Northumberland - White water watching

 Another day, another Dame Shirley holiday, this one to one of our favourite places. Northumberland. As Heather and David prepared to return from Baaaaarrrrrrth, we prepared to depart for Stockton-on-Tees. But first, the essential morning activity of checking ‘The Queue’. 

The official government Queue Checker

11.5 hours, not too bad! Luckily we wouldn’t be going anywhere near it. Our path lay in a different direction. Ian had risen especially early in order to do the ‘two minute job’ of putting the bikes on the bike rack. ‘I have another beeping flat tyre!’ he wailed, after having changed one only the day before. ‘Beep, Beep, Beeeep.’ Never mind, he would change it later and went off to quickly put them on Dame Shirley. Three quarters of an hour later he returned, having shaved a whole hour and a half off the first time he quickly tried to do it. Well done Ian. 

I busied myself with making a pie, ironing, tidying, dog walking, and packing. Along the way I discovered that one woman in ‘The Queue’ had come over from Canada, and another had a cheese sandwich, with some little tomatoes. Sadly we will never know the seven things to know about ‘The Queue’ as Chris would not click on the link!!!

About 10am there was a startling development. ‘The Queue’ had reached capacity. No more people were allowed to join. Due to pie making I wasn’t sure if they would allow a ‘Pre Queue Queue’ or not. As it happens, they did have a queue to join the queue. Phew! The people queuing in the pre queue would look forward to a 24hr wait though. 

Chris arrived home for lunch, then departed again to visit Toby and Kirsty. Ian arrived home just after four, and after adding a few final things and the dog, we left for Stockton-on-Tees. It was quite busy on the roads, probably due to the last minute bank holiday, but we made good time. Just before 7pm I got the customary phone call. ‘Hello Mrs Walters, just wondering what time you will be arriving?’ ‘In about three minutes!’ It was actually about ten minutes as I misread the sat nav and sent Ian back on the same dual carriageway we had come off a minute earlier. 

The wardens turned out to be a really lovely, welcoming, couple. I told them that Vicky would be arriving for one night and asked to add her on the bill. ‘Sorry, no, you can’t. We have a new computer system and can’t fathom out how to do that! She will have to be free’. Nice.

We were directed to the water tap and pitch number 39, right by the toilet block, and set about plugging in all the tubes and wires. As usual we had a minor panic. We kept getting an error message saying the gas wasn’t strong enough to run the central heating. That would have been a catastrophe. But after pressing a few buttons Ian got it running. I popped the pie I had made earlier in the oven, warmed the gravy and some mushy peas, and we had a veritable feast.

Pie and peas

We fed Misty and set off to take her to the area where the lovely warden had pointed out, right by the Tees White water rafting area. We couldn’t see much in the dark but will have a better look tomorrow. 

A dark night

There was just time for the washing up, and a look at the white water caravan park midnight grotto.

Grottoes 

We then settled down to watch gogglebox in the comfort of a centrally heated Dame Shirley Bassey.

For fans of Strava Watch and Neighbour watch, they will return in the next episode.