The museum of bagpipes at Morpeth

Hands up if you've been here?

In my relatively short life I've been to the shoe museum, the hat museum, the vaccination museum, the museum of packaging, the clock museum, and, as of today, the museum of bagpipes.

How so? We started off on the coach to Alnwick. The sky was Provencal blue. The castle was Harry Potter-ish and an all round success because it had a lift for the disabled, excellent guides, and some wonderful paintings including several by Canaletto. I wasn't allowed to take photos of them, in case I come back to steal them later.

The town was good too, but D seems frail today and can't walk well. It's not CoVid, but it's something. I found him a walking pole in a charity shop and some biscuits because he doesn't want to eat much. I never made it to Barter Books in the former railway station. Sad about that, but there wasn't time.

We drove near the coast, and our next stop was Morpeth.
A little phone research had revealed that a building known as the Chantry housed the Tourist Information, a craft gallery, the Northern poetry library, and the museum of bagpipes. We made our way there pronto and spent hapoy times iooking at bagpipes in glass cases, listening to recordings, and buying the usual stuff. No one in my family plays the Northumbrian pipes, but there are three surviving generations of Highland pipers.

We went back to the coach via the Sanderson shopping arcade. It seemed familiar. All at once I realised that this is what Stroud's Five Valleys shopping centre is based on. Even the same modern department store, Sanderson's, is the same, one of an exclusive chain of two. The developer is Dransfield holdings. The Morpeth development looked a lot more light and airy than the inside-a-battleship-grey gloom of the Stroud project.

Back at the hotel, I was due to meet a friend. She texted me to say she was already in the bar.
Which bar? I asked.
THE bar, she answered
There's only one bar here, I replied. And I'm standing at it. Which hotel?

It turns out that there is more than one Gosforth Park hotel. She was at the other one.

When she turned up at last, we went out for an Italian meal downtown, and attempted to catch up with the news of the past six years. Where does one even begin? Four hours is not enough!