Washed and brushed

After a yesterday's excitement (our flights are booked!), the troops spent this morning washing and polishing our car, so we can sell it (anyone interested in an Audi A2 with a tow bar, do drop me a line!). The plan is to buy another car in Finland when we get there...

The troops also hoovered out the Danish/Northumberland beach which had been sitting in the boot for a while, despite our best efforts. The car is now cleaner and shinier than it's ever been...so this afternoon we took it out for a spin to Belsay, to meet some friends for a picnic. It was gloriously sunny: here's the view in the quarry garden.

I can thoroughly recommend visiting on a Sunday afternoon - it was really peaceful. Everyone seemed to disappear off home at about 4pm, leaving us with the place to ourselves. And best of all, the ice cream shop at the castle does mini milks!

Belsay

It was sunny and warm today so we trundled off to Belsay again - this time for an egg hunt rather than a fairy trail, and a picnic (the second this week!). The egg hunt was fun - there were lots of letters hidden in the gardens, which then had to be made into two words (Easter-related, not surprisingly).

We had a picnic at the castle, and then climbed the winding steps to the roof. I don't remember going out there before - it's probably been too cold and windy the other times we've been! There's a great view across the valley, and some rather good turrets.

The Quarry Garden was as beautiful as ever - last time it was snowdrops, this time it was lime green ferns and pink, white and red rhododendrons:

All in all, a top day out. More like this please.

Extraordinary measures

We hopped up to Belsay Hall yesterday (not literally, obv), to catch the last dying days of their Extraordinary Measures exhibition. Belsay's a great place to go with kids in tow - it's got extensive grounds you can picnic in, there's a 14th century castle to scramble around, and the house interior is gloriously empty, and free of tutting curators.

Best of all, though, they have the most fantastic art exhibitions. Years ago we went to the Sitooteries exhibition of pavilions, and more recently Picture House, which had the spooky Hereafter mirror which showed you images of past objects and previous visitors layered with a time-delayed ghost of yourself moving around.

Extraordinary measures was equally appealing. We loved the Slinkachu 'day trip' photographs, and were fascinated by Ron Mueck's realistic sculptures - especially the 2m tall wild man. It all had an Alice in Wonderland feel - you never knew if you would feel enormous or tiny in comparison to what you saw.

So we took our own large and small photos in the quarry gardens:



That last one's quite terrifying...