Newcastle Adventures
Jun. 9th, 2008 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ailsa_chanBelow the cut because of copious aquatic photographs!
So, the make-up for laming trip to Newcastle was lame in numbers, but hey, no one was surprised. We wanted to see Mili and Paul again anyway, and we weren't going to lame out ourselves, so at 6.30 on Friday night we set out to find the magical land of The North again. Joe was utterly wonderful and has driven over 600 miles just this weekend, aside from all the expo adventures and things he was put through the other week. I wish we'd been able to get someone else to come with us, but by the time we knew we'd been left in the lurch again it was too late for anyone else to get organised. I didn't do too badly in the directing, though I'm not an exciting car companion and I find holding conversation very hard, but Joe was epic and got us there fine. On the way up, we saw a cop car go speeding down the fast lane, but without sirens. We suspect we found out why when we saw him in the queue for KFC at the services we stopped at! Eventually we made it to Mili-chan's house and had brief sleepy conversations before bed.
I got up first, so went to read comics for a bit before other people got up. Chili-cat came to say hello and even walked across my lap, which was very brave, but decided it was not for him and wandered off. Mili fed me smoothy and musli for breakfast (it was much posher musli that the sainsburies economy stuff I get and even had fruit other than raisens. Then there were strawberries, which were even better.
When everyone was up we went to go and pick up a mattress for Mili from a little place on the way to the Lake District, because we suspected that Mr Brum probably wouldn't be able to consume a whole one, but our car might. Queue convey missions as we followed Mili out into the countryside. We crossed over the Tyne at one point, which looked absolutely beautiful in the summer sunshine, and then headed down pretty twisty roads into the sheep territory. Eventually we found the house we were meant to be visiting, by pulling into a drive to ask for directions, we found out we'd been asking at the house next door! Mattress was claimed and fitted neatly in our car, then we found a quaint english pub and had a lovely leasurly lunch. Paul had much cheese.
Came back, ahd some more sleepy conversations, naps were had and then there was cheese for dinner! Whoos! Then we went for a walk in the park and Mili showed us the shoe tree. This apparently is an art installation, but I think it's evidence of carnivorous trees. In the park, there is one tree that has had pairs of shoes tied to it's branches, then shoes tied to these. It looks very much like the tree has eaten people and been unable to digest their shoes. There were a couple of pairs on other trees, showing that it had been teaching its neighbours. I found the whole thing vaguely surreal and more than a little creepy.
We came back and watched an episode of Dr Who, which was the closest thing Mili had to horror. I liked the concept of the episode (stone angels that move when you are not looking at you), but think it would have probably been better as an episode of something else, like Poltergeist or Supernatural. The Doctor was largely irrelevent to the episode. I also felt very sorry for the cop, who was lovely and wonderful. "I'm going to call you." "Why, you've only just met me?" "Because life's short and you're hot!"
On Sunday, Mili and Paul took us down to the sea to visit the octopi at the Blue Reef Aquarium and their aquatic friends. I need to go to more aquariums: I throughly enjoyed myself. I took many picutures, but they didn't come out as well as some of my london Zoo ones did. They're all up on my photobucket site, but I thought I'd put a selection up here too.
A happy little ray. I hope he's happy, anyway. As we were heading out we stopped to have a last look at this tank. There's no lid on the top, and as Joe was leaning over, one of the rays (possibly this on) leapt right out of the water in front of him! We're not sure if it wanted to kiss him or eat his face. It was quite startling!
Seals having breakfast. We arrived and were told they were being fed, so nipped through to watch before going back to the rest of the aquarium. Three keepers went in with buckets to feed them, and the one doing the talking explained that he wold be feeding the two males, another keeper would feed the younger female and the third would feed the two older females. The buckets all had a different symbol on them and they had taught the seals to recognise the symbol of their bucket and go to that one for feeding. The one in the picture was the biggest, (though he's only about half grown) and struggled a bit getting onto the rock. When they were swimming underwater they were amazingly graceful and seemed to spend most of the time swimming serenly upside down.
These were amazing and also swam backwards. Apparently they swim into the tank wall and go "doink", but this never happened when I was watching.
Longhorned cow fish. Seems to have been designed by a committee of 5 year olds.
This is a cod. Of the unbattered variety.
I can't remember what type of shark this was, but I think he's a member of the aquatic mafia.
Video of the giant pascific octopus. He was lovely. Unfortunately the camera kept losing focus.
Asian short clawed otters. I'm not sure what problem was, but at least one of them was being very noisy. He sounded very indignant. I'm not sure if the people were bothering him, or if he was just hungry. At one point he was sat on the log squeaking, and another otter ran over his head. This did nothing to improve his mood. Otters apparently can't just swim from one end of the tank to the other, they have to do barrel rolls.
More here:
http://s158.photobucket.com/albums/t91/ailsa-chan/Blue%20Reef%20Aquarium%20June%202008/
Then we went for a walk on the beach. Both Joe and I agreed that it wasn't how we'd imagined a Northern beach. There was wide golden sand, little cafe and nothing was grey at all. WE had a look in the rock pools, but didn't find much. Joe managed to find a shrimp and two dead crabs, and that was about it.
In the evening we had a barbeque, which was very yummy and Joe rebeled against civiliation and went without a plate. Then we watched Corpse Bride, which reinforced Paul's supicions about brides. It's very sweet, but I did feel sorry for the Corpse Bride. I also want to cosplay her, but that's probably to be expected.
I leave you with a video of the largest tank. You can see Humphrey, he's the big grey fish, who's species can get as large as a van and who like to play with divers. There is also a pufferfish, which thinks it's a yo-yo, and a leopard shark amoungst other things.
So, the make-up for laming trip to Newcastle was lame in numbers, but hey, no one was surprised. We wanted to see Mili and Paul again anyway, and we weren't going to lame out ourselves, so at 6.30 on Friday night we set out to find the magical land of The North again. Joe was utterly wonderful and has driven over 600 miles just this weekend, aside from all the expo adventures and things he was put through the other week. I wish we'd been able to get someone else to come with us, but by the time we knew we'd been left in the lurch again it was too late for anyone else to get organised. I didn't do too badly in the directing, though I'm not an exciting car companion and I find holding conversation very hard, but Joe was epic and got us there fine. On the way up, we saw a cop car go speeding down the fast lane, but without sirens. We suspect we found out why when we saw him in the queue for KFC at the services we stopped at! Eventually we made it to Mili-chan's house and had brief sleepy conversations before bed.
I got up first, so went to read comics for a bit before other people got up. Chili-cat came to say hello and even walked across my lap, which was very brave, but decided it was not for him and wandered off. Mili fed me smoothy and musli for breakfast (it was much posher musli that the sainsburies economy stuff I get and even had fruit other than raisens. Then there were strawberries, which were even better.
When everyone was up we went to go and pick up a mattress for Mili from a little place on the way to the Lake District, because we suspected that Mr Brum probably wouldn't be able to consume a whole one, but our car might. Queue convey missions as we followed Mili out into the countryside. We crossed over the Tyne at one point, which looked absolutely beautiful in the summer sunshine, and then headed down pretty twisty roads into the sheep territory. Eventually we found the house we were meant to be visiting, by pulling into a drive to ask for directions, we found out we'd been asking at the house next door! Mattress was claimed and fitted neatly in our car, then we found a quaint english pub and had a lovely leasurly lunch. Paul had much cheese.
Came back, ahd some more sleepy conversations, naps were had and then there was cheese for dinner! Whoos! Then we went for a walk in the park and Mili showed us the shoe tree. This apparently is an art installation, but I think it's evidence of carnivorous trees. In the park, there is one tree that has had pairs of shoes tied to it's branches, then shoes tied to these. It looks very much like the tree has eaten people and been unable to digest their shoes. There were a couple of pairs on other trees, showing that it had been teaching its neighbours. I found the whole thing vaguely surreal and more than a little creepy.
We came back and watched an episode of Dr Who, which was the closest thing Mili had to horror. I liked the concept of the episode (stone angels that move when you are not looking at you), but think it would have probably been better as an episode of something else, like Poltergeist or Supernatural. The Doctor was largely irrelevent to the episode. I also felt very sorry for the cop, who was lovely and wonderful. "I'm going to call you." "Why, you've only just met me?" "Because life's short and you're hot!"
On Sunday, Mili and Paul took us down to the sea to visit the octopi at the Blue Reef Aquarium and their aquatic friends. I need to go to more aquariums: I throughly enjoyed myself. I took many picutures, but they didn't come out as well as some of my london Zoo ones did. They're all up on my photobucket site, but I thought I'd put a selection up here too.
A happy little ray. I hope he's happy, anyway. As we were heading out we stopped to have a last look at this tank. There's no lid on the top, and as Joe was leaning over, one of the rays (possibly this on) leapt right out of the water in front of him! We're not sure if it wanted to kiss him or eat his face. It was quite startling!
Seals having breakfast. We arrived and were told they were being fed, so nipped through to watch before going back to the rest of the aquarium. Three keepers went in with buckets to feed them, and the one doing the talking explained that he wold be feeding the two males, another keeper would feed the younger female and the third would feed the two older females. The buckets all had a different symbol on them and they had taught the seals to recognise the symbol of their bucket and go to that one for feeding. The one in the picture was the biggest, (though he's only about half grown) and struggled a bit getting onto the rock. When they were swimming underwater they were amazingly graceful and seemed to spend most of the time swimming serenly upside down.
These were amazing and also swam backwards. Apparently they swim into the tank wall and go "doink", but this never happened when I was watching.
Longhorned cow fish. Seems to have been designed by a committee of 5 year olds.
This is a cod. Of the unbattered variety.
I can't remember what type of shark this was, but I think he's a member of the aquatic mafia.
Video of the giant pascific octopus. He was lovely. Unfortunately the camera kept losing focus.
Asian short clawed otters. I'm not sure what problem was, but at least one of them was being very noisy. He sounded very indignant. I'm not sure if the people were bothering him, or if he was just hungry. At one point he was sat on the log squeaking, and another otter ran over his head. This did nothing to improve his mood. Otters apparently can't just swim from one end of the tank to the other, they have to do barrel rolls.
More here:
http://s158.photobucket.com/albums/t91/ailsa-chan/Blue%20Reef%20Aquarium%20June%202008/
Then we went for a walk on the beach. Both Joe and I agreed that it wasn't how we'd imagined a Northern beach. There was wide golden sand, little cafe and nothing was grey at all. WE had a look in the rock pools, but didn't find much. Joe managed to find a shrimp and two dead crabs, and that was about it.
In the evening we had a barbeque, which was very yummy and Joe rebeled against civiliation and went without a plate. Then we watched Corpse Bride, which reinforced Paul's supicions about brides. It's very sweet, but I did feel sorry for the Corpse Bride. I also want to cosplay her, but that's probably to be expected.
I leave you with a video of the largest tank. You can see Humphrey, he's the big grey fish, who's species can get as large as a van and who like to play with divers. There is also a pufferfish, which thinks it's a yo-yo, and a leopard shark amoungst other things.
