Sunday in Northumberland

  

Sundays are special. They're for big cups of tea and rooting around in bookshops. For walking up hills or along beaches. Redecorating the living room, or even just reorganising your sock draw. They're for whatever you want them to be.

Today is Sunday, and although my morning was fairly self indulgent, the afternoon has been spent working on my Masters thesis. I'm still in the early stages where you feel like you're swimming through treacle, and I can only look at it for so long. So I thought I'd take a little break and share some of the photographs from a couple of Sundays ago, when I had a wonderful day down near Newcastle with Ben, pootling around National Trust properties and eating the most delicious Sunday roast.

We visited Cherryburn - the birthplace of Thomas Bewick, a name I didn't know until we went in, but then realised I was actually quite familiar with his work. A wood engraver and a naturalist, Bewick revolutionised print art in the middle of the 18th century, illustrating numerous books about natural history, amongst other things. Not only was the printing method he developed much cheaper than other methods, his meticulous attention to detail, and the fact that he based his illustrations off actual specimens meant his books were surprisingly accurate for their time. I think it's amazing that he was so determined to tell such an accurate story all those years ago. The property is tiny, especially compared to other National Trust properties, but as I'm sure you can tell by the lengthy paragraph I've ended up dedicating to it, I really loved it and learnt a lot. I'd highly recommend it if you're in the area!

We stopped into a pub I'd heard good things about, The Feathers Inn for Sunday lunch, and although it was crammed to bursting they managed to find us a seat in a little outside area, which we were more than happy to take in such beautiful sunshine.

As I've mentioned before, I'm a stickler for knowing where my food has come from, especially meat, so I was incredibly impressed to see this map on the back of the menus, detailing exactly where all of the produce the pub uses in food comes from. Funnily, they get some of their vegetables from the same crop share Ben's family uses - Go Local.

The local ingredients really shone in the food that we ate - fish fritters, classic Sunday roast with beef and rabbit pie. I only have one gripe, and that's that we were so full we couldn't sample the dessert menu! Next time we're going to mains and pudding rather than starters and mains.