We spent the weekend in the North pennines, near Alston. Alston is reputed to be the highest market down in the Country and in keeping with such towns it had 8 or nine pubs and a fair splattering of idiots.
It used to be a mining town when the locals were involved in excavating lead. Today the lead mines are all closed. The lead is still there but now too deep to extract for any commercial gain.
These mining areas do seem to have the knack of rejuvenating though, and currently a Canadian outfit is boring for other mineral deposits.
The locals also had the opportunity to place a wind farm in the area, but rejected it. The benefit of free electricity for the community was outweighed by the weekend residents wanting to preserve their scenic views, and why not?
We were staying as part of a Groupon offer....buy a room for £60 instead of £200, then spend shed loads of money in our bar and restaurant. It was a good weekend so I declined to complain about the poor quality shower, low temperature hot water and lack of taxi's, that's my townie mentality coming out.
We took the opportunity of visiting Hadrians wall while we were so close to it. It qualifies as our Unesco World heritage site of 2011. We had a bit of a roll in 2010, visiting the Maritime Mercantile City in Liverpool (handy that), the historic centre of Rome and Saltaire in Yorkshire. 2009 saw us in, the old town in Edinburgh, Machu Picchu and Cusco. where to in 2012?
