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ENGLAND 2000
Day 8
Cotherstone, Durham, England
Thursday
May 11, 2000
An overcast day today. We are sad to have to take Margaret to the train station in Darlington today. She's going to London and will spend 4 more nights there before returning home to Marblehead next Monday. She really loves London and has tickets to some shows all lined up. She's arranged to stay in a self-catering suite of rooms located in a monastery near Westminster Abbey. She knows someone from the church who has done this and she got the place for the 4 nights! A nice little kitchenette and a bedroom and bath...really kind of different!
So back at the cottage, we all got up and dressed and prepared for Margaret's departure. We tried to get a group picture of us sitting at the little table outside our cottage door, but for some reason my camera was not behaving and it would not flash for us...I thought it had, but I've not got any of those pictures so I guess it wasn't working! Figures!
The train wasn't leaving until around 2:30 pm, so we decided to do one last jaunt of sightseeing before going to Darlington. On our way out of Cotherstone, I wanted to get a picture of a donkey who lived at the corner and was always standing there watching us as we made the corner to go up to our cottage. He looked so lonesome there, all alone.
We chose to visit High Force - a waterfall in Middleton-In-Teesdale, just up the road to the west of Cotherstone. We arrived at the High Force car park and met this resident dog who came over to say "Welcome to High Force" to us. What a pretty dog!
We found the path entrance across the road and it was so nice in there...a long downward sloping walk led us away from the main road, into the woods, to the wonderful sound of the rushing river Tees below. We met a few people and dogs along the way. It wasn't long before we arrived at the end of the walk to see High Force through the trees. There were a few other visitors there, but they all disappeared when the three of us arrived here. So we decided to pose for some self-photographs - hoping that maybe Margaret would get a good picture of us to use for a Christmas card! I don't know...I think a picture of Margaret alone would be better, but we persisted in our attempt to get a good group picture of us at the waterfall, and I guess these are as good as any.
One last look at High Force and it was time to hit the road for Darlington. We were not sure just exactly where the railroad station was so we left plenty of time to find it. We are getting pretty good at navigating around England after all these trips, and we zoomed right in on the train station with an hour to spare. Sorry I didn't get any parting shots of Margaret at this time...wish I had!
We stopped in a little cafe there at the train station for a satisfactory lunch. We did a lot of chit-chatting, giggled a lot over the times we'd had in the last 5 days...it really was nice to have Margaret with us... probably saved my marriage as well - since Paul and I run out of things to talk about after being together 24 hours a day for 2 weeks straight usually!
2:30 pm came.....the train showed up right on time... and Margaret piled onto the high-speed machine and away she went to London-Town! We slowly meandered back to the car part and drove out of Darlington, a little sadder, but hey! We have more than a week to go...and the Lakes are still ahead of us! So we found a new way out of town and decided to just take back roads, through the farmlands of Durham, all the way home...we took the tiniest red-line roads on the map...there was almost NO traffic along these roads, and it was a nice leisurely drive.
Before we arrived at Barnard Castle, we stopped off at Eggleston Abbey where I was really --- really -- hoping to find a loo about. It was a lovely serene and peaceful setting, out here in the countryside, with no one around but us! We parked in the tiny car park, and found this sign telling about the Abbey. We walked through the ruins of what must have been a wonderful home for those monks so long ago. But I had to pee...real bad.... and now some people showed up to tour the ruins also... oh no! I'd settle for a big tree at this point!
I won't go into details here about how I solved my dilemma, but once the other people went back to their car, let's just say I found relief where I could! Trying to be as nonchalant as possible, I moseyed on out of the ruins after that, feeling very much better and stumbled onto this wonderful ancient hump-back bridge in back of the abbey. We strolled around the entire grounds and finally headed back to the car and home.
We nipped into Barnard Castle to do a little food shopping and back at the cottage we cooked up the last of the lasagna and some veggies for supper. We had the rest of our anniversary cake for "pudding" and some praline ice cream we'd picked up as well. We were having our cake when .... tap-tap-tap.... it was a knock at the door! It was Peter...he had a letter ... for us!! Mail? For us? Here in Durham? This was too exciting!
Leave it to Sheila! She'd sent us an anniversary card and it only arrived 1 day late! Wasn't that nice? So thoughtful she is! We thought about things together for a while...we are now entered into our 15th year of married life. Snuggled in our cottage in the Durham Dales. We watched Emmerdale, then EastEnders, and then The Bill, before retiring for the night.
Goodbye Margaret --- have a grand time in London Town! We'll see you back home in a fortnight!
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