We had to get up and have the car loaded by 8:30 today and our bnb kindly packed up bacon sandwiches for us to take with us. It was a smooth hour-long drive to Carlisle where we first dropped our bags at a storage location before dropping off the car and wandering up to the castle. It was a strange walk, up the main road which was lined with old pubs and sad-looking takeaway joints and we weren’t particularly rapt with our first impression. However, we did eventually pass through a fairly imposing set of stone gates and this was clearly the entrance to the ‘nicer’ central part of town. It was still mostly generic retail stores, but there was a pedestrian precinct that made the walking nicer too. We passed the huge cathedral and a bookshop that looked fantastic and bookmarked both for later.

The castle appeared at the end of the road, a squat wall and gatehouse that we made our way to, before having to wait for a while in a line as the English heritage people dealt with visitors who hadn’t pre-booked tickets. Once inside, our first stop was an exhibition explaining the history of the castle and the many times it’s passed between the English and the Scottish over the centuries. It’s been besieged ten times, more than any other castle in the UK. This was surprising, considering how intact it seemed, but I suppose the parts that were destroyed aren’t there anymore! We followed a one-way path up through some rooms and then along the walls, which gave us views of… not much – other than the rest of the castle.

Our next stop was to enter the keep, which was very interesting. The basement contained cellars and a prison where there are marks in the stones from where Jacobite prisoners had to lick the walls to get moisture! Further upstairs there was information about the use of the castle for the military during the World Wars and up until the 90s – there’s still a mess and military museum on the site. On the top floor there was a room which had detailed carvings in the stone that historians thought were probably done by a bored guard. This was very cool, I was surprised by how complex and well-preserved they were. Annoyingly, right at this point we got another aggressive email from our landlady continuing to tell us that our notice is invalid and still not clarifying why. Luckily we’d completed most of the interesting parts of the castle, so after a quick visit to the battery, we headed to the café and got a coffee to contemplate our next steps.

After deciding to finish up at the castle, we had a look around the gatehouse, then headed towards the bookshop we’d spotted. This was a fantastic space stretched across what seemed to be two stores – a second-hand bookstore connected with a ‘new books’ store, with a café out the back. We had a big explore of the book stores and then headed out the back and got a cup of tea while we re-wrote our letter of notice and an email to the landlady. At 1:15 we had to head back over to pick up our bags from their storage spot and then quickstep to the station to get our train to Hexham.

On the train we sent our email to the landlady and crossed our fingers that it would be accepted this time, and then tried to relax for a little while. Hugh, Peter’s uncle, picked us up at the station in an absolute downpour and we headed back to his for a cup of tea. We haven’t seen Hugh and Caroline since we stayed with them in July 2019, so it was really nice to catch up. Taking advantage of a break in the rain, we did a little walk down through their back garden to the river and field below, before heading back upstairs. Hugh cooked us a delicious dinner of steak and chips, and we caught up on all the things that have been happening in the last few months.