Sunday 9th June 2024

Woke early went back to sleep and woke again after 8am.

Shower facilities are great, warm underfoot and not timed showers, really invigorating, definitely one of the best facilities blocks we’ve been in.

I started cooking the breakfast pack, 4 sausages, 4 slices of bacon, couple of slices of black pudding, 2 eggs and mushrooms and an unused tomato.

Cooked it on the large combi Ridgemonkey which is a bit too big for our hob, would have preferred to cook outside, but again, it was very windy.

The handles on the Ridgemonkey aren’t great so it’s a bit tricky (dangerous), but it is great for keeping everything separate and cooking all the parts of breakfast.

The cooking was interrupted by a wet foot. Our sink down pipe was leaking again.

We had this problem in March 2023, and had taped it back up, but something had failed and it was a problem again, breakfast was finished and we had to fix the sink, it’s extremely tight, and hard to manipulate but, a bit of teamwork and we got it taped up.

We needed to dry the carpet tho’, fortunately it was dry and sunny, and windy, so we put the carpet outside and left it for a while.

We wandered down the “Haltwhistle burn” route into town, it’s a bit tricky, you have to head out the site and then round the back and then follow public footpaths that bring you to the other side of the site wall and then down some steep paths that are a bit overgrown, at the bottom of this is a really nice river walk into the foot of town, and we were back in Haltwhistle for the first time since November 2022, we had a wander down towards the train station, and I had an Amazon order to pick up (hammer for rock pegs) so we went for Sunday lunch in the Manor House Hotel, really great meal, I started with potato skins and garlic mayo with sweet chili sauce, really thick and tasty (maybe a disservice calling them potato skins) and Gayle had curried parsnip soup, which was really nice too.

Unusually they had roasts of all kinds on, so I opted for lamb, Gayle had the chicken and stuffing, huge platefuls of really tasty food, the Yorkshire puddings were spectacular.

I finished mine, but I was too full to help Gayle with hers, the meal was delicious, and worth the money, and it wasn’t particularly expensive, no room for dessert sadly 😥

Back to Co-op, managed to get my Amazon delivery, and then hopped the bus back to the site, last bus is at 6pm, and they’re only every 2hrs, we made it in time to avoid walking the hill with a full belly.