ESCAPE ROOM: Aladdin & The Magic Vault (Escape Hunt)

Our first visit to 'Escape Hunt' in Milton Keynes proved to be very rewarding. We really enjoyed this one and thought it one of the best escape rooms we'd done. It's much more professional than some (but priced accordingly - £72 for two of us for 60m) with three separate rooms and automatically unlocking chests and doors etc... 

We made it out in 53m and I don't think we had that many clues really, would definitely go back and try their other rooms.

SHOPPING: MK Centre

Nothing too exciting to report here, just another trip to the MK Centre... we stopped off at the TAG Heuer boutique and tried on the purple and green 36mm Aquaracers and a couple of new F1s, then wandered about on our own for a while and then reconvened at Hotel Chocolat. After this we headed to Escape Hunt to do an escape room.

GIG: Combichrist (Birmingham)

Our fifth (actually my 6th) time seeing Combichrist... and it was okay. There were two main problems with this gig, first the sound was crap... it really was muddy to the point that everything sounded in the wrong key. And the other thing that sucked was the set list. They started with three killer tunez (All Pain is Gone, Throat Full of Glass and Get Your Body Beat) which would have made a great encore honestly... but then of course it was all downhill with a lot of very similar sounding stuff, with only Follow the Trail of Blood and Electrohead breaking it up. 'Violence Solves Everything' sounded interesting.. but mainly cos it sounds like Zeromancer. Maybe I should give that another listen. But apart from that it was not very memorable and the support band (Extize) was unmitigated, directionless twaddle. Oh well.

ESCAPE ROOM: Gas Alert (One Way Out)

Yet another visit to 'One Way Out' in Oakham, this time to do the 'Gas Alert' room. We knew this one was a bit harder and we weren't likely to get out and we didn't, but we got pretty close with only a few steps left to complete. Even though we didn't escape it was still fun to try.

LEGO #14: Tuxedo Cat

HOLIDAY: Alnwick (Northumberland)

Inspired by the writings of L J Ross, Rose announced that she would like to visit Alnwick in Northumberland and so a few weeks later, off we went! So easy, this holidaymaking lark. Anyway, much to my disgust she insisted that we leave at 6AM, which on reflection I have to agree was a good idea... and we arrived at Alnmouth beach around midday.

The beach was really nice, though there was a bloody cold wind which froze your fingers, but also tempered the heat from the sun, so positive and negative. We wandered around aimlessly for a while and eventually decided to go off the beach to find the restaurant we'd booked for the following evening and try to work out where me might be able to park, since parking was rather limited to say the least! 

We found The Whittling House, which had some empty parking spaces nearby - what chance of those being available the following night? Well, we didn't really know one way or another, but if it came to it the car park by the beach was within walking distance. 

We went back to the beach and walked a bit further down by the golf course, but eventually turned round and came back because that's what you do when you're walking on a beach isn't it. Plus the tide was coming in and the wind was still freezing cold, so...

From here we punched 'The Night Owl' into my phone and set off the short distance to our home for the next two days, a B&B in a farmhouse on a dead end track just off the A1. Actually everything was just off the A1, we hardly seemed to venture very far from it at all... which was convenient! 

Anyway, we arrived at 'The Night Owl' and were immediately greeted by the owner's three dogs who did their best to run under my car's wheels. Fortunately Fiona soon arrived to corral them away to safety and we parked up and made our way inside.

The room was really nice, with an enormous bed, a fantastic bathroom with a great shower and lovely views out of the window over their back garden and paddock where two ponies live. 

Fiona kindly offered us her complimentary afternoon tea and so after a few minutes we headed down to the breakfast room for tea, sandwiches and cake (even though we'd eaten a massive stick earlier and we had a restaurant booked for later!).

I have to say, Fiona's homemade cakes were pretty amazing, especially the ginger cake (but also the chocolate fudge cake too). After afternoon tea we headed back to the room and this was when we discovered that we couldn't find the TV remote. I rang Fiona and she couldn't find it either, so she suggested we move rooms.

We'd just about finished moving rooms when Fiona came up the stairs with the remote, don't ask me where it was, but she'd found it somewhere and since we preferred the original room we decided to move back again. 

We both had showers and relaxed a bit before we headed out to 'Cook and Barker' in Newton on the Moor, just a few miles down the A1 where I was looking forward to having scampi and sticky toffee pudding!

Annoyingly, our waitress told me that scampi was off, so I had to choose something else.. that something being the Angus Steak burger. This arrived on a stupid narrow wooden board and when I cut into it I noticed it was a bit pink inside. I decided to enquire whether this was how it was supposed to be before I risked giving myself food poisoning, and by the time she came back with it and told me it was okay to eat it was getting a little bit cold.

I was also quite full from the huge baguettes we had at lunch time and the afternoon tea, and I quickly realised that sticky toffee pudding was not going to be on the cards. I ate the chips (which were nice) and about half of the burger (about a quarter of it fell on the table because of the stupid wood board it was on), but overall it was rather unsatisfying and I hoped the next night would fare better.

Meanwhile Rose had the shin of beef with Ox medallions; she said the beef and potatoes were nice but the Ox medallions weren't to her taste... so it was a bit of a damp squib all round really, which was a shame because up 'til then we'd had a good day. Oh and one more thing, despite looking comfortable, the seats in 'Cook and Barker' were anything but. Honestly, I've sat on church pews that were way softer!

So we decided to ditch the puds and since time was knocking on and everything seems to shut early these days (and considering we'd been up for nigh on 16 hours already at this point), we decided to call it a night. So we headed back to the A1 only to find it closed. So we took a detour and got back on the A1 higher up only to find another police car blocking the road again.

We stopped to ask for directions and a very friendly police lady told us to go through Shilbottle and come back to the A1 and then we would be above the problem and our turning so we'd have to come back down the A1 instead. Eventually we made it back to 'The Night Owl' only to find the heating was on and making a squeaky noise. 

I texted Fiona and while I didn't get a reply a moment or two later the heating went off, so I assumed she'd got my text and solved the problem - however the next morning she told us she hadn't seen the text, so it was just lucky. 

We slept pretty well, considering we never sleep well at all when we're away from home and the next morning we enjoyed a lovely cooked breakfast (eggs, bacon, sausages, orange juice, toast and marmalade) which set us up nicely for the day.

After breakfast we set off for 'Cragside' the 'original Smart house'; an impressive estate house built in the late 1800s by industrialist (and arms dealer) William Armstrong. This place was enormous with something like 40 miles of walks around it's expansive grounds. We were greeted by a very cheerful Geordie with tattoos all over him, in fact the Geordies as a people seem to be very cheerful, which is a bonus! Anyway, once we'd waited for the poor bloke to wave his stupid card reader around to try and get a signal (and you got the impression that this was not unusual but probably just par for the course in this remote location) and parked up in the main (lower) car park, we decided to start with the formal gardens...

Not sure what these are but they are quite cool!

Heliograph sounds like a cool name that some Swiss watch brand should use.

Greenhouses contained nothing but pear trees. How thrilling. If you like pears...

Annoyingly you can't go inside the clock house to see it working - well, actually it seemed to have stopped working anyway - but there was a dusty window you could look in if you were really arsed... we then headed off to the 'Pinetum*' and eventually the 'Gorge', which was one of the best bits of the grounds.

*Presumably a pinetum is like an arboretum, but solely for pine trees.

From here we visited some other parts of the grounds and then headed off to the house itself, but not before we headed back to the car park where we devoured some M&S buns and a cereal bar. Actually, it took us a moment to find the car as we walked the whole length of the car park before we realised that there was actually two car parks (one higher than the other) and we were in the wrong one! Oh how we laughed...

Having changed into shorts (cos it was getting bloody warm now) and put on some more suncream, we headed off to the house.

View of the 'Iron Bridge' from the house, not as old as you might think since it was partly funded by the EU! 

Unusually, this house didn't really have a lot of the usual paintings (Louis 14th, odd children, dead pheasants, etc...) but more animal/wildlife pictures, and there seemed to be a theme running throughout of paintings featuring dead men lying in fields with dogs sitting next to them with titles like 'Faithful until Death'.

An exceptionally gaudy fireplace... truly remarkable! 

Once we'd completed the house we decided to drive out a bit to the lakes and walk around them. This was quite nice although it was definitely getting warmer, which we could have done without. We also wasted a lot of time following the 'flume' which was nothing more than a long channel made of wood which eventually just disappeared into the ground. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of this to prove just what a dull thing it was... but thankfully the internet can provide one anyway.

Honestly, that picture flatters it somewhat, it almost looks mildly interesting here but it really wasn't. Anyway, by the time we got to the end of that Rose decided it would be quicker to climb up a hill and walk down one of the roads back to the car park and start again. Don't ask me why she thought that, but at this point I was too hot to argue. Fortunately on the way back to the car park we came across a little drive that took us back to the lake just where the flume started so we continued where we left off several hours before. 

Time was knocking on and our feet were getting pretty tired by now, so we decided to head to Rothbury and have a drink before going back to the B&B and getting ready for our second meal out of the week, slightly worried by the recent Trip Advisor reviews which seemed to have taken a dip and suggested the portion sizes were extremely stingy, excellent news! 

We parked up in the Queens Head car park but then realised that we weren't going to get a seat in there and headed off to find another pub. There was a police incident going on in the centre of Rothbury, so the pub next to that was shut so we ended up over the road in the Newcastle Hotel. Once inside, a very friendly Geordie barman struggled to serve us Diet Coke from a recalcitrant pump and we ended up having two J20s instead; though to his eternal credit, the barman later offered us two Diet Cokes on the house once he'd got it working. What a splendid chap! Again, I have to say, what is it with the North and hard seats? We ended up sitting on a corner banquette which was fine, but the wooden seats we sat on to start with were rock hard! Must be my soft southern posterior! 

While we sat in the 'Newcastle House' we checked the menu for 'The Whittling House' and realised that they only served scampi at lunchtime, which pissed me off just ever so slightly, given that it was off the previous night and that didn't turn out so well! 

We headed back to 'The Night Owl' for a rest and a shower and then set off to Alnmouth once again, hoping for the best (since we'd already handed over our credit card details to secure our booking) but slightly sceptical. Needless to say none of those parking spaces were free so we had to walk a little way, but at least we didn't have to use the beach car park.

Thankfully once we got there the place was really nice inside, being divided into rooms rather than one big open restaurant. The waitress was absolutely lovely as well and laughed when Rose asked if the food came served on a wooden board. It didn't, but it did come on a stupid narrow plate, but at least it had a lip to it and it was better than the night before. The food was much better too, we both had the buttermilk chicken burger which was actually really nice (once we'd removed the disgusting gherkin).

Clearly the person who slagged them off on Trip Advisor for their portion sizes didn't have the sticky toffee pudding because it was very nice and more than adequate. It also came served with about half a pint of caramel sauce and a generous quantity of honeycomb! I kept palming off bits of it to Rose (she only ordered a couple of scoops of ice cream) but I still felt distinctly queasy afterwards. It was nice, but by God it was sickly and there was just too much sauce! 

Once we'd finished our meal we moved into the bar because, yet again I was sitting on a seat that was rock hard and my arse was completely numb! It would have been nice to stay there longer, but I really did feel quite vommy and by this point my arse was so achy that even the comfy seats in the bar were uncomfortable.

We slept well again on the Wednesday night (eventually) and on Thursday morning we enjoyed another cooked breakfast before heading off to Alnwick gardens, where we hoped to be able to visit 'The Poison Garden'.

On arrival the first thing you see (after the six mile walk from the car park, I mean) is the impressive central 'cascade'. This has several fountains incorporated into it which fire off randomly, mostly when you're busy looking at something else (of course...). 

Interestingly, the car park had an attendant, as did the beach the day before - which struck us as rather uncommon and delightful, in the South all you get are bloody machines and parking apps!

As we were there as the place opened, we decided the best thing to do was to get in the queue for the Poison Garden as they can only accommodate twenty people at any one time. As we waited another friendly Geordie lady entertained us with tales of vomiting and fainting and showed us the blackboard they keep which shows how many of each they've had this year. Also they had a wedding proposal, which had to have been a Goth couple! 

This was the best bit of the whole experience really, our guide was very entertaining and it was interesting hearing about how most of the plants around us could kill us if we weren't careful. Surprisingly a Yew tree has berries that can kill you in 20 minutes, though I thought including 'Rosemary' was a bit of a stretch. Apparently if you boil down a 'whole bush' it could kill you... but, perhaps more pertinently using Rosemary 'essential oil' is not a good idea if you are on heart medication as it can mess it up. Who knew!

Inside a hut just around the corner we spied a Lego model of the gardens which seems to be becoming a bit of a thing almost everywhere we go. It was pretty good, but a bit too 'green' and they probably should have done the Cherry Orchard in blossom to break it up a bit!

The Orchard and the actual 'Formal Gardens' were a bit meh honestly, perhaps it would have been better to visit a few weeks later as there was a distinct lack of flowers and a whole lot of 'green' which frankly we can see in our own back garden! Similarly the Orchard probably looked amazing a few weeks prior when it was in blossom, but now of course it was just a bit dull.

After this we headed down past the 'Cascade' and off to the 'Serpent Garden' which featured several water features.

Then we took a quick stroll through the rose garden and the 'Bamboo Labyrinth' and then took one more look at the Cascade before heading home.

All in all it was a pretty good holiday, and the journeys both ways were pretty smooth. Certainly a lot more appealing than a seven hour drive to Cornwall that's for damn sure. It was surprising how nice the beach was and I understand that all the beaches up there are quite similar. We didn't have time to visit Bamburgh Castle, so that's something we can go back for and I believe that has a nice beach near it too. 

As ever it was nice to be home again, and generally our week off felt very long this time, which was nice! Three days at home, three away and three at home seems like a good balance and thankfully we didn't come home to find Panda had attacked the wallpaper in our absence.