Alnwick

(Backblip)

We spent the weekend in Alnwick, staying at the White Swan which contains the dining room from the RMS Olympic. We had dinners and breakfasts in there and it was magnificent. So elegant

Today we visited the gardens at Alnwick Castle and it was a brilliant place to visit. This is the cascade which fires up every so often. There were also some fabulous water sculptures in the Serpent Garden (a couple are shown in the extras). There was a display of birds from a falconry centre and we were able to stroke a couple of owls The feathers are extremely soft, so much so you could hardly feel them.

There was a bamboo labyrinth and we took a tour of the Poison Garden which was very interesting, even if many of the things are still hiding underground at this time of year. Fantastic place and highly recommended.

Later on we went to a pub which has a group of very dusty bottles in the window (see extra). A plaque proclaims them to have been in place since 1725 when the landlord dropped dead after touching them. The landlady said they were cursed and no-one has touched them since. Since getting into seaglass, I know a bit about glass bottles and I proclaim most of the bottles to be much newer than 1725! There is one old bottle in there but the ones in my photo I reckon are late 1800's. Fun story though, and they have definitely been there for some time. After a while I stopped talking as it was becoming clear that Scotland were gubbing England at the rugby!