It's No Great Wall of China

Thursday, March 10, 2016
Matfen, England, United Kingdom
After a yummy brekky, we set off for the trip south toward the Scotland/England border. The GPS took us on the B roads and wound us through farmland and narrow roads for a couple of hours. It was a bit of a slow trip but very beautiful. We were heading towards Birdoswald Fort on Hadrian's Wall. We found the fort and it looked strangely deserted so we rocked up to the visitor's centre only to find that the fort is closed for winter...arggghh!. Not to worry, we climbed over a fence (that was fun for Grady) and wandered along the wall for a couple of hundred metres and arrived at a small fort on the wall. When I looked over the top of the rise where the wall finished, I could see Willowford Farm. Renee and I stayed here in 2010 or 2012... I can't remember :) I didn't realise that we were so close. After having a good wander through the cow paddock and the cow pats we found our way back to the gate and a man opened it for us so we didn't have to dump Grady unceremoniously over the fence... for which I'm sure he was grateful.

We reset the GPS and headed for Matfen Hall for our overnight stay . I thought we would stay somewhere really nice for just one night. This is an amazing place with a full 18 hole golf course, spa and swimming pool. We found our room and took a photo before we trashed it. Every place we've stayed has taken us 3 minutes to have our stuff everywhere. We are getting a dab hand at tidying up in the mornings though... The restaurant on site was fully booked and the on-site pub had stopped selling food an hour before we arrived so we jumped into the car and headed into the village to find some dinner. We are only eating twice a day on this trip as we load up at breakfast time and then don't eat again until dinner. The pub in the village was called the Queen's Head. I'm not sure whether it was named after the queen as the 'head' of the country or rather she lost her 'head'! There was no one in the pub and we sat in front of the fire for a half an hour and then ordered. It was Chinese food and really yummy. I had chilli tofu and Graeme had chilli chicken. I'll attach a photo.

After a lovely meal we went back to the hotel and did some washing and settled in for our one night of luxury. We felt totally spoiled! Off to York tomorrow.
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Comments

Jan
2016-03-12

What happened to the photos of the lovely place you stayed, they weren't with the reports Jan E

2025-02-06

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