NOT THERE

The National Trust is an odd thing. That Georgian House thing and Gladstone's Land in Edinburgh both suffer from their signature can't-move-for-old-women-in-sashes problem coupled with a dearth of information on the laminated informational cardlet things; if, like me, you are interested in information but prefer to read it for yourself whilst wandering around looking at things rather than standing being talked at with an interested expression dripping slowly off your face then National Trust facilities can become a little wearing. If the old women were only there to enforce the ban on photography it wouldn't be so bad but the VERY MOMENT one of them catches your eye they're off into the same spiel you heard them deliver to someone else a few minutes ago from a couple of rooms away.

When it comes to something as relatively vast as Cragside near Rothbury in Northumbria (lack of T-mobile reception a speciality) even the NT struggled to find enough smiling old women to run the tea house, staff the gift shop, distribute tickets at the door and infest the rooms dispensing verbal information so besides the odd one or two dressed up in period costume lurking here and there the information cards and the stuff itself are the only source of explanation on the contents of each room. This would have suited me fine were it not for the additional factually incorrect information being dispensed by the other visitors at volumes more suited to town crying than visiting a place of historical interest. Maybe if there had been more infocodgers around... they could arm themselves with metre-sticks with which to rap the knuckles of people woefully misinforming their children. "When the water goes high-up it gets full of electricity so when they let it fall down they get the electricity out of it for the lightbulbs" was a good one (heard even through the earplugs) but unfortunately it was muffled sufficiently to obscure the origin so I wasn't certain at whom I should have glared whilst shaking my head very slowly from side to side.

Similar frustrations strike when going round the museum in Edinburgh; the enjoyability of a visit can sometimes involve hitting the right balance between getting annoyed at people bellowing nonsense at their childs, being amused by the same and occasionally being correctly aligned to be able to amble past muttering a more accurate fact before disappearing swiftly around the corner in case anyone takes offence though I assume that the Perpetrator of Misinformation is unlikely to register a muttered fact in the same way that they fail to register information labels describing exactly what a particular specimen's purpose, diet or habitat is or was.

At least the estate grounds are similarly vast and kempt but almost completely unstaffed. There aren't even that many warning signs alerting people to interestingly sloping and rocky paths which might mean that a few people discover the fun of scuttling and jumping.