Dressed to the Pennines

The whole week running up to the weekend the forecast for today had been for a really rather nice day. And then yesterday that changed to, well, just rain. All day.

But we'd planned for that possibility, and the planned walk up a gorge in the North Pennines was mainly in trees, so we figured we'd still risk it. The bonus being that most others had been put off, and so we had most of the 6 odd miles entirely to ourselves (though sadly that also included a slight lack of wildlife).

On the way I managed to talk Mel into popping by Pedalling Squares, a great little cycling café just outside Newcastle. As she said, as I supped on my coffee, "I think you have to be a cycling aficionado to appreciate this place." I'd expected a shop as well, but was happy with the café, festooned with classic cycling jerseys and prints, and a huge screen ready to show this weekend's cyclocross world champs.

After that it was our usual stop in Corbridge to visit a great shop called Re, and we wound up spending far too much (on, amongst other things, a vintage wall mounted bottle opener in the shape of a bear's head; and some vintage ink and dip pen nib).

The evening meal was unfortunately underwhelming, so we retired slightly round the corner to a great little pub, that was mercifully more quiet than much of Newcastle, serving some great local beer.

Oh, and our clubber neighbours returned at 4.20am this time, but thankfully got themselves off to sleep after only 20 minutes or so of bellowing....