever posted on the internet and possibly where I got the bug for this kind of thing.
If you like a good conspiracy theory, and who doesn’t, there is a beauty about Hawksmoor and his churches. It is not conspiracy but documented fact that Hawksmoor and his mentor Wren were both Freemasons and Wren is supposed to have been fairly high up in the craft. He is also alleged to be part of the Illuminati, if you believe in that sort of thing. Geometry plays a large part in the symbolism of the Masons and both men, as architects, would have been well versed in that science. The basis of the theory is that if you plot some of Hawksmoor’s churches on a map they form a pentagram with St. Paul’s at the centre.
All the above may be complete nonsense but I have just spent quite a few hours diverted into a world I had never really considered and yet which I had been exploring unknowingly for years. Yes, that is a bit cryptic and no, I haven’t gone completely mad, at least not as far as I can tell. On the back of this I can see a few new projects coming up for my explorations if I ever get this current lot written up, which seems unlikely at this rate.
If you want to have a look for yourself then just try an internet search on “psychogeography”, itself a gorgeous word, and “London” and see what you come up with. I do warn you that if you are as as inquisitive as me it can be a lengthy operation. For a quick start, all the hard work regarding the Hawksmoor idea is done for you here. I won’t go into more detail but that is the bare bones and I want to get back to a rainy day in Berwick.
To say that I was disappointed by my failure to visit the Barracks was would be an understatement and to have missed it by such a narrow margin was indeed a bitter pill to swallow. Still, I had the bridges to look forward to and I was quite sure I would find something else along the way, I always do.
The next “find” was a complete reverse of the Barracks and very close to it. Sadly, in this day and age, I do not really expect to find churches open unless they are very large tourist attractions or are open for a special purpose like a service and so I didn’t hold out much hope as I approached the Church of the Holy Trinity and St. Mary aka Berwick Parish Church which stands just opposite the Barracks. To my surprise and delight it was open.
I was just glad to be in out of the rain but I was soon back in exploring mode and this was a fascinating place. Given the bellicose nature of the town and the long-standing barracks a stone’s throw away it came as no surprise that there were a number of military memorials here and that suited nicely as it tied in with my practice of photographing such objects. As I have mentioned before I contribute to the excellent War Memorials Online project and there were rich pickings here indeed.
One memorial that particularly caught my eye was one to a Lt. Wanston of the Inniskilling Dragoons, the reason being that the Regiment was raised around Co. Fermanagh in what is now Northern Ireland, the country of my birth. The unfortunate Lt. Wanston had lost his life in 1900 in the Boer War which I think is a much forgotten part of British military history, possibly because it is not particularly glorious but that is a discussion for another time.
Apart from the numerous personal memorials, the main remembrance of the fallen of two World Wars is particularly impressive as it covers the entire lower wall behind the altar which gives it a position of physical and symbolic prominence in the church. I may have seen similar examples before but I really cannot recall where or when.
In a town that is only about 2 ½ miles from the border and boasts so many “furthest Norths in England” it is unsurprising that this is the Northernmost Church in the country, having taken that distinction from the now re-used St. Mary’s, Castlegate that I mentioned in the last entry.
With my track record for such things it is almost inevitable that this building is of particular interest in that it is one of only a handful built during the Commonwealth which was the period between 1649 and 1660, after the Civil War, when England did not have a monarch and were ruled as a Republic by Parliament / Oliver Cromwell. It is also the only one still in use as a place of worship. This is where it starts to get little strange.
One of the other rare Commonwealth era churches is St. Matthias Old Church, now a Community Centre, which is in Poplar and not 30 minutes walk from my home. Again, I had previously written about in my time on Virtual Tourist. It was merged in the 1970’s with St. Anne’s, Limehouse which was odd as St. Matthias had by far the larger and more active congregation. The reason cited was that St. Anne’s was too architecturally important to lose which is interesting as it was designed by our old friend Hawksmoor, as I mentioned above. Although I had no inkling of any of this at the time and only discovered it all today whilst researching this piece, it leads me inexorbly back to the concept of the “interconnectedness of all things” that I refer to often and am becoming increasingly convinced of.
Money to build a Church here had actually been granted by King Charles I in 1641 before he literally lost his head in 1649 and the building work carried on, to the design of John Young, using mostly stone plundered from Berwick Castle. It was finally finished in 1652 but was not consecrated until 1660 after the Restoration of the Monarchy.
There is a fine organ in the church which is the latest of a series of rebuilds of a 1773 original designed by Byfield and Green of London with the latest update costing a princely £160,000 in 2010. This was necessitated by a botched rebuild by the organist in the 1970’s.
You may wonder why a church that was consecrated in 1660 did not have an organ for over a century later and the clue to this lies in it’s date. The time of the Republic was a time of puritanism and so the church was built without chancel, altar, organ, tower or bells. The local Bishop ordered a chancel and altar built when he consecrated it but, as the image shows, of tower and bells there are none to this day. This situation is remedied by the slightly unusual arrangement whereby the “church” bells were installed in the tower of the nearby Town Hall from where they are rung. Fearing another time-consuming digression I have disciplined myself not to investigate this state of affairs but I’ll bet it is pretty rare.
Another of my many loves is stained glass and, again, Holy Trinity and St. Mary’s served me well as you can see above. This is the Millennium Window designed by Ann Southeran and is absolutely loaded with symbolism. At this point I shall defer to an entry in an excellent blog written by a “Northern vicar” so he should know what he is talking about. He tells us,
“At the top of the centre bay the window holds the symbol of the Trinity, drawn as a Celtic knot, endlessly intertwining. Beneath is the Tree of Life also a Celtic veneration of growing things – God in Creation. The Tree is nourished by the water of life, also the symbol of Baptism for the window which is directly above the font. The image of the church is from a sketch by Susan E. Hughes. The water becomes the River Tweed, Tweed Dock and the coastline. The main cross is Celtic, with a circle representing encirclement, protection and eternity – it stretches across all three lights of the window. In each of the four corners are the four Evangelists. In the left is St Columba with the Scriptures overlaying Iona; the right hand is St Aidan overlaying Holy Island. Wonderful”.
Wonderful indeed, although I am always a little surprised at the use of Celtic symbolism in churches and gravestones as Christianity did it’s best to obliterate the older Celtic / pagan belief system and regrettably succeeded. A little subconscious triumphalism, perhaps?
A little warmer and a lot happier I went outside to brave the elements again, still with no plan other than those lovely bridges which were exerting some sort of siren song by this point.
Heading back towards the river I passed the rather grandly named “St Andrew’s Wallace Green and Lowick Church of Scotland” which sadly was not open as it’s Church of England neighbour had been. Perhaps the canny Scots are more suspicious of the modern world than their English counterparts. Although the Church and building dte to 1859 it did not become part of the Church of Scotland until 1971. I m sure that is an interesting tale but another one that will have to remain unresearched at present.
Passing another sadly closed pub (the Cobbled Yard Hotel) which I photographed to submit to the Lost Pubs website and passing also my hotel I headed back towards the station where I knew there was the entrance to park which would lead me to the River and hopefully some good images of the railway bridge.
I hadn’t even got into the park when I met the cuddly looking and very cleverly carved chap you can see who I was informed by the attached plaque is Bari the Berwick Bear which I feel needs some explanation and it is rather clever. The sculpture was carved in 2017 by David Gross and it references the name of the town. Berwick is named from the old English “bere” and “wick” which mean barley and farm respectively. Simple enough. Transliterate this into modern English and you get “bear” and “wych” which is a type of elm tree. The logo of the town Council is a bear and an elm tree. I told you it was clever stuff. The name? Well, bari is a local dialect word for something that is really nice and I wouldn’t disagree.
Leaving my new-found ursine friend behind I finally made it into the Castle Vale Park which really was not seen to best advantage in these conditions. A very informative board told me that the park was built on part of a ravine which once formed part of the defences of the now derelict Berwick Castle which would have been to my right as I looked towards the river and beside the railway bridge I was aiming for. The railway station itself is actually built on part of the site of the castle. The board also indicated that there was a path along the river which would bring me nicely back into town via the other two bridges. Job done, I had a new plan.
The park is small, narrow and and the path is just bit slippery underfoot in weather like this was so be careful. In a town as ancient as this it is a fairly modern addition to the attractions having only been laid out in 1931 on land given to the people by a philantrhropic Mr. Cairns. Thank you, sir!
Getting down to the river I was treated to a wonderful view of the bridge I was so desirous of seeing and photographing and I did have quite a few attempts at it of which the one above is my favourite. The flat calm and a very temporary lull in the rain made for some great reflections on the Tweed.
I wanted to get “up close and personal” and walked up to, and under, the bridge in search of a new camera angle but I didn’t improve on my previous efforts. What I found instead was a lovely, slightly brooding, River Tweed upstream. Not only had I managed my images of the bridge but I was also at the remains of the Castle, such as they are.
Berwick Castle dates to the 12th century and it was here in 1292 that King Edward I (yes, Longshanks again) declared John Balliol King of Scotland over the rival claim of Robert the Bruce. What I did not know until writing this was that the Count of Holland also had his hat in the ring for the Kingship although I am not quite sure how. Despite what appears to be a fairly strong defensive position on top of a steep hill, the castle was captured by both sides over the years so it was not at all impregnable. At one point King Richard I, the so-called Lionheart, sold the castle to the Scots to fund his ultimately ill-fated Third Crusade to the Holy Land.
With the building of the new ramparts in the 16th century the castle became largely obsolete and in the 19th century much of what remained was demolished to make way for the station. All that really remains now is what you can see in the images including the very aptly named “Breakneck Stairs”. Breaking your neck seems a likely fate for those attempting them in the dark, especially on a day like this was.
With what remains of the castle duly photographed it was time for my riverside walk along the riverside path which was built in 1815 and is referred to as the New Road. Road it may or may not be but what it certainly was not that day was a thoroughfare as the image shows. Could anything else go wrong on this walk? All the way back up I climbed and I did manage another few decent images of the bridge but I won’t bore you with them here.
Following a higher level path I soon came upon the the ramparts again, it is difficult not to. This particular portion of the walls is called Meg’s Mount and I can only surmise that Meg must have been a cannon of some description like the famous and monstrously calibred Mons Meg in Edinburgh Castle. If so, I can offer no explanation as to the use of the name Meg for heavy artillery. Can anyone enlighten me?
I walked a little further and found this rather pleasing water fountain which was erected on the occasion of the Queen Victoria’s Silver Jubilee in 1897.
By this point it was getting on for three in the afternoon, I had been walking a lot and so I was getting thirsty. Whilst looking at the pubs online the previous evening I had noted the Leaping Salmon and I knew it was nearby so, passing through the Castlegate which I was becoming quite familiar with, I headed on down towards the river. Of course, being that close to the river I was close to the bridges and so another few images were quickly rattled off.
In the course of taking the bridge images it occurred to me that the light was going and so I did the completely unthinkable and gave the pub a miss to get a bit more sightseeing done. Yes, really. I walked past the pub but I did return later that evening when it was dark and my photographic attempts were not calling.
I decided to try to walk a bit more of the ramparts and was heading back towards Meg’s Mount when I came upon the statue of Annie, Lady Jerningham and took a couple of images as I found it quite charming with the two dogs. Naturally, I felt compelled to do a bit of research as I had never heard of Lady J. or her husband and I was a little intrigued by the statement on the inscription describing him as “late and last member of Parliament for the borough”. I found it unlikely that notwithstanding Berwick’s unusual political history it had no parliamentary representation so here is the story.
Sir Hubert Edward Henry Jerningham had served as MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed which was redefined under the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885 and hence the phrase on the inscription. The good folk of Berwick are indeed represented in Parliament, at time of writing by Anne-Marie Trevelyan of the Conservative party. Unusually, this constituency is one of only two in the Northeast never to have had a Labour MP.
After leaving Parliament, Sir Hubert entered what might loosely be described as the Diplomatic Service and was first the Governor of Mauritius and then Trinidad and Tobago, taking his wife, Lady Annie with him. She was the widow of a man called Charles Mather when she married Sir Hubert. Sadly, colonial life apparently did not suit her health and she died in 1901 of an illness contracted in Trinidad and Tobago.
As another ridiculous aside, did you know that Trinidad and Tobago is named for the Spanish words for (holy) trinity and tobacco? You do now but back to rainy Berwick and my walk round the ramparts.
I had passed under Castlegate often enough but it was only when I walked over the top of it that I not only got a great shot of the Town Hall but also found out about a very unusual artistic connection with the town. As I was looking at the Town Hall from the rampart I could not help but notice the information board headed “the Lowry Trail” and with an image very obviously in the style of the painter L.S. Lowry and of exactly the view I was now looking at.
I know next to nothing about art but even I recognise the “matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs” style immortalised in the appalling 1978 hit song by Brian and Michael. I have juxtaposed my image and the facsimile of Lowry’s painting here to illustrate how little has changed in the intervening eight decades or so.
In my mind Lowry was inextricably linked with the grime of the industrial Northwest, particularly the area round Salford where he lived so why was there a trail here in this seaside Northumbrian former fishing town? It appears that in the 1930’s, up until the outbreak of World War Two he took his annual holiday here and did a lot of painting as you might expect. After his stint as a war artist in that conflict he continued to visit right up until his death.
Lowry would have had plenty of views to choose from in this attractive place. There is more of him in a moment but for now it is useless trivia time again. L.S. Lowry was the official artist for the Coronation of H.M. Queen Elizabeth II. I wonder if he worked in the style of “matchstick Queens and matchstick cats and corgis”.
Following the ramparts on round I found myself back at the sea, more or less where I had started that morning. Being slightly elevated gave me good view over the golf course, the undoubtedly closed holiday park and the North Sea which was still looking fairly unwelcoming. I was also treated to a view of how effective the defences must have been as shown in the second image above. Imagine trying to assault the walls over that completely exposed killing ground, it would have been complete suicide. It is easy to see that when they were constructed, these formidable defences represented the cutting edge of military engineering, largely inspired by Italian design and are today regarded as some of the finest remaining examples in Europe.
Another view of the Barracks did little to soften the blow of my earlier visit and when I came down from the walls I was not at all surprised to find that the Gymnasuim Gallery, equally unsurprisingly housed in the old Barracks gym, was also closed. I did allow myself a small smile at the thought of the amount of sweat that must have been produced in there by generations of squaddies being beasted by ackers. In conventional English that means generations of rank and file soldiers being trained hard by Physical Training Instructors!
Carrying on a bit further I discovered that I was still on the Lowry trail although I was making no conscious effort to do so. I found myself facing what had once obviously been a rather grand house and reading the Lowry information board about it. It is rather unimagintively known as and is a listed building. It was refurbished in early 2019 although whether it still serves as a residence I really cannot say although somehow I doubt it.
There is a probably apocryphal story that Lowry spoke of buying the premises but a surveyor friend found it riddled with damp. Lowry was a single man who would have had no use for such a large dwelling and used to stay in the Castle Hotel when he visited. When I found that out I couldn’t help but wonder if he had ever stayed in the room I was in. Possibly not but it is a nice thought.
As you can probably guess from the length of the description I had walked a fair bit that day which was good as I am supposed to exercise regularly but what was not so good was that I hadn’t eaten since that gargantuan breakfast and it seemed like a long time ago. Certainly it was large enough to keep me going but I was getting a bit peckish and so I decided to regroup in the Brewers Arms where I had been the day before and where the food had looked good. There had also been plenty of diners which I always take to be a good sign.
Approaching the pub, I not only had my choice of dining venue confirmed but also my menu choice decided before I even set foot in the place! They had a blackboard outside with an extensive list of the daily specials on it and that included haggis so there was no doubt in my mind. I know haggis is not to everyone’s taste being made from the lungs, heart and various other sheep offal mixed with oatmeal and traditionally wrapped in the intestine of the poor old sheep. Put like that it does not sound overly appetising but I love the stuff.
In I went, ordered my first pint of the day, if you can believe that, and the special of haggis which included a dessert so I went for the pear crumble with custard as any sort of crumble is another favourite of mine although I am not much of a sweet eater. The meal was duly served by a very friendly young lady and I took to it with a will. I had certainly earned it and it turned out to be a fitting reward for my exertions as the whole meal was excellent and obviously home made. OK, the haggis would have been bought in, but you know what I mean and it was very good, nice and spicy as I like it.
Quite replete I decided on a quick spruce up and an hour’s post-prandial doze which I duly did. Suitably refreshed I took off into the filthy night for the short walk to the Pilot Inn which I mentioned what seems like half a book ago now. Online I had seen words like “quaint”, “traditional” and “homely” bandied about and it was certainly all of those. It was also completely empty and I mean there was not even anyone behind the bar. I ventured a tentative, “Hello” and was rewarded by what I took to be the landlady who, after serving me, apologised and said that he was having her dinner in the other room but that if I required anything to just call her. There I was, a complete stranger, left all alone in the bar where I could have stolen just about anything I could have carried. It was very trusting of her.
I had a good look round and studied the various old pictures on the wall. I also took the image of the beer font you can see as I know the Broughton Brewery is a small brewery nearby in the Scottish Borders and this seems to reflect the policy here of having various guest ales available.
My solitary existence was interrupted, although not unpleasantly so, by a young girl who had come in to charge her mobile ‘phone and when I got talking to her she regaled me with a story about having had a row with her Mother who had thrown her out. She needed the ‘phone charged to call round and found somewhere to stay. I’ve heard all sorts of spurious tales of woe from beggars but for various reasons I think she was telling the truth and, feeling sorry for her, bought her a drink after summoning the landlady from her TV soap watching in the other room.
I was a little concerned about the young lady, who was certainly not dressed for being outdoors in that weather but she assured me she would be alright when she had made a few calls. She thanked me for the drink and took off to wherever it was she was going. I do hope she was OK.
By about 2100 it was very obvious that I was going to be the only patron that evening and so I spoke to the landlady about when she was going to close. Although she invited me to make myself at home, which I already had done, and stay as long as I liked, I reckoned she would bar the door as soon as I went so I took my leave. When I was there I discovered that they held regular open folk music sessions so I’d love to get back for one of those. It was a great little pub and I was sorry to leave although it was clearly the decent thing to do.
As if I had not done enough walking for one day I trekked all the way back down the town to the Leaping Salmon which I had so stoically avoided earlier. The Leaping Salmon is quite unusual in that it was formerly a Wetherspoons pub but they had sold it which is something of a rarity as they normally hang onto places they own and make a roaring success of them. The Salmon is now owned by Great UK Pubs, a subsidiary of Stonegate which is quite a large chain all over the UK but it might as well still be a ‘Spoons as they follow exactly the same business model. I had a couple in there and then headed back to the hotel for an earlyish night. Obviously, I had taken the image above earlier in the day.
I got back to the hotel with no problem but the problem with the early night plan arose upon entering the premises where I noticed the bar was still open. Well, rude not to have a nightcap I suppose. I got chatting to the barmaid who was great fun and had a look round the triangular shaped bar which boasts a lovely open fire that was somewhat inexplicably unlit. I don’t know if they wait for a full-on blizzard before they light it. I should add that the bar was perfectly warm without it. Up the stairs to bed and after my rather energetic day it was straight off to dreamland.
Well, it appears as if I have finally come to the end of this epic and I do hope I have not bored you overly.
In the next entry, which I promise will be shorter, I return to Newcastle to meet Paul, have a “get Carter” moment, visit an absolute gem of a station bar and then make my way back to London to conclude this trip so stay tuned and spread the word.
Fergy's Rambles. 