Wednesday 16th October

Today we made our way to Durham.  It was much smaller than we had anticipated, and most of the shops were typical of nanny towns high street really.  Inside the Cathedral we were unable to take any photos, which is a shame as it was really nice inside!  We climbed the tower which was over 300 steps and when we returned we were rewarded with a sticker saying we'd climbed the tower!  On our way to the gift shop, we came across the Cathedral being built in LEGO which looked rather fun - especially the stained glass windows!  We were told that they were raising money by asking people to pay £1 for a brick in order to build it, which we did - and promptly received another sticker saying we helped build Durham Cathedral in LEGO.  I wonder how much they see it grow in a day?  They have already raised £35,000 - the idea is to create an exhibit of all the things which are currently locked away never to be seen by visitors.


In the shop I bought a Christmas Present, before we left and decided to have some lunch on the cafe not far from the Cathedral instead of the one IN the Cathedral.  We went to the "Cafe on the Green" which had a very nice menu, so it seemed we had chosen well despite not even seeing a menu beforehand.  We both had toasties - mine was Northumberland Cheddar and sun dried tomato, whilst Mathew had roast pork with apple sauce and stuffing.  It came with a side salad and those vegetable crisps which were very nice!  Afterward, we decided on some cake.  I had rich chocolate fudge cake with another decaf cappuccino and Mathew had spiced apple cake with another pot of tea.  DELISH!!  Finished, we left the cafe and headed straight to the car as there was nothing really for us to do in Durham - we were thinking it would have lots of handmade craft shops but it didn't.  We had a quick look in the Market which was very eclectic - I said that three quarters of it was basically like Leicester market selling the usual things markets do, whilst one quarter of it was how I wanted it to be, for example there was an art stall and a place selling Moroccan lamps.

Back to the car we had a slight incident with the pay and display machine as it ate our ticket and announced it was out of order, Mathew went to find someone in the office which turned out to be empty and closed, but he found a number to call which I dialled but had no response.  in the meantime, someone had come out to see the machine on our floor and we just ended up paying him instead as he couldn't fix the machine.  Panic over, we headed back to our cottage for a nice cup of tea after a quick visit to Sainsburys for a few bits.  The rain had set in by this time, and we had heard on the radio that there were lots of delays and everything seemed to be going pear shaped with the trainlines and even Heathrow.  Back in the cottage we had our tea and relaxed in the warm dry cosy cottage for the rest of the day.