Like going through the back of the wardrobe to get to Narnia this little piece of fairyland is accessed via a small gap in a terrace of houses on a hill, – blink and you will miss it! Then squeezing between back yard allotments you follow a winding track that still gives no indication of what lies beyond, past Stewart’s house the story begins to unfold …
We arrived on a Sunday, are you hungry? he said -go down to the bar by the fishing ponds; there we were served a delicious Sunday dinner the size of which I hadn’t seen since my Grandma died, ten pounds!…. no wonder they sell a hundred dinners each Sunday.
We had come here in our motorhome with our bicycles on the 200th anniversary of the first public railway journey anywhere in the world with the birth of the Stockton to Darlington Railway… which really started in Shildon at the first railway station in the world! LOCOMOTION, a wonderful extension of the National Railway Museum in York is a short walk across one of Stewart’s fields from the site entrance, it’s a fascinating few hours particularly if you get a wet day.
Anyway, we didn’t and we cycled our socks off returning to the hottest most generous shower we have ever experienced on a campsite. Stewart is very proud of what he has done on this his project of the last ten years or so… he showed us around the very swish glamping pods, each with its own adjoining hot tub building with wood stove and ‘feasting’ table for socialising with your friends. It really is very impressive.
We arrived after a night of torrential rain during which the sky-light in our van began to leak remorselessly into our bed, not a pleasant experience. We told Stewart about this when we arrived and he said that he would put Bobby, his joiner, in the bucket of his telehandler and lift him up to have a look, Bobby stripped away the old cracked mastic and resealed us with a tube of new. Neither of them wanted a penny for this hour or so of work!
Two really nice men!
Thank you both.