OT : what I did on my holidays, part 4
Rik Shepherd
Short version: Rik and Carol wander about Berwick, with snacks.
Longish version :
We arise leisurely, and a bit later than since we've left home, because we
aren't going to miss breakfast if we don't get up. We check that the Tweed
is still outside the window, have some breakfast, and decide to spend the
day in Berwick, seeing if anything's changed since we were last here.
So we set out along the private road, through the car park, through the arch
in the walls and up into the town.
It turns out Saturday is market day, so our progress up Market Street is
somewhat slow, and we mysteriously acquire some socks, a jacket and an extra
bag by the time we've got to the top.
Approaching the North gate to the town we find that our absolutely favourite
eating place, Andrew's bistro, has changed hands and is now called Sinners,
which is a stupid enough name for a place which isn't open in the evening.
But it is open when we're there, and we are hungry, order some food and sit
down in the courtyard outside. Carol has a steak sandwich, I have a cheese,
tomato and basil panini.
Leaving the cafe we stroll up onto the Elizabethan ramparts. These are
Elizabethan and they're ramparts. I suspect they're still there because
they're so massive that it'd be too much bother to knock them down or turn
them into garden walls. There are wall walks at two levels most of the way
round, with a number of star shaped bastions, which have gun positions atop
the walls, and ground level flanker positions firing along the base of the
wall, on the off chance that you forgot to shoot any attackers when they
were a long way off. Large flat areas around the walls used to have ditches
and were intended as cover-less killing grounds but have been turned into,
depending on which bastion you're looking from, a football ground, a
playground, a carpark and a pleasant park. The walls themselves probably
have all sorts of intriguing tunnels inside (there are odd doors in
embankments) but they're locked, sadly. There's a lot of earth and grass on
top of the walls, so the ramparts as a whole are an interesting stepping
stone between medieval castles and Vauban style artillery forts. Probably.
Obviously, Queen Liz put them up to ward off the Scots, who cunningly never
attacked Berwick, preferring to wait until she died and James VI of Scotland
became James I of England as well (the 400th anniversary of Union of the
Crowns is being celebrated this year, mainly, it seems with recreations of
famous Scots vs English battles). Typical, eh ? You spend thousands of
pounds constructing state of the art fortifications and no-one invades you,
and you just end up with a century of cross border guerrilla warfare where
no-one will admit which side they're on.
A new feature of Berwick that we discover on the north gate is the Lowry
Trail. Apparently, whenever Lowry got bored off doing deliberately inept
paintings of Salford he skipped off to the North East and did deliberately
inept paintings (though a lot of the examples on the trail are biro and felt
tip) of Berwick. Because of this, there are now something like 14 or 15
display boards allowing you to compare a real scene and Lowry's attempt at
painting it. There's a number of entertaining oddities, such as a picture of
the front cover of 'The Berwick Polka' with the comment 'Lowry probably
never heard this, but he did like music'.
We walk about a quarter of the way around the walls, avoiding the strange
youth capering around with his jacket over his face, and come off by Cow
Gate to visit the Barracks. Berwick Barracks were designed by Hawksmoor and
were the first purpose built barracks in Britain, but they're pretty much
rectangular buildings around a square. Today the square is full of cadets of
some sort being taught important cadet things, such as saluting, and
stamping, and stamping while saluting. We watch them for a while out of the
windows of the Berwick museum. Annoyingly they don't have a special
exhibition on - the usually have something good - seemingly because their
technical chap is making trebuchets and replica Mon Megs to besiege Norham
Castle, as you do.
Realising that we're a little short on food, we stock up in Somerfields. It
begins to rain as we set off for the cottage.
On a whim, we drop into a huntin' shootin' fishin' and ramblin' shop just as
they're closing up. Carol buys some walking shoes that are like sawn-off
boots, and I get a pair of sensible Barbour shoes.
It's still raining when we leave, though not much..
We stay in for the rest of the evening, so that Carol can watch low grade TV
while we feast on lentil soup and more bread until it's time for bed.