2024 Grand Day Out

We had four cars for our tour of the Souht West of our region.  Alan, our erstwhile chairmain, in his Robin Hood was joined by Liz & Arthur  and  Denise & Mike in their MG TFs along with Brian and Judy who chose their daily driver ( a ford kuga) for the trip.  

We left, in bright but breezy sunshine, from the Three Horse Shoes, Horton at 10.00 and headed off through Cramlington, Ponteland, Darras Hall and along the military road to the Riverside Kitchen at Chollerford for our first coffee stop. We arrived there shortly before 11.00 in the pouring rain.  It had seemed like a good idea to go 'topless' when we left Blyth but for three of us there was some frantic erecting of hoods / tonneau covers before we finally got to go inside for coffee.

From Chollerford we headed to the Hemmel Cafe at Allenheads for lunch, the route taking us via Haydon Bridge where we crossed the river, and then through Alston, Nenthead and then on to Allenheads. We had a British Summertime mix of sunshine and showers along the way but overall, leaving the car hoods up was probably the right decision.  The rain, though had stopped by the time we arrived at Allenheads and we opted to have our lunch outside, much to the astonishment of the staff.

We came back from Allenheads via Hexham, Corbridge, Aydon, along the military road, then through Prestwick and Dinnington where some peeled of for home and others opted for a thirst quencher at the Snowy Owl first.  All in all, we'd a leisurely run out of about 120 miles.