We’ve just got back from a long(ish) weekend in a cottage on Lindisfarne, just off the coast of Northumberland.

We drove up on Friday and planned to get to the island just before the causeway shut at 2.15pm. I somehow managed to get the maths wrong so we ended up leaving for the three hour drive at 9am-ish. We fought with the GPS most of the way - it didn’t seem to have the island in its village/town/city listing and when we tried to browse it like a normal map, the whole of the north-east was underwater for some reason - but we didn’t really need it: the directions were pretty much “get to the A1. Drive on that for a while. Then turn right. Drive for a little bit. Turn left into the cottage.”

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I’ve been going through our photo collection recently to select some for uploading to my new photos gallery and it reminded me that John and I have seen some unusual sights (and sounds) during our travels, for example:

• just going out of shot but half a dozen men with mowers cutting a single piece of grass outside the Kremlin in Moscow.
• the open air reception outside the Winter Palace in St Petersburg for two bikers who had just got married.
• a reindeer gondola full of Santa Clauses punting along the Grand Canal in Venice.
• a door to the other side of the sand in Whitby.
• we were wandering the park land on Margitsziget (Margrit Island) in Budapest when we heard loud music - some large scale opera tune. We wandered closer to a small building - a cafe-like building but couldn’t see any speakers that could be kicking out that much noise but lo, there was a small curtain at one side of the building. Pulling back the curtain in a Wizard-of-Oz style, we expected to find the speakers but instead we found a full orchestra and choir on a stage rehearsing.

Spent the weekend in Wolverhampton at LUGRadio Live 2006 with around 350-400 other people, which is quite a feat for an anti-social freak like me. John did a talk about the webcomic he writes (well, we write, he “draws” and pimps), Everybody Loves Eric Raymond and we also sold some of our ELER and Knuth tshirts thanks to Gareth on the FSFE stall. I mostly lingered and sweated.

As the official documenter of our trips, I’ve written up a detailed account of our trip (below).

As it is rather too detailed, as per usual, here’s a summary: hot, good food, clammy, nice people, sweaty, interesting talks, did I mention it was above average temperature?, RedHat flying disc, stupidly warm and stuffy, well worth going.

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Got up about 10 and were packed up by about 11. Was a shame to be leaving as we’d had a lovely relaxing time and it really felt like home after those few short days - well, it needed cats to be truly homelike - cats to hog the fire and to sit on the table and meow at the ducks on the beck.

Anyway, dropped the key off at the other house then set off home. We stopped on the moors to take photos of the scary RAF base then continued on our way. We got hungry by the time we got to Pickering so we stopped there for some lunch - wanted a pub lunch but the menus were uninspiring so we ended up having pizza at a bar. Was decent pizza, stone baked with chillis on it :)

Got home mid-afternoon and suspect we had bread, soup and cheese for tea but I think that might be a bread-overdose caused lie. Mmm, cheese, soup and bread…

Got up around 11 yet again but had a broken night’s sleep for the first time all holiday - was colder than normal and John, the fiend, kept stealing the duvet.

John went to the post office to buy some more coal while I started making our uber breakfast: local sausages, bacon and eggs from the butchers, with chestnut mushrooms, beans and toast. Funnily enough, it filled us up for the rest of the day.

John didn’t want to go out anywhere so we stayed in again and I snoozed the afternoon away then drew at the table. I watched the ducks racing on the beck (the white ones always won) then was amused to note that an hour later, when the tide dropped further, they ended up sitting on dry land where they had previously been swimming.

We had another game of Scrabble later on and my awesome word power (and knowledge of the game of Scrabble) meant I won again. Then we read and drew more before tea, which was that wonderful combination of cheese, with bread and soup. Finished up the end of the chocolate cake we had brought with us then watched ‘Love and Sex’ in the evening and read more before bedtime.

Woke up around 11 again and after a cereal breakfast, I went to the butchers to pick up supplies for a planned cooked breakfast on Thursday while John got the fire going.

We stayed in nearly all day Wednesday for a lazy day - since that was the point of the holiday, to just relax and read until our heads exploded (we didn’t quite get that far though). We watched Shrek 2 (one of the DVDs in the cottage’s library) then read/drew in the morning. We had yet more soup, bread and cheese for lunch (because we dig soup, bread and cheese individually and any combination thereof) and then went out in the afternoon (with just our normal clothes over our pyjamas) to watch the waves - it was low tide but between the wind and rain, the sea was still pleasant rough.

When we got back, we had a game of Scrabble (I won, even though John got extra points for prettiness and being near a double letter tile) then had pasta and garlic bread for tea. We thought about watching another film in the evening but couldn’t decide on one so I had a bath then read in bed for ages and ages.