Aydon castle

This castle started with just a fortified house. Then the scots burnt it down, so the owner built a small wall with crenellations all over it to keep them out. Then the scots came in and burnt it down again, so the owner built a second wall around the first wall and that was that. After this castle had been lived in for 200 years or so, farmers used it as a barn and living space untill English heritage bought it and opened it up to the public. This castle was interesting because it had a great hall (where everyone would eat and sleep) a kitchen, and an orchard, along with secret passages and private courtyards with really uneven cobblestone. I like this castle the best so far because you can actually see how people lived here for a long time.

Roman ruins

We saw two roman city ruins (corbridge ruins and chester's roman fort- the latter had a bath house which was mostly flooded because of all the rain recently) in the last few days. Both protected the northern border of hadrian's wall (the bits of which you can still see where they uncovered them- the bases of the roman towns and the wall were all that was left after the local farmers dismantled the smooth square buildings to make farm houses that they could live in). The romans built the wall to keep out the Scottish barbarians from invading even though they just broke down the walls and invaded tons of times anyway. You were allowed to climb on the ruins as well, and Tobin was small enough to fit in the drain system which was still intact, so he'd keep popping up out of holes in the ground.

Prudhoe castle

We are now in a new house swap in wylam near newcastle england. Prudhoe castle had tyme again swords, bows and daggers in the shop for half the price back home because they're handmade in england. Prudhoe castle was the only castle never to be taken by the scots, my guess why is here's what they had to contend with: 1st gate, drawbridge, 2nd gate, inner gate, inner inner gate and keep. And archers shooting at you the whole time. This castle is probably the most classic medieval castle we've seen yet.
Two days later I biked there on abandoned railway bike path (4 and 1/2 km each way) like the galloping goose with Julias to get a sword for me and we got there just as it was closing. But then the next day we drove there with everyone but Lise, and I got my wooden sword, and Julias and Tobin got wooden daggers.

Trains to Newcastle

trains to Newcastle - i wrote this on the train: so we're on our way to Newcastle upon tyme now and its taking us two days because we went to a hotel in Plymouth and the train car we were in has no power therefore no air conditioning so is 1900 degrees in there so we moved to this car (and I quickly moved my viola and luckily its ok) and now because we have no reserved seats we are using three seats for our whole family , but it's better to be crammed into a air conditioned car then to be spread out in a boiling car. Update over
Update back: we're in Newcastle train station awaiting Lise and Jeff to come back with our car rental and a lady from a baguette place nearby walks up to us holding two baguettes with ham and cheese (worth fourteen pounds each- I know because we bought some from the same baguette place earlier) and gives them to us for free because they're closing. So I'm happy.
Update over

Fort de berthume

Near our France house swap was fort de berthume. We had walked past it before when it was closed but we went to it again and visited it and it was open. The fort had been continuously occupied all through ww1 and 2 and before that, so it had a bunker with a secret passage to the shore. You could also do zip lining across ocean rocks and a large gap, but we saw some other people do that so we didn't do it because it looked scary.