Blagdon Hall

In recent years our Bank Holidays seem to have been cloaked in miserable weather- or was it just 2012?

However last weekend (May's Early Spring Bank Holiday when we no longer dance around May Day's maypole) revelled in sunny warmth. Hurrah! and boy! Did we make some electricity to pump back into the Grid!!

After visiting St. Aidan's Flower Festival we went to Blagdon Hall. On our way to Howick Hall on the Saturday, we spotted a roadside notice advising that Blagdon Hall was open over the weekend.

We have lots of Halls dotted around Northumberland.... after all if you are a Victorian entrepreneur, as well as your urban residence- possibly in Gosforth so you can see your factory across the Town Moor- you would probably have a country house too.

Blagdon is located on the northern edge of the urban sprawl of the Tyneside conurbation and is owned by the Ridleys- there's a good Northern family (Reiver) name.

Anyway- their gardens are only opened to the public a couple of times a year ( last weekend for North Northumberland Hospice Care  and sometimes as a Red Cross Garden)



Blagdon visitors looking for frog spawn

 Oh- just remembered something I omitted from my last blog- Donations at St Aidan's Flower Festival were for two of my favourite and local charities- Brian Burnie's ' Daft as a Brush' (which I have seen in action at the Northern Centre for Cancer Care, ferrying folk to and from chemotherapy) and the Great North Air Ambulance which I have also seen- or rather heard the helicopter -flying a headinjured student from a Northumberland rugby pitch quickly down to the Royal Victoria Infirmary.

To get back on track......

H1, D3 and I spent a relaxed afternoon swanning around Blagdon's extensive grounds amid drifts of daffodils, narcissi and so many follys (or should it be follies?)

We really must go soon to see Matt Ridley's (Is he now Lord Ridley?) Northumberlandia; she has been constructed, methinks, from earth replaced after opencast mining on the Blagdon estate.

We must get abreast of the times and climb all over the lady. I bet the best (oops! Almost a Freudian slip of the pen) view is as planes come into Newcastle airport as she seems to lie below the flight path.

Now I must do some Bookcrossing to register then release some books into the wild.... but where to leave them to be discovered and read.......

I have just finished 'The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn' by Robin Maxwell. Then I had a dilemna- H1 would have a dilemma- still a problem for him so he asked friends J&J how they spelt it- and was left with egg on his face as they both spelt out DILEMNA!!



See the face looking at you?

 My perplexity was that I was spoilt for choice- what to read next from my pile of literature? 'The Return by Victoria Hislop (I so enjoyed her 'The Island') or Wolf Hall? I have temporarily diverted from Tudor times but will return to Cranmer? soon.

Now I must get some breakfast; I am peckish and Northumberland awaits me!