Tynemouth Priory!

Today I went to the Tynemouth Priory, at Tynemouth! In case the name isn't enough of a clue, it's the mouth of the River Tyne.
And there is a massive promontory that may or may not have had an iron age promontory fort on it.
It was also used as a WWII base thing, and also a coastguard base.
And in the C18th century there was a barracks building built onto the gatehouse, which was later removed! The place has been used for so much! It's amazing!

The priory was fantastic, and the graveyard was fantastic as well! We looked at the phasing of the buildings and ran around in the windy sunshine. I fell off that canon a few seconds after taking that pictures as well. (got blown off by the wind! I'm only small!) I'm very glad I brought my camera and the weather fantastic for the trip as well. I would have liked to have more time to explore the buildings and the graveyard a bit better..and walk around the outside of the property and down to the lighthouse on the spit! It looked fantastic!

It's only near Newcastle, I can probably go back sometime soon!

In other news my advanced-study plan is working pretty well thus far, and I've gotten through almost all of the notes and slideshows by this point! Excellent. And I have about..oh... 1/4 of a paper left, and that takes care of all my assignments for this academic year! brilliant. I just have to prepare a few prospective exam essay questions for the two exams aaaand I should be good! Awesome. And then Wales!! Then more studying for another week, then finals! yay!

Also, I got a smartphone. hello, future world!

I haven't written anything in a while!

I was attempting to print out a document on the tiny HP printer that doesn't really work this evening. I re-located the printer to the loft because
a) I took apart the little bookcase during mock-packing and didn't have another place to put it.
b) It's not the most useful printer in the world, so it can just go upstairs now~
I managed to print the document..however the printer decided that not only was it going to continue to print in blue, but it would only print the top half of each line.

While it was doing that though, I hung my head out the opened sky-light and took some pictures. I love how you can get a feel for how the area would have been during the time of the coal-mines. Honestly it wasn't very long ago, but I'm still impressed that some of the features of the area have maintained themselves, such as the little coal doors on the sheds in the alley way, and the original cut-nails in the floorboards of my bedroom. When I eventually go back to Canada of course I'm going to miss all the big things, but the little details like that are really going to be missed as well.

I still don't know how much longer I get to stay in the UK for. I'm trying my hardest to stay for the summer, or at least for June. There are a variety of reasons, but a major one is that I just don't want to waste my time here that, through my visa, allows me to work and be a temporary legal-living person in the UK! It's great, and I love the north east. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited to go back to Canada and see everyone and go on Calgary adventures with people and move into the awesome condo with Amy. It just doesn't feel like it's time yet...
Though with unemployment rates for students being rather high this summer I'll be taking the best job I can manage, I guess? Tomorrow I'm writing and emailing off an application for another job that doesn't have any issues with the end date of my visa, which is awesome, so fingers are crossed for that! They are also crossed for the Calgary Heritage Park to email be back to say they want me full time as a curatorial assistant...because that would be good too!
Oh job hunting.. At least I'm getting lots of experience doing interviews over Skype. loooots.

RRS Discovery

The small film I created to go along with my trip to the RRS Discovery. Also, an overview of my day.

4am. Wake up in a panic, worried I'd missed my alarm.
5am. Alarm goes off. Proceed to run around getting ready.
6:10am. Taxi! This was earlier than I wanted, but he was pretty booked up on a tuesday, apparently.
6:45am. Sitting at train station.
7:23-10:45am. Sat on a train, saw Lindisfarne out the window, got to Edinburgh and switched trains, fell asleep, woke up as we were arriving in Dundee.
10:50am. Round the corner of the train station and had to compose myself because the Discovery was right there. Right. There.
11-11:30am. Cafe lunch break!
11:30-1:30. Museum and ship. Oh my god it was so wonderful!
1:30-3pm. Wandered around the Howff cemetery, and then the McManus art galley and museum. Dundee seems pretty cool!
3pm. make my way slowly back towards the train station.
4:06-8pm. Trains home.

And then I caught a bus and came back to the house and made chips and put up pictures and fell asleep. Done day~ x

ps. I found and ate haggis crisps. they were pretty good!

I forget I have glasses sometimes.

It is just going to be an pile of videos this week it seems! This one is less exciting than Malta, but I do talk about things. Not interesting things, but things! (and I edited out all the Um's. )

I went to Malta for a bunch of days!

This is the small video that came of the trip~
In the second to last clip when the camera is pointed at a small hole under a pile of rocks, that is the way we got out of the hole in the end~ Fun times bouldering in a boulder.

Malta was very lovely though, and very warm! I'm super glad it was windy the entire time though, or I might have roasted to death a little. ;)

Roman fort, early church.

Today in the land of going on site visits, my Field Archaeology of Britain class went off on an adventure to Piercebridge Roman Fort and Escomb Anglo-Saxon Church.
In the first picture at Piercebridge, we were standing within the visible remains of some of the buildings, looking towards the entrance to the fort where the gates would have been. Between those buildings, the hugeeee defensive ditches, and the gate things...they decided that it would be a perfect place for a pottery kiln (the round-ish thing). It seems an odd place for it!
Then I stood on some roman walls with my hair being crazy...as it does. And apparently someone was falling into the ditch/gutter in the background!
And behind the sheep in the third image you can sort of make out a curved wall? That was a latrine block! Now it's for sheep~

The last picture in that set there is Escomb church, which is a wonderful example of a still-standing anglo-saxon church. We were told that it surved so long because Escomb was a very poor area and so the church was never renovated and changed a lot (according to Dr. Petts or Dr. Hingley), apart from the addition of all the larger windows and the porch. It's actually built mostly from stones from Binchester Roman Fort as well, which is really cool!

Also, this gravestone!


This gravestone was pointed out to me before going to the church as something I'd probably want to see. I figured it was probably late C17th or early C18th.
Got there, and took those pictures. It was very clearly covered in inscriptions on the back so when we were released upon the site to explore a little I sat down and recorded the inscription as best I could in the few minutes we had.

HEARE.LY
ETH.THE.BODY
OF.[C]RIS[.]TE[F?]A[]
N[ ]S.SON.[ ]
INTERD.AVST.
THE.7
AD 1703
So if anyone wanted to know... that is mostly what it says :)

Surveying in Durham Castle

When I looked out the window this morning, there was frost all over the cars and grass. This was alarming, because it was another outdoor-for-ages surveying day. I bundled up, and was able to wear my warm hiking boots this time (don't have to worry about metal if you're surveying with a pencil) and got a ride into town with my friend Mark (thank you!). Good, I hate waiting for the bus when it's not even 8am yet, and the bus is late..and I probably could have slept a bit longer.

Got into town, and adventured to an interesting graveyard near Claypath that had some gravestones being terribly looked after, but the piles of vines made them look like Daleks in hiding, and a small chapel that was filled with windows and nothing much else. Met up with the rest of the surveying class, and we all headed into the castle.

I was far, far too excited to go in there! You have to get a tour to go in it seems, unless you're with someone who lives there...and so this was my first time actually get to go inside! Oh and it was just fantastic. We got to go into an area that students aren't usually allowed to be in as well, where one of the Bishop's (I believe?) garden used to be. We were surveying a wall that is currently being restored because people a while ago re-pointed said wall with materials harder than the sandstone bricks..and they are just in a terrible state now. But you could see various stages of building along the wall, as well as different periods of restoration to the building. It was really cool (both meanings) and not unlike all the site-planning I did in Ballanorris in 2011...which was nice because I had a bit of background, unlike with the geophysics machines last week!

It was a really fantastic day, and after lunch which I ate in the company of a load of small birds which joined me on a bench, we got to take a tour of the castle with another fellow in the class who lives there and is one of the tour guides as well! It was amazing, and we got to go all the way into the C12th Norman chapel, which is what I'd been wanted to see since my very first day in Durham. I loved how high the ceiling was, compared to the relatively small room~ Unfortunately we weren't able to take photos inside the castle, but I can say that we found out that the Great Hall of the Castle was used in Harry Potter too. Aw yeah~
Also, the Castle has the country's oldest still-working kitchen! The screen in front of it is from the end of the C15th as well, which is just..ugh...so cool. I was grinning for the entire tour~