When the boat comes in

The Cap'n & I took a long awaited holiday the week before last - I might fiddle with the photo layout later but it's taken me this long to crank out the post - sheesh some writer I turned out to be.

We spent a week in Co. Durham, it was our first holiday in this country for years and it proved to be a major logisitical challenge since surprisingly it is more difficult to get holiday dialyis in the UK than it is to get it in Europe (we normally go to the States but couldn't afford upwards of £250 per dialysis treatment). We had wanted to holiday in the Whitby area but that would have meant dialysing at York or Scarborough and one needs to book at least a year in advance for either of those! Darlington was much easier to get in to although they wanted the address of where we were staying before they would commit themselves and I wanted a definite place before I booked somewhere to stay. A veritable Catch 22 - guess who backed down first? Yup, moi meme.

The cottage I booked in the end was absolutely gorgeous, it was a converted cow byre with almost 2 feet thick stone walls, huge kitchen, roomy bedrooms, log fire, chickens on the doorstep, horses in the field - all the mod cons.







We started on Sunday with a quick visit to Consett and then went on to Tanfield Lea where my Dad was born. We then went on to the Tanfield Railway which is the world's oldest railway still in use today. It's a short stretch of track that operates a couple of locomotives and passenger carriages. In its heydey it transported coal and workers from the local colliery. These days the locomotives regularly get dressed up with smiley faces a la Thomas The Tank Engine to transport sticky kids and tired parents on special kids' days. Unfortunately the day we went happened to be one of these days so we were crammed in a small carriage up to our ears in pushchairs, buns and baby wipes.



Later in the day we drove to High Pittington where my Dad was raised by his grandmother. We managed to find the actual house where she lived but I failed in my mission to find where she was buried. My Dad suffered an industrial accident that deprived him of 4 of his toes when he was 15, his Granny died while he was in a convalescent home from what he always believed to be shock and grief over her precious boy's accident. He was whisked away by his Dad to live in Gibraltar and Gran was buried without my Dad ever having the chance to say goodbye.

On Monday we had planned to go to the seaside, Cap'n S had found a booklet for Sunderland that appeared to have been written by one of Tony Bliar's spin doctors and they did such a good job that we were pencilled in, for oh about 5 minutes, to visit. Now forgive me anyone from Sunderland who happens to be reading but I'm sure you will understand where I'm coming from if I say that when you want to go to the beach you don't immediately think of Sunderland. Fortunately the good Cap'n detected my hesitation and he opted for Whitby instead.

It's a long drive to get to Whitby from Durham but it was well worth it. The weather was fantastic and the town and beach were every bit as I remembered. Actually I dodn't remember the Captain Cook Pimped My Ride Experience but then again it was a long time ago.



Sadly we only had a couple of hours there before we had to leave to make the trek across to Darlington for my treatment that night.

Tuesday dawned bright and clear, that day we were off into Durham city centre so I could conduct my first ever blogmeet with the lovely Shaz. When we had been in the planning stages we were trying to figure out a suitable place to meet - now I'm not that familiar with Durham so all I could think of was to meet at the Cathedral. Little did I realise that although you can see the cathedral from most places in the city, getting there involves a short hike up extremely steep and twisty streets. I later learnt that if you use the Park & Ride you can hop on a little bus that takes you all the way to the cathedral ... don't kill me Shaz I didn't know!




Anyway meeting Shaz was like meeting an old friend, we repaired to a little coffee shop and spent a good hour chinwagging until the lunchtime crowd of sightseers started to pressure us for our table.

We set off to do some shopping but didn't get very far before our tummies rumbled in unison and we decided to rendezvous with the Cap'n. After almost eating at a Thai restaurant suggested by the Cap'n (dropped because I knew he wouldn't enjoy it) we ended up in a fish & chip cafe and sat and talked for a long time again before we thought we'd better move along.

Now poor Shaz, I think she had come along with the intention of doing some serious retail therapy but instead we ended up back at at the Cathedral to have a look round inside where I actually managed to pull. We were walking round minding our business when this nice old chap stopped me and insisted that I check out the elevation on his bell tower (the bellth, the BELLTH!!). He also tried to show me his hidden flying buttresses but we managed to make our excuses and moved on.

Following a stroll around the cloister on a pilgrimage to find the loos we posed outside for each other's photo albums and then Sharon & I parted ways with a new friendship forged and promises to see each other again. Ahhhhh.

By Wednesday I was starting to feel somewhat under the weather, we were supposed to go to a place called Diggerland where you can drive JCBs and such (woo) but thankfully for my brand new white Reeboks they were closed. We went to Barnard Castle instead and strolled around a nice shopping area in the centre of town, had a mediocre lunch in an overpriced poncey little restaurant, and then walked around the castle ruins. I had dialysis later in the evening which I wasn't looking forward to and had a little strop on the way before being delivered to the waiting room for a 2½ hour wait before being hooked up to the machine.

The worst day weatherwise was Thursday. We went up to look at the Roman ruins at Corbridge. There is quite an impressive ruined fort up there along with a small but very good museum. I had really wanted to visit Hadrian's Wall and was disappointed to find that the fort wasn't by the Wall, several miles south in fact. I was windswept and cranky by the time we left there and headed for Newcastle where the Cap'n was intent on finding the Metro Centre which we did eventually. Unfortunately my heart really wasn't in traipsing round a giant mall, no matter how impressive so I just did a circuit of the ground floor and headed back to the car.

We checked out of the cottage on Friday and planned to go home via Scarborough! The journey took over 2 hours but took us through some lovely scenery. I spent several holidays in Scarborough as a kid and had very fond memories but somehow this time round it just didn't seem to measure up - it all seemed smaller and dingier than I remembered. We walked along the front and took the little hillside tram up into town. Although we didn't make it to Peasholme Park I did manage to strike one more thing off my nostalgia list - I bought some curd cheesecakes, enough for my parents and me. I've never been able to get these anywhere else in the country apart from Yorkshire and was desperate to have some again.

We then drove down through Hull and across the Humber Bridge the building of which forms a large part of my childhood memory cache - Granny lived in Hull and every time we went to visit her we would have to go and view the progress on the bridge until eventually it opened in 1981 and I got to walk across it.

Finally we arrived home weary and looking forward to a cuddle from our furry family. I shall miss this view from my bed every morning.