Day 12 – Alnwick

After a frustrating night of not being able to get a room in Edinburgh I have decided to visit the medieval city of Alnwick, pronounced Annick. This turns out to be a wonderful surprise as it is a wonderful town, it has a fantastic castle, which if you are thinking I have seen this somewhere before well then you probably are a Harry Potter fan as this is the Hogwarts castle from the early films. the town is full of rambling streets and gates that are the reminisces of the wall that use to surround the town. I stayed in the white swan hotel which when I went to breakfast I was amazed at the wood panelled ballroom, it turn out that this is the ballroom from the Olympic Cruise liner, sister ship to the Titanic, the owner of the hotel bought the ballroom, staircase and rotating door when the ship was decommissioned and added them to the hotel.

The drive from York was very interesting there was a horse carved into the hill just outside York, lots of windmills, and power stations. At Gateshead I called in the have a look at the Angel of the North, It was much bigger that i was expecting and the wind was blowing a gale. Apart from the wind it was a nice drive.