Foiled

We can't win them all, I guess. Weekends that is.

Last weekend we were able to plan an outing with a co-worker of Devin's who is here for a short time without a car. We thought it could be fun for her to come along on a weekend adventure with us to see some sights. Thorough warning was given regarding Jonas and car rides and she still wanted to come. She suggested Holy Island - a place we hadn't visited yet.

I got nervous when I mapped it and realized it was almost 3 hours away! Consensus was to go anyway.

The thing with Holy Island is that the road to get there is submerged in water during parts of the day. You have to check the tide table to know when you can come and go. Here's the road...

We had checked and thought we'd be fine but due to traffic didn't have as much time as we had hoped. The other problem was that once we got there, we found out that the only way to the castle is via a bus. We assumed we could drive there...but the next bus wasn't due for another 20 minutes which meant we would ride out there only to stay on the same bus to return in time to drive off the island before the tide came in. So after the 3 hour drive, we were able to take a picture of the castle from about a mile away and spend about 10 minutes walking to the Priory, looking around and walking back to our car. Great fun, huh?

See, if you look closely you can see the castle...

Then there's the Priory...

Next we drove to Bamburgh Castle which has the most beautiful setting right on the ocean and it is still in use.

Here's Clara enjoying her time to play around the Bamburgh grounds.

We had enough time to tour the castle but there was one more castle we had planned so we had to hurry along before it closed at 6pm.

Walking up to the Alnwick Castle ticket office, we realized that the last castle tickets were sold at 4:30 - it was the grounds that were open until 6. Needless to say, the grounds were beautiful. The castle was one of the locations for the Harry Potter films. I could see why, it was really amazing - from the outside, that is.

Oh, and this castle is also still a residence. I can't even imagine it. I just hope they have the heating figured out a bit better than when it was first built.

The drive home was at least scenic with the sun setting (which isn't until about 10pm now) and Clara slept most of the way...too bad Jonas won't close his eyes in the car. At least it was his best behaved car trip to date - maybe because of the tickle fest that went on before getting buckled up again. We'll plan better next time.