Newcastle trip report

Whenever I visit my parents, I like to go for long bike rides in the Northumbrian countryside. Last summer, I went for a ride up the Military Road alongside Hadrian's Wall, as far as Chollerford, which was pleasant (if hard work going uphill). However, it was a little disappointing in that the scenery was very typical English countryside—fields and woodland; whereas, as I discovered the following day (in my parents' car), only a little further up it changes to a more exotic upland landscape, with moorland and heather patches on the upper hillsides.

This time, seeing strong winds forecast from the west, I decided to get the train to the delightfully named Haltwhistle^*, and cycle back east.

* There was a boy in my class at school with the similar name Entwhistle. I'd like to go into the middle of some old-growth primary forest and blow one of those.

The centre of Haltwhistle is very pretty; unfortunately I managed to get my finger in front of my camera (the lens is very badly placed at the top-left), wrecking most of my shots. This is the best I could salvage:

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Below: Serious Hadrian's Wall country. The town was also full of shops with names like Hadrian's Estate Agents.
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Below: A dry stone wall outside Haltwhistle, with built-in sheep run.
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As I journeyed, I stopped at some of the interesting places along the way (excepting the major Roman camps of Vindolanda and Housesteads, which I had been to before). Here's a picture of Cawfield Quarry; Hadrian's Wall used to go through the middle of where the pond now is, but was demolished in an act of archaeological desecration that wouldn't happen nowadays. (Hadrian's Wall is now a designated UN World Heritage Site.)

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Below: Milecastle 42, just next to the quarry.
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Below: some well-cut ashlars, for dhole. :o). (Yes, that's my finger again at the top left.)
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Below: the view from the milecastle, with the wall running in the fenced-off area on the left.
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Below: There was a place called Once Brewed on the other side of it too.
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Five years ago, my parents took me and livredor along this route, when we saw this nick in the ridge of the Great Whin Sill (the geological feature atop which Hadrian's Wall is built), with a tree at the bottom:

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My father asked if we knew what was going on here, geologically speaking. No, chorused livredor and I. During the Ice Age, my father explained, the glaciers had got dammed up behind the Whin Sill; as the pressure increased eventually the ice broke through at weak spots, creating nicks like the one pictured here. (I have no idea whether this is actually the case, but this is the explanation he gave. :o))

At a place the Romans called Brocolitia, I discovered a Mithraeum, or temple of the god Mithras (an Iranian cult which spread over the empire before being displaced by Christianity). The decorated altar stones are casts of the originals (now in a museum in Newcastle), and the wooden roof posts are obviously new, but as the area was boggy, the original wooden posts were still in place when the site was excavated.

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You probably can't see at the resolution of this close-up, but there's two 10p coins in the hollow at the top of the central altar-stone. Are there still Mithras-worshipers here today?

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Seen in a field (with signs saying private property; no right of way); no idea what it is:

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Beyond Chollerford, following the Military Road would taken me along the outbound route I used on my previous trip, so I decided to take a different route this time. Along the way, I passed a sign saying "Kirkharle—Birthplace of Capability Brown". I had no idea he came from my neck of the woods originally.

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On the Sunday, my parents and I went to have a look at Cragside Hall, the residence of Lord Armstrong.

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This was the first house in the country to receive electric lighting (in 1870), and the first place in the world to be powered by a hydroelectric generator. Cameras weren't allowed inside the house, but I did get some pictures (through glass, hence no flash, hence the quality) of the original generator and control room in the power house:

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Fascinating though it was to see the original electric setup (complete with incandescent light bulbs in converted vases :o)), it was possibly almost more fascinating still to see the things Armstrong had done with water power alone, before the house was electrified, such as driving a passenger lift, and turning spits in the kitchen.

I actually had relatives—cousins of my great-grandfather—who worked as electrical engineers in Cragside in the first half of the twentieth century. (They weren't responsible for the original electrification, though; that was done before they were born.)