Uncategorized – Fergy's Rambles.

Compelling, compact Carlise Cathedral.

Hello again folks, welcome back and thanks as always for visiting the previous posts in this series about a trip round the North of England (and even a brief incursion into Scotland) and if you have not read it from the beginning you can do so here if you like. I realise that I start every post here with more or less the same thanks and it probably sounds like I am “gushing” but, believe me, I genuinely do appreciate it and wish to show that appreciation.

If you read the previous entry you will know that it was not so much a travelogue but rather a fairly amateur essay about the history of Carlisle which is where I had landed the day before and a discourse on the history of hostelling over the last half century. I promise I shall rectify that situation in this post and there is certainly a lot to see so please read on.

Riding the rails again.

Hello again everyone and a warm welcome back to my ramblings, both physical and verbal. I don’t quite know where this sudden bout of productivity has come from but I do seem to be getting quite a lot done here which I suppose makes up a little for the time recently when I went incognito for rather too long.

My much appreciated regular readers will know where I am but if you have just randomly landed on this page I should explain briefly that it is to do with a trip I took in May 2022 which was initially meant to be four days meeting some travel writing friends in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in Northumberland but has rather stretched on since then. If you wish to read the story from the beginning, you can do so here.

Mooching round Morpeth.

Hello once again and welcome back to what was turning from a four day trip into something of a Northern saga. Still, if landing on the gorgeous Northumbrian coast and moving inland was good enough for the Vikings I reckon it was good enough for me. I do hope you are enjoying reading about it half as much as I enjoyed doing it. In the previous post I had promised you a bit of a tour of Morpeth so, if you fancy it, let’s go for a walk.

As I did not have to check out and had nothing particular to do (as usual on the road) I had awarded myself a lie-in but not a major one and on waking I took a look out the window where heart dropped slightly as it was the most dismal, dreary, wet day you can imagine. Well, it wasn’t going to stop me as I had my trusty leather bike jacket with me which is both pretty waterproof and very warm, it weighs a ton. I was glad of it when I ventured outside as, not only was it drizzling but it really wasn’t that warm, it was difficult to believe we were only a couple of days away from June but that is the British weather for you especially the further North you travel. The image of the main street shows just how foul the conditions were.

I make it to Morpeth.

Hello again and welcome to the final post in my Ambling in Alnwick series (albeit I was leaving soon) which I hope you have enjoyed half as much as I enjoyed the town itself. I know I perhaps enthuse too much about places I visit but Alnwick really did appeal to me on so many levels and I thoroughly recommend it. Should you wish to visit, and I do recommend you do, here is a link.

Ambling in Alnwick (4).

Hello again and welcome once again one and all. I do hope you enjoyed my previous post about the gorgeous town of Alnwick which was really growing on me as you have probably guessed if you have read my previous entries. I realise that by my usually verbose standards it was fairly short which I am sure my regular readers were very glad about.

Ambling in Alnwick (3).

Hello there folks and welcome back to my ramblings which at least this time I did warn you about and not just go AWOL like I did before. The reason for this you can see in the header image for this piece which has absolutely nothing to do with what I am going to write about here although hopefully it will be covered in the future. There is a long way to go (physically and in a literary sense if this can be termed literature) so I suppose I had better crack on.

Ambling in Alnwick (2).

Welcome back folks to my little series about a trip I took to the North of England and I do hope you are enjoying it. I know there are a few hardy souls who read most of the nonsense I write and I thank them but if you have not begun this particular adventure from the start, you can do so here.

If you have been reading from the beginning you will know that the whole trip began with what is called a Euromeet, a concept that began with a now tragically shut down travel website called Virtual Tourist. This is an annual event which this year was held in and around Newcastle-upon-Tyne and which was hugely enjoyable but I wasn’t quite ready to go home yet. Having been deprived of travel, which is one of my greatest delights, for so long I was having a great time and being a single man with no dependents there was nothing I specifically had to go home to London for.

Ambling in Alnwick (1).

Hello again folks and welcome back again, never mind a huge thanks to everyone for reading, liking and commentating. I know I say this often but it really is appreciated.

After what had been a brilliant weekend which constituted the Euromeet, instituted by the sadly now departed Virtual Tourist website and which had culminated in an utterly brilliant day out on the stunning Northumbrian coast (see my previous entry for full details), my plans were literally completely fluid which is the way I like to travel.

As much history as you could want in one day.

Hello folks and welcome back to my latest odyssey about my trip to Newcastle for a weekend meeting my friends from the excellent and now murdered Virtual Tourist website and I shall start this post not with my usual apology but with a bit of a spoiler. This supposed weekend away got slightly extended so there is plenty more to come! In my previous post, which I admit was very sparse, I did promise you that this one would hopefully be a lot more interesting and certainly have a lot more images and I intend to fulfill that promise.

A very boring post!

Hello again my friends and once again thanks for sticking with me so long, I keep getting notices from WordPress telling me the site is doing well, I am getting more followers etc. and frankly it still baffles me! Don’t get me wrong, I am not complaining.

When I left you last time I had hooked up with my Virtual Tourist friends for the annual Euromeet in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and despite my very limited mobility I was still enjoying being away from home even if it was nowhere near as far as I usually travel but it was a whole lot better than the mind-numbing nothing I had experienced during the Government’s ridiculous and now increasingly discredited policy of house arrest. If you want evidence of this, look at the Swedish experience.