Saturday June 9th

We were very efficient having packed the night before.  Well, we always are but we were leaving earlier than we usually do on this holiday, and we just about managed to leave at the time we wanted to – at about 8:45am.  We had the radio on to listen to the traffic updates, but nothing seemed to be happening on our route and all was pretty quiet on the roads.  The weather was quite hit and miss as we kept driving in and out of weather fronts, it was rainy then sunshine and blue skies, rainy again....

 We stopped off at Cragside House and Gardens.  Cragside House was one of the first Victorian houses to have electricity.  It was built and lived in by Lord Armstrong who was an industrialist and inventor and Cragside House was the first house in the World to be lit by hydro-electricity.  What I liked about the house was its no nonsense ceilings – I may have mentioned this before in another travel blog, but I quite like to see the simpler ceilings in grand houses like these, it makes a nice change from fussy painting!  I particularly liked the “soda stream” which was in the first room we went into – the Butler's Pantry.  The kitchen had hydro powered rotating spit, a dishwasher, and dumb waiter.  There was even an elevator which was originally hydraulic!  This house was pretty special.

Outside, we explored the rock garden which is one of the largest in the World and there were plenty of flowering rhododendrons and azeleas out.  It was a pretty spectacular garden which we had time to explore a little, before heading to the shop where I bought a stained glass butterfly and a stained glass bird which I thought would be useful as Christmas presents (yes, I know it's only June but this is what I do, I shop throughout the year!).  Back into the car, we unfortunately didn't have time to enjoy the scenic 6 mile drive around the estate so we headed straight on to Edinburgh and we checked into the Northfield House Hotel at around 6pm, shortly after which we had dinner in their own restaurant.