June 18
Cockburnspath to Gilling West
After another late start, I packed everything into the car and went South, back to civilization. First stop was at the border, to photograph the flags. I had intended to do this on the way up but was too short of time. On the return journey, I had no such limitation so was able to do the place justice. The big question is, how long will it be before I have to show a passport to cross this border?Next stop was Berwick, firstly for petrol and then for sight seeing.
Right: Back to civilization |
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I have always loved this town but, not having visited for about 20 years, I was sad to see it looking rather down at heel. Lots of the shops were empty and most of the rest were of the "cheap and cheerful" variety.
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The walls and the bridges are the main features and they are well worth a visit. I even found a notice commemorating the interest of LS Lowry in the town.
After a lot of looking, I found a serious looking café up a side street. It was busy, whilst most of the others looked empty. They sold me an excellent coffee and a baguette stuffed with feta, aubergine and chorizo. Definitely a cut above the average. |
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The road from Berwick to Kiplin took much longer than I had expected, more than two hours at a fair speed, so I didn't arrive at Kiplin until mid afternoon. The two things that struck me immediately were that the place was doing a roaring trade and that the gardens had undergone a major upgrade. Everything looked superb.
The walled garden, previously the haunt of dogs, chickens and stray lambs, had been turned into a mini allotment. I spent ages trying to photograph bumble bees on the chive flowers.
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The tea room has always been famous and has recently won a marketing award for the campaign to acquire mixed lots of crockery from friends and supporters of the Hall. I'm not a great lover of Victoria sponge but the slice I had was of the highest quality.
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After tea, I explored all of the gardens, took lots of photos of the flowers, views of the house, the lake etc. Most of them will probably be a load of rubbish but there might be a few keepers.
We finally left the office long after the visitors had gone home and went to the beck to let Lily have a swim before we all went home. Capturing a fast moving wet dog on film (sort of) isn't easy and I failed completely to get a sharp image.
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We drove home to Gilling West en convoy, had dinner and I was able to take a photo of a more slow moving and dry dog.