We woke up at 9am, washed dishes, packed our bags, and loaded the car by the 10am check out. Then we headed south. It was a three hour drive south to Newcastle upon Tyne. Nearby is the Beamish Museum, our main attraction for today.
We arrived at the Beamish museum at 1:30pm. I honestly kinda sorta forgot what the Beamish museum was... I only knew that it was an open air museum, so I figured it would be something like St. Fagan’s. Our initial impression wasn’t good. Unlike St. Fagan’s which was FREE <3, the Beamish museum cost us almost 30Pounds! Equipped with a map, we set out to explore the museum village of Beamish. It turned out to be much like St. Fagan’s, historic buildings were moved to the museum and arranged into a village within. The variety wasn’t as great as at St. Fagan’s, but we felt that the guides really delivered when it came to being friendly and eager to explain the history of the buildings that were there.
First, we visited the colliery village. It looked much like the Big Pit mine that we visited in Wales. We noticed some people handing out hard hats. We wandered over there and were given hard hats as well. It turns out we wandered into another mine tour. It wasn’t as impressive as Big Pit, but our tour guide was very talkative and extremely informative. I was happy to have brought my camcorder today so that I could record his tour. We went down 100 yards into a coal mine. The clearance was only 4 feet high. It would have been absolutely horrible to work in such a place.
When we exited the mine, Davin noticed rows of discarded, rusted out tanks. We asked a guide what they were. We would have been satisfied with a simple answer, which would have been ‘boilers’. But instead, he launched into an entire history of boilers and explained how they worked in detail. We were very pleased and impressed with the young man’s knowledge. Next we climbed to the top of the drive shaft where we came upon another guide given an animated description of what life would have been like working with the lift and unloading the carts of coal. It is clear that the guides here really enjoy their work and teaching visitors about life in the past.
Next, we walked to Pockerley manor. There we stumbled upon a steam locomotive ride. It wasn’t thrilling or anything, the steam engine was originally intended for pulling carts of coal so it wasn’t very fast. We enjoyed our ride nonetheless. We then explored the manor house and barn area. The house was built in two different time periods, and a guide explained to us how the older part was fortified to protect the inhabitants from invading Scots.
When we finished exploring the manor, we walked to the town of Beamish. There we were able to explore a bank, grocery store, hardware store, confectionary, pub, and dental practice. Apparently, dentists only very recently had to complete training to do their job. Before 1920, one could simply call oneself a dentist and open up shop. After 1920, one could no longer call oneself a ‘dentist’ without training, but one could still work under a different name, like ‘toothdoctor’.
Our exploration brought us next through the railway station. There we were amused by the indoor ‘Ladies Room’ and toilet. Apparently, men had to wait outside in the weather until the train arrived.
We wrapped up our visit with a trip to the Home Farm. There we saw a bunch of old farm machinery, and some more GIANT pigs. Pigs can get damn huge! Bigger than the biggest dogs, or sheep. They are freaking monster pigs! :)
We also stopped by the old schoolhouse on our way out. It was interesting to see the mixture of desk sizes for different aged pupils. A guide told us that there would be about 90 pupils in the class. I tried out writing on a slate board with a slate pencil. It worked pretty well!
Once we left the Beamish museum, it was only a 20 minute drive to our hotel. This time we stayed in a Premier Inn off of the main highway. It actually just changed to a Days Inn. Our room had one double bed, and a sofa bed. We tried to change to a real twin room, but the room hadn’t been cleaned yet. I decided I like the room with a sofa better anyway because it had more space. Plus, the sleeping bag that I’ve been carrying around this whole time can finally be put to use!
We finished settling in, went to the Road Chef restaurant next door and downloaded our email for the past week (I had 140!! I have to unsubscribe from some of these environmental and political groups!). Unfortunately, the free internet is only in the restaurant and not in the hotel. When we finished with that, we went to find a grocery store. We decided to get some more Indian food from Tesco. We brought our groceries back home and worked on heating our food up on the stove while watching Voyager. The episode we watched was a really bad one!
Next, Davin took advantage of the bathtub for a nice relaxing soak. I went through my 140 emails that I downloaded earlier. I formulated a few email replies, and walked over to the next door Road Chef to send them. I chatted briefly with Scott, Amber and Leigh. Then I went back to the hotel room and worked on a blog update until 11:30pm. Then I went to bed. Davin stayed up a bit longer on his computer. He is thrilled to have a desk to put his computer on for a change.
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