September 13, 2013: A Tour of Hadrian's Wall
	September 11, 2013: A Tour of Bath, England
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This morning, I am going to walk up and onto the Avon Gorge suspension bridge to get some pictures before we head to the train station to catch our train up northeast to Haltwhistle, England. We'll be checking into a guest house there and spending the afternoon in the town, prepared for a tour of Hadrian's Wall tomorrow.

The Avon Gorge and Suspension Bridge

In the two days we have been here at the Avon Gorge Hotel, I have not had a chance to get up onto the Avon Gorge bridge, which spans the Avon Gorge just a few hundred feet northwest of the hotel. The Clifton Suspension Bridge opened in 1864, spanning the Avon Gorge and the River Avon, linking Clifton in Bristol. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the bridge is a grade I listed building and forms part of the B3129 road.

We have, of course, seen the bridge from the patio in back of the hotel, from Sion Road in front of the hotel, and also, in a picture Fred took yesterday, all lit up at night. In a room off the lobby, there was even an old drawing of the bridge, probably depicting the bridge around the turn of the century.

The idea of building a bridge across the Avon Gorge originated in 1753. Original plans were for a stone bridge, and later iterations were for a wrought iron structure. In 1831, an attempt to build Brunel's design was stopped by the Bristol riots, and the revised version of his designs was built after his death and completed in 1864. Although similar in size, the bridge towers are not identical in design, the Clifton tower having side cut-outs, the Leigh tower more pointed arches atop a 110-foot red sandstone clad abutment. Roller-mounted "saddles" at the top of each tower allow movement of the three independent wrought iron chains on each side when loads pass over the bridge. The bridge deck is suspended by 81 matching vertical wrought-iron rods.

Two men were killed during the bridge's construction; since opening it has gained a reputation as a suicide bridge. It has plaques that advertise the telephone number of The Samaritans and above the railings on the bridge there are anti-climb barriers. The Clifton Bridge Company initially managed the bridge under licence from a charitable trust. The trust subsequently purchased the company shares, completing this in 1949 and took over the running of the bridge using the income from tolls to pay for maintenance.

The bridge is a distinctive landmark, used as a symbol of Bristol on postcards, promotional materials, and informational web sites. It was also used as a backdrop to several films and television programmes. It has also been the venue for significant cultural events such as the first modern bungee jump in 1979, the last ever Concorde flight in 2003 (that one is a bit puzzling, as I seriously doubt the Concorde could either land on or take off from the bridge, and I also doubt that it could pass under it) and a handover of the Olympic Torch relay in 2012.

Walking out the front door of the hotel, I turned left to walk up Sion Road towards the bridge. It was a misty morning, and people living in the houses and apartments on Sion Road were putting out their trash and recycling and getting into their cars to head to work. From the top of the street near the park I took a picture looking back towards the hotel. I didn't know it at the time, but there is a cave in the cliff face about 90 feet below the hotel, but it is not accessible.

I walked up through the park to the roadway, and then turned west to begin crossing the bridge. Here is the Leighside tower.

I walked along the upstream pedestrian walkway as I crossed the bridge, taking a number of pictures as I crossed and from the viewpoint on the Clifton side. I wish the weather had been better, so my pictures would be nicer, but they were pretty good anyway. Below are clickable thumbnails for some of the pictures I took:

While I was on the far side of the bridge, I used my new little camera's ability to create panoramic images to try one of the Clifton Bridge. The result is below:

When I got back to the Leigh (hotel) side of the bridge on my way back, I noticed that a couple of guys had arrived and closed off the pedestrian walkway on the other side of the bridge, presumably because they were going to be doing some maintenance work. They were getting into harnesses, again presumably because the work would involve hanging off the bridge itself. From my side of the street, I took a couple of pictures, and you can have a look at them here and here.

My walk across the bridge was interesting, and the views were neat, but everyone back at the hotel was getting ready to leave for Haltwhistle, and it was time for me to join them.

Our Trip to Haltwhistle, England

We began our trip to Haltwhistle by checking out of the Avon Gorge Hotel and piling into a large (very large) cab for the ride to the main Bristol station. There, we bought tickets to Haltwhistle.

Our journey would take us on a 225-mile trip from the Bristol station to the city of Carlisle in the North Midlands. There, we would get off that train (which continues on to Edinburgh), change platforms, and get on a local train for the 20-mile trip to Haltwhistle, a small town midway across England just below the line of Hadrian's Wall.

We got to the Bristol station pretty quickly, unloaded all our stuff, got our tickets and were heading out to our platform when Fred got this picture of Prudence, Guy and Nancy. We did not have long to wait for our train; we boarded, stowed our luggage and found seats. We could not find seven together because we had too much luggage to fit into the storage area in a single car, so Ron, Guy, Fred and I sat at the front of one car while Karl, Nancy and Prudence found seats (and luggage space) at the back of the car just ahead of us. Then we were off.

From Bristol to near Liverpool, it was pretty cloudy. Fred took lots of pictures, but I have put clickable thumbnails below for just four of them:

The leg of our trip to Carlisle took about three hours, but was very pleasant. We went back and forth between the two cars to visit. As we got within an hour of Carlisle, we started listening to the station announcements carefully, so as not to miss our stop.

From Liverpool northward, the weather improved greatly, and so I began taking pictures out the train windows as well. I have put clickable thumbnails below for three of them:

Fifteen minutes before we got to the Carlisle station, the four of us, hearing the announcement, began the process of getting our luggage down off the racks, as other people had come along and piled stuff on top. By the time the train entered the station and slowed to a stop, we were positioned at the front door of our car, ready to get ourselves and our luggage out when the train actually stopped. I assumed that in the car ahead of us, which we could not see into from where we were, Karl, Nancy and Prudence were doing the same thing. Big mistake.

We helped each other with our luggage getting off the train onto the platform. Ruckman's bag was particularly large, so it took a couple of us to get it down. We had other people coming out ahead of and behind us, so we were focused on getting off the train and out of their way. I lost sight of Guy in the crowd, but quickly found him again standing right by Ron and Fred. By the time I had a chance to turn around and find Karl, Nancy and Prudence, the train was already pulling out of the station on its way to Edinburgh. A quick stop to be sure, but I guess that's how the trains run on time.

That's when I noticed that the three of them weren't standing on the platform. Thinking that they'd already passed me to join the other guys, I turned to look at them. They were there, but no Nancy, no Prudence and no Karl. Immediately, I ran alongside the train, and I think I caught a glimpse of them still standing in the aisle of their car. But, in any event, they had not gotten off and were now on their way to the train's next stop- Edinburgh- an over an hour away!

At the Haltwhistle Station

We only had 30 minutes before our train to Haltwhistle, and I spent that time in the station dispatch office, telling them what had happened. The British rail system is pretty efficient, and in just a few minutes they got a call from the train to say that the other three had contacted their conductor who called back to Carlisle with a message for us. And the dispatcher told us that they would simply have to ride to Edinburgh and just stay on the same train for its return trip to Bristol. They would miss our departure to Haltwhistle, but there would be another they could catch late in the afternoon. The rail personnel were very helpful and very efficient. I was to remember this fifteen days hence.

By the time I returned to the guys, I found that Prudence had already texted Ron with the same information, and he'd texted back to tell her that we would go on to Haltwhistle, check into the B&B there and meet them at the station when they arrived about six-thirty.

We made our train to Haltwhistle with a few minutes to spare, and after a 40-minute trip had disembarked at the Haltwhistle train station. (You might be interested to know that the part about driving your car on the left-hand side of the road also applies to trains when there is one track in either direction.)

The Haltwhistle railway station was very picturesque; a little later on today when we return to collect Prudence, Nancy and Karl, and also tomorrow, when we leave for Edinburgh, we will take more pictures of the station, and you'll see them then.

At the railway station, there was a large sign, similar to ones I had noticed in Bristol and Carlisle, that talked about the local area, and how train riders could get to lodging, restaurants and local attractions. You can read the sign yourself, using the scrollable window at right. But I was impressed with how England (and, I recalled from years ago, Japan) cater more to mass-transit users than to automobile users. Sure, there are lots of cars on British roads, but in small towns like this, as we were to notice tomorrow, there were a lot more people around than there were cars to go with them. This tells me that many more tourists and locals take the train or the bus or a taxi in Britain than drive their own cars. This is certainly an advantage in the crowded older cities and towns, and also an advantage considering that once you get off the motorways and the "A" routes, British roads are notoriously narrow and winding. About the only time a tourist needs a car is if he is going to want to drive leisurely along scenic roads far outside of towns and cities- as we were to do in Ireland and outside of Edinburgh. But I found the British reliance on train travel, bicycles and walking to be a refreshing change. (And the walking part certainly contributes to the overall "fit" appearance of most of the people we saw here, in Scotland and in Ireland.)

We'll save most of our pictures of the train station for later or tomorrow when the weather was a bit nicer, but we did take a few in and around this old station as we headed off to find transportation to the B&B. There are clickable thumbnails for some of these below:

We were the only ones getting off here in Haltwhistle, and there were no cabs or anything like that to be seen at this small station. We walked to the entrance to the station, and saw no waiting transportation, but we did see the town of Haltwhistle just a block away. I didn't think that the B&B was far, but Guy went over to a pub nearby to ask someone to call a taxi for us, and it arrived fifteen minutes later (the only cab in town, as it turned out). Also as it turned out, we could actually have walked to the B&B.

The Ashcroft Guest House in Haltwhistle, England

The Ashcroft Guest House B&B was actually not that far from the train station; we could have walked.

My guess was that the Ashcroft House was maybe 3/8ths of a mile from the train station; when we left here the next day, there was not room in the cab for everyone and his luggage, so I volunteered to walk it, and I got to the train station in perhaps five minutes or so.

Our cab driver just took us up to the main highway, turned east, and then turned on Lanty's Lonnen, the oddly-named street that led up the hill towards the town and ran right by the guest house.

You might want to remember that this aerial view of the town is here; in the next section, we'll take a walk through it and you'll see some of the places marked on the view.

We stayed in a number of interesting places on our trip; Nancy and Prudence were in charge of picking them, and they gravitated towards "B&B" accommodations, although we did stay in three or four hotels from time to time- such as the Avon Gorge Hotel in Bristol. This time, in the small town of Haltwhistle, we stayed at the Ashcroft Guest House B&B.

The English countryside is rife with such places; I don't think they ever got comfortable with our small town motels and hotels, perhaps because theirs was not a "car culture" but rather a "train" one. In any event, if you look at a Google map of the Midlands, and drill down until individual businesses are shown, you will find many, many places like Ashcroft.

For the interesting places what we stay, I'll usually have a section like this one devoted to it, a section where I will gather together all the pictures and movies of the establishment, regardless of exactly when they were taken. For Ashcroft, we stayed only one night, but we took a good many pictures around the guest house, some this afternoon and evening and others tomorrow. But they will all be in this section. That's why, even though Prudence, Nancy and Karl haven't arrived yet, you'll see them in some of the pictures- like this one, taken after our missing companions had finally arrived in Haltwhistle.

So let's have a look around the guest house, beginning with some pictures of the house itself and the gardens surrounding it. The Ashcroft Guest House is a large, charming Victorian house at the southeast corner of Haltwhistle. It is set on a hill with views out away from the town across the English countryside.

When you arrive by car, you enter the property at the back corner, and park on the gravel apron. The front door is right there. The yard and gardens slope away from the house at the front. Below are clickable thumbnails for some of the pictures we took outside the B&B (although I couldn't get down the hill far enough to get a good picture of the whole structure):

The owners live in an area of the house attached at the back; with the guest rooms are upstairs (just like at Ruckman Haus) and the public rooms on the first floor.

The guest house is locally famous for its extensive gardens which, in the spring and summer, sport many thousands of flowering plants of all kinds. (I can only assume the B&B business is good for the owners to be able to afford to maintain such extensive grounds.)

There are clickable thumbnails below for some of the pictures Fred took around the grounds:

As for the inside of the guest house, just inside the front door there is a kind of anteroom where the owners have coat racks, a small closet, tourist brochures and stuff like that; the front door has a colorful stained‑glass window.

When you come in through the interior door from this anteroom, you find yourself in a very nicely-decorated room, which is really only used to provide access to the other public rooms on the first floor. You can see this room at right. The door in from the front is at the left, and just to its right is the doorway into the living room. There's a laptop that guests can use, and also a first floor bathroom just to the right of the living room. Stepping back towards the entry door and looking in the other direction, you see the stairway to the second floor, a doorway that leads out the back of the house, and the hallway back to the kitchen and the rest of the house. In the corner below the stairway, there was a neat fishbowl.

Right opposite the stairway was the entrance to the large dining room. It had a fireplace at one end, and rather more tables than I thought they might need. It was spacious, and the next morning we had a nice breakfast there.

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As for the upstairs, where all the guest rooms were located, it was a hall that began at the top of the stairway with the guest rooms off of it. Our room happened to be the first door on the right. It was a nice, spacious room with a small ensuite bathroom in one corner and a little desk where I could set up my laptop. Below are clickable thumbnails for the two pictures of our room that I took:

Beginning outside our bedroom, I finished up by making a movie as I descended downstairs and looked around at the public rooms. The lighting isn't very good in spots, but if you want to watch it with the player at left, it will give you another idea of what the Ashcroft Guest House was like inside.

An Afternoon in Haltwhistle, England

The four of us had gotten all our stuff to the B&B and gotten checked in by three o'clock, and we still had at least three hours before the others would arrive at Haltwhistle station, so we set out on a walk through town to see what we could see. We went just a bit north on Lanty's Lonnen to the High Street through Haltwhistle, and then walked west towards the train station. Along the way, we passed a couple of churches, including a Methodist church (also, seen here from across the street). Further down the street, we also found St. Wilfred Anglican church. Guy wandered around that church for a few minutes, taking pictures of it and its adjacent graveyard. Below are clickable thumbnails below for some of his pictures:

All along our walk through Haltwhistle, we found interesting subjects for our candid photos, and I want to include a selection of them here.

Below are clickable thumbnails for some of our pictures of Haltwhistle; each has some odd or interesting thing to recommend it. Have a look at as many as you wish:

At the end of our walk through town, the High Street curved around down towards the railway station, and that's where we came again to the little pub where Guy had asked about a taxi earlier.

I made a movie in the pub; you can watch it with the player below:

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We spent a really pleasant hour or so in the little pub, chatting with the bartender and some of the customers that came in and out, including a particularly friendly gentleman named Ned (appropriate, as he recalled the movie "Waking Ned Devine"). Of all the pictures I took in the bar, three turned out well. One shows Guy getting some cider at the bar. I am not a fan of hard cider, but one of the unusual brands they served here, the Woodpecker, was, by the accounts of Fred, Ron and Guy, quite good. Ron plied me with Bailey's which, he said later, seemed incredibly cheap here for the amount they poured. I also prevailed on Ned to take a picture of the four of us in the Railway Pub.

A short while before the train from Carlisle was due, we settled up, bid the bartender and patrons "Cheerio," and left to go wait on the railway station platform.

We Are Reunited

We got down to the railway platform to wait for the train from Carlisle, learning from a nearby sign that the little Newcastle to Carlisle Railway that stops at Haltwhistle was 175 years old this year. I made two movies while we waited, the second one of the arrival of the train we hoped the others would be on. You can watch those movies with the players below:

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) A Train Departs for Carlisle

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) The Train Arrives from Carlisle

Although the narration in the last movie leaves some doubt, indeed our three companions were on the train from Carlisle, with quite the story to tell about how they missed getting off in Carlisle in the first place as well as their trip to Edinburgh and back. We were happy to see them as we collected their rolling luggage and headed off back through town to the B&B.

Before we leave the station, however, I want to include a selection of pictures we took here; the station was very quaint and interesting, and you might enjoy seeing it (and us) from various perspectives. You can use the clickable thumbnails below:

We took Prudence, Nancy and Karl on a walk through town back to the Ashcroft Guest House, towing their luggage behind us. We wanted them to have a look at Haltwhistle while it was still light. At the B&B, they had a chance to relax and freshen up before we went out to dinner at a local place back on the High Street- the Centre of Britain. We'd seen the restaurant on our walk, and it looked as if it had a good menu, but the name was a bit puzzling. Turned out that the restaurant is only a few hundred yards from the geographic center of the island of Britain.

We did have a nice meal, and Fred and I changed positions to take pictures of the group. You can see those pictures here and here.

Then it was back to the guest house for a good night's sleep.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	September 13, 2013: A Tour of Hadrian's Wall
	September 11, 2013: A Tour of Bath, England
	Return to the Index for Our British Isles Trip