An A to Z of Northumberland A

Hi, last year I started an A to Z about Northumberland in the UK on Bubblews, and I thought I would tweak it a bit  and share it with you.

So starting with A;

A is for Alnwick (pronounced An-ick), which is a small town and home to the Duke of Northumberland, who owns the rather magnificent Alnwick Castle. The Percy family have been the Dukes of Northumberland for hundreds of years. The castle is also famous for being used as Hogwarts. 

Alnwick is also famous for having one of the UK's largest second hand book shops called Barter Books, in it's old train station. 

The town is called a market town, as it holds a weekly market selling all kinds of different goods. Throughout the year they also sometimes have special fairs, for example French ones, and a Christmas fair.

Alnwick also has a great museum called Bailiffgate, which is about the history of the town and surrounding area, and the award winning Alnwick Gardens which is a separate part of the duke's estate, and visitor attraction. 

My favourite thing to do in Alnwick is to explore the streets, which are full of history and the Alnwick pants (water fountains), and to sit in one of the many cafes and let the world go by.

A is also for;

Ashington, a town in the south east of Northumberland. Ashington is the opposite of Alnwick in that it is an ex pit (coal mining) town, and is all back terraces and shops (unfortunately now mostly charity ones). 

It sadly had it's hay day when the mines were still open. Although the council are supposed to be doing something to improve it, and are currently building a new leisure centre. 

It is still though a lovely friendly town, and has a leisure centre (the old one), as well as the nearby Woodhorn museum ( a local museum about coal mining), and the beautiful QE2 park and lake.

Amble, is a small coastal village, with a lovely harbour and some great fish and chip shops, my favourite is the Quayside cafe, great friendly service and lovely chips.

Alnmouth, a small coastal village with some pretty houses.

Aydon, a small village in south west Northumberland, with a lovely castle.

Acklington, a small village best known for it's prison.

New Year in Morpeth, Northumberland, UK

Now I admit Morpeth is not the most glamorous place to find yourself on New Year's Eve, but if you are taking a holiday in Northumberland or in the area it's one of your choices.

Morpeth used to have a very lively night scene, but sadly that's no more and it's now just a collection of pubs with a little bit of music on in the background. 

Me and my husband went there with some friends to see in 2015, and while it was pretty quiet we did have a laugh. 

We went for the pub crawl method, starting of in The Electric Wizard which is their local Wetherspoons. Wetherspoons is a cheap pub chain, specialising in cheap food by day and cheap drink by night. It's a popular place to start the night off and to give you an idea of how quiet Morpeth is we easily got a table for 6, in fact we did in every pub. 

After Wetherspoons we went to the White Swan, the Black bull, the joiners, back to the black bull, up to the square to say Happy New Year and then back to the Black bull before going home. As you can tell the Black Bull was our favourite, followed by the White Swan and Electric Wizzard. The Joiners is ok, but it's more of a local pub, with strange stuffed dead animals above the bar, and we thought it pretty expensive compared to the others, it also took me ages to get served. 

In Morpeth people go up to the square in front of the clock tower a few minutes before midnight. There was quite a crowd considering the pubs weren't that busy. There people count down the last few minutes and wish each other Happy New Year.

I wouldn't rush back to Morpeth as I didn't think it was that cheap or special, but it's a nice enough place to go if you want a quiet drink at new year. 

Morpeth clock tower

Morpeth square and clock tower

Magaluf restaurants and bars

In September 2014 I went on holiday to Magaluf, Mallorca, and as we were self catering we visited various bars and cafes. 

So here are my thoughts :)

Tom Browns

No trip to Maguluf would be complete without a visit to Tom Browns. This cafe is on the main street (where you also catch the bus) next to Mcdonalds. It is quite a large cafe with the majority of it being outside under cover. They tend to be on the cheap and cheerful side of the cafe scale, and have lots of very busy happy, friendly staff, TVs playing sports or music, mini golf and a snooker table. We mostly went for our breakfast, although we did have a couple of nice evening meals there, although the burgers were not very big :).

The Moon Bar

This bar is located down the street directly opposite McDonald's, and next to two of the larger hotels. We probably wouldn't have noticed it if we hadn't been staying in one of those hotels. That said once we did we kept going back. The food was really nice, I got to cuddle a lovely cat, and a bottle of wine was reasonable :). The waiter is also really friendly, and we had several conversations with him about the upcoming BH hotel and cats :).

El Salmon

This is a more up market for restaurant at Cala Blanca, between Torrenova and Palmanova. We went there once and had their special offer of nachos followed by steak. It was absolutely beautiful. The only problem was the restaurant was very empty, and while we were there a young spanish couple came in, and then changed their mind and left. Not traumatic in itself except the staff then started arguing about it, which meant the only other couple in the place finished their desert and left. When we got our bill we'd been overcharged for some wine we didn't get, they put it right when we queried it, but it wasn't ideal. We did consider going back a few days later as the food was so nice, and stopped to have a look after we had spent the afternoon at Palmanova. It was about 7pm and we were on our way back to get a shower, but were looking at places to eat later that night. The owner or someone in charge was in the entrance next to the menu board, and without greeting us he turned away, obviously they didn't want someone in beach attire in their restaurant :). That, coupled with the special still being the same, and everything else being a bit pricey for our budget made us decide to go elsewhere :).

Florida restaurant

This was on the way into Palmanova from Maguluf, and is a small friendly restaurant, which seemed to attract repeat custom, we went there twice. The food was nice, if nothing special, and it had a nice ambience with a great view of the street, perfect for people watching.

Benny Hills
Benny Hills is a large bar on a corner of the main street opposite Mcdonalds. It is a fun bar with a small cafe area around one side. It has a large outside seating area, various games for the children, and friendly staff. Inside is some nice comfortable seating, a large floor area, and a huge wrap around bar. There's also a dj and karaoke. We only ever got a couple of late night kebabs from here for around 5 euros each, these were nice and quite filling. We finished off most nights at this bar as it was convenient for our hotel. This was late September to early October and most nights the place was pretty dead, especially inside. Outside there are the usual people trying to pull in the punters and when they managed to bring in a hen party or two it really did liven the place up. We both felt that the place was let down a bit by the lacklustre dj, who seemed to tell the same tired jokes, and rarely advertised the karaoke.

Linnekars 

Linnekars is on the main bar strip, and we chose it one night when we were looking for somewhere different. Outside they had a lad and a lass dragging people in, but we walked past them straight in, tempted by their cocktail offer. I have to say this was a mistake. We sat on the terrace, which like every other bar in the area was waiter service, well I sat there while my husband went to the toilet. I was still waiting when he came back, although someone had been to wipe the table. Anyway my husband came out and said he'd go to the bar, he took ages and came out with nothing, and asked if I wanted a beer instead. I said ok so he went back in and eventually got served :). We then sat and watched the publicity people messing around on the strip, and dragging people in. They had a high turnover of people as no one stayed after the first drink. A group of 6 spaniards came in and sat at the table next to ours, after about 5 minutes someone eventually brought them a drinks menu, but that was it 10 minutes later still no one had reappeared to ask what they wanted, at which they left. Shortly after so did we, not a place I'd recommend.

Citylights 

This is another bar on the main strip, it's quite small and narrow, but we found it lively and friendly. We finally got our piña colada there, which was nice, but not the best we've ever had :). That said of the places we saw on the strip this was our favourite, they also did karaoke :).

St Nicholas Cathedral, Newcastle

Newcastle Bridges

View from Newcastle Castle keep

A slideshow of my photos of Newcastle and Gateshead from Newcastle Castle Keep

The very British Resort of Magaluf

My recent holiday was late in the holiday season and me and my husband went to the Spanish island of Mallorca or Majorca.

Mallorca is one of the Balearic islands, and is in the Mediterranean sea. It's a very beautiful island, which is quite mountainous and full of plants and wildlife. The sea is a lovely clear blue, the beaches made from beautiful sand and the weather is mostly sunny.

This was our third visit to Mallorca, and the second time we had visited Magaluf, we chose it as we remembered it as being nice to visit, sunny and cheap for meals out. We mostly go self catering for our two weeks abroad as we like to be able to try different places. The hotel we chose was also cheap to stay at and the whole holiday only cost us about £350 each for two weeks in the sun. We flew with Thomson, who are a package holiday company, and the price included the flight, coach from and to the airport and the hotel. There were also holiday reps (from the travel company to help the guests) in the hotel in case we needed anything.