These days it’s an odd sight on a grassy mound at the end of a residential road.

But in earlier days it was in a prime position overlooking the sea, the fields and the town. Nearby is Lord’s Mount, a fort built in  around 1540 during Henry VIII’s reign. It was orginally on two floors but all that remains are parts of the ground floor and you can see fireplaces, a flagged kitchen floor, a well and a privy.

There used to be guns mounted on the parapet and I climbed what was left of the steps to see the view. I didn’t venture on to the top; it was very windy and I don’t have a head for heights!

Photos taken September 2011.

For more Saturday Snapshots see Alyce’s blog At Home With Books.

Our first sight of the castle was as it appeared behind the railway line:

The Castle was was built in stone during the reign of Henry II, between 1168 and 1178, at a cost of £1,144. There was an earlier castle on the site, a wooden motte and bailey castle built by William the Conqueror’s son, Robert Curthose. This was replaced by the stone castle – hence the name of Newcastle! It stands high above the River Tyne – Newcastle upon Tyne.

This is the Castle Keep, which is the only remaining part of the 12th century Castle:

It is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and is open to the public, but we didn’t have time that day to go inside. On our next visit to Newcastle, we will make time to have a proper look at the Castle Keep!

The Gatehouse to the Castle is still standing – the Black Gate. It was added to the Castle site in 1247 by Henry III.  The wooden footbridge was originally a drawbridge.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce at At Home With Books.

I think it’s an impressive sight!

It’s a peel tower perched on top of a rocky crag, originally built in the 15th/16th centuries to protect its occupants from English raiders. It’s now a Scheduled Ancient Monument in the care of Historic Scotland.

Although the Tower now stands alone on the crag it was once the centre of a small castle toun. Sir Walter Scott stayed with his grandparents who lived at Sandyknowe Farm in the hollow near the Tower, where his parents hoped his delicate health would improve. It was there that his love of the Borders began as his aunt and grandmother recited to him ballads and Border tales and legends.

For more S posts visit ABC Wednesday.

Here is a closer look at the medieval bridge:

As we went along the river bank the salmon were leaping out of the water, but no matter how quick I tried to be with the camera I couldn’t snap a fish as it leapt out of water. This is the closest I got:

The nearer circle is where the fish jumped out and the further one where it went back into the river!

We carried on down the river bank to Twizel Viaduct. This stands 90 feet over the Till and used to carry the Tweedmouth to Kelso railway line. It was built by the York Newcastle & Berwick Railway between 1846-9. This line closed in 1965:

The autumn trees still have most of their copper leaves:

But when we got to the junction of the Till and Tweed there were these leafless trees on the opposite side of the river. The angle of the trunks is just amazing:

We weren’t the only people out enjoying the autumn sunshine – the fishermen were there too.

There is a ruined castle on the ridge overlooking the Till, but more about that in a later post.

A Saturday Snapshot post, hosted by Alyce, At Home with Books.

The view below shows the beautiful, unspoilt beach, with Bass Rock on the horizon. Bass Rock is the home of thousands of gannets.

Enjoying the view:

An ABC Wednesday post to illustrate the letter R.

Even though it was a grey, misty day (as these photos, taken in the early afternoon, show) we decided to have a look at the River Tyne. The river is crossed by several bridges and went to the High Level Bridge, designed by  Robert Stephenson and built between 1847 and 1849. It’s a road and railway bridge. Below is the view of the pedestrian/road crossing below the railway line.

From this bridge we could see more bridges crossing the river. Below is the view of the Queen Elizabeth II Metro Bridge between Newcastle and the Gateshead Metro Centre :

We walked about halfway across the bridge to see more bridges  across the river. The photo below shows the Swing Bridge (red and white) and the Tyne Bridge, in the centre with The Sage, an international music centre in the background:

East of  the Tyne Bridge is the Gateshead Millennium Bridge (white):

Standing on the High Level Bridge, my eye was caught by this statue on the top of a building below:

This is King Neptune with two fishwives seated on both sides. This was the old fish market, erected in 1880.

A Saturday Snapshot post, hosted by Alyce, At Home with Books.

Then I realised it’s not as simple as that – how was I going to decide on the locations? For centuries the people of the British Isles have been discussing, debating and even fighting over how we should divide up the land. Now, I don’t want to get into politics (I’m not saying anything about moves from different sections of our community for ‘independence’), so I thought I’d focus around our counties.

Again not simple. At first I thought I’d use the current local administrative areas, forgetting all the reorganisation that seems to be always on the go! How could I have forgotten after working for over 20+ years in local government! It’s not only the physical areas that keep being tinkered with but also the names of our counties. It’s  complicated and confusing. Eventually I came round to the idea of using the Historic Counties of the United Kingdom - there are 92. With so many counties, I’m making this an open ended project, because I shan’t be restricting my reading to just British books, by any means.

Map source: The Association of British Counties

I’ll read fiction in different genres, I’ll stray into poetry and drama occasionally and I’ll also include non-fiction – history, travel, diaries, biographies and so on. As well as focusing on the counties I’m also going to include regional books and books about the four countries that make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, not forgetting the surrounding islands.

I shall most likely expand/adapt this project and I plan to make a separate page on this blog to record my progress.

I’m not waiting until next year to start – I’m beginning now, in the far north, in the Shetland Isles reading White Nights by Ann Cleeves.

We’ve lived just north of the Cheviots for nearly two years now and have been saying ever since we arrived that we must go walking in the hills. I don’t know how many hills there are that form the range, but there are many of these rounded hills bisected by valleys. They straddle the border between England and Scotland, that area of land fought over in the past, a land where the Border Reivers held sway. The Cheviot, itself is the highest point at 815 metres and the last major peak in England, but we decided to start small with Great Hetha above College Valley and work up to walking the Marilyns.

The photo above shows the view at the start of our walk with Great Hetha on the skyline. It’s 210 metres at the summit where there are the remains of an ancient hillfort. We parked in the car park just south of Hethpool and the walk began easily enough along the private road through the Valley. The photo below shows the Valley looking south:

After a short distance and turning right it’s a steep uphill climb described in Walks in the Cheviot Hills by David Haffey as a ‘strenuous climb‘! I was soon struggling for breath. We stopped halfway up to look at the view northwards to Scotland (and to get our breath back!).

Looking up at that point we could see a small cairn on the summit, still a steep climb ahead.

It was worth the climb to reach the hillfort. This is an Iron Age hillfort dating from about 500BC. The remains of the stone ramparts are still there and it was easy to imagine what it must have been like in such an isolated place, being able to see for miles around, aware of any approach to the hill. According to the Walks guidebook such hillforts would have contained several timber-built round-houses within the stone ramparts, probably being occupied for several centuries.

From there we left the route in the guidebook and walked down the other side of the hill to the valley below and crossed the Elsdon Burn. The sky was most dramatic:

It was getting towards the end of the afternoon and as we headed back to the car, the sheep were being rounded up in the field, below a wooded dome-shaped hill known locally as the Collingwood Oaks (after Admiral Lord Collingwood – there is a hotel in Cornhill called the Collingwood Arms, more about that another time maybe). I wasn’t quick enough to take a photo of the running sheep (they were galloping!) but I managed to snap the farmer and his three sheepdogs on their way back, with the Collingwood Oaks in the background.

There are more photos of our walk on Flickr.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce, At Home With Books.

I’m stepping back in time again this week for my Saturday Snapshot, but not quite as far back as last week. This is a photo of the two dogs we used to have, enjoying running for a stick in the Chiltern Hills, near our home at that time, in Great Kimble in Buckinghamshire. We were on the footpath below Pulpit Wood looking down on the old rifle range.

Zoe is the golden retriever, who always had to get the stick first with Ben, the border collie cross following on behind.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce of At Home With Books.

I have a scrolling photo viewer on the computer desktop and this photo greeted me this morning when I switched the computer on. It’s the view from the field near to my previous house looking towards the town of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. The grey tower block in the background is where I used to work at the County Council offices – I was on the 8th floor, just over halfway up the building.

I like this photo because it shows the contrast between the old and the new, although the County Hall tower block is not new, completed in 1966, it’s certainly centuries older than the timber-framed house in the foreground.

Believe it or not, the tower block, sometimes called Pooley’s Folly after the architect, is a Grade II Listed Building. It’s constructed out of concrete and glass and whilst I was working there it was discovered that the core of the building was crumbling and it had to be reinforced. We were surrounded by scaffolding for months. It’s also a most inconvenient building to work in, boiling hot in the summer, freezing in the winter, draughty windows and only two lifts serving 13 fours and no service lift. I spent hours in total over the years I worked there just waiting for the lift. Still, that meant I had more time to read whilst waiting.

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Alyce of At Home with Books.