Alba Tour - August September 2006 - Week 1 (cont)

After Paris, we had another night at Mme Roussel's in Albert, narrowly avoiding a middle-of-the-night-visit from the usual occupants (farm labourers, arriving late from ?) before heading back to Dunkerque, then Dover via the ferry, the next day. We arrived back in the UK around 2 and then drove about 200 miles up the east coast to King's Lynn. We found a cute pub called the Lattice House and I remember having a decent beer (Mum and Jane were onto Guinness at that point ... nothing like it as a salve to travel woes!) and sausages and mash. The hostel was cute, though enforcing a peculiar practice of seating all its guests at the communal table for breakfast the next day. Everyone at the table seemed kind of bemused by this (especially the group who, after sitting at a table a little apart, were requested to reconsider!).

After breakfast and a couple of return trips to the hostel (first for the road maps, which I'd left lying on the entrance table, second for Mum's parka which had slithered under the bed), we drove west to Haworth, home of the Brontes, to visit the Bronte museum there ... it was kind of depressing to read about their lives (which ended before any of them had reached 40 - makes me thankful, as I think about it, to have the opportunity to wallow in my various my mid-life crises) and the conditions in which they lived.

We meandered north-east-ish from there to the big YHA in York and collapsed in our room. We walked around the city walls the next day, visited the National Rail Museum (where we had a very tasty Devonshire tea), and then wandered to Betty's Tea Room which Jane had read about. We were sadly beyond lining up (and had had our daily quotient of scones), or would have joined the queue to wait for a table. We settled on purchasing some tea instead, before hitting the road again to head further north.

We stopped briefly at the Lindesfarne crossing and then on to Coldingham Sands, arriving in time for a beautiful sunset which we enjoyed over fish and chips at nearby St Abb's - our attempts at dining elsewhere failing miserably due to Bank holiday. Coldingham Sands was a nice, if remote, hostel, though we had to share our room with someone who had a few words to say the next morning after she'd been rudely awoken by Mum's regular 6.00 am morning conversation. Gracious as ever, I found myself easily (so easily ... sigh), pettily, retaliating that she had preceded the favour by waking us up when she entered the room the night before. I then spent the next hour or so thinking about what would have been a more satisfactory retort. The joys of travel - so expansive to one's nature.