Hartlepool

We had a good day in Newcastle despite it raining non stop for all night and all day. Went to the Baltic flour mill modern art gallery. One huge room had "art" by a Turner prize winner. Three things: A brick wall with about ten thousand bricks, each one numbered in sequence before being handed to the bricklayers randomly and built into the wall. Hence the numbers all jumbled up. This represents chaos. On the floor, a huge chequer board, each square of which has a pebble. About 680. This represents order. And a continuous film showing two scaffolders erecting a scaffold on a pebble beach, then taking it down again. I think scaffolders who used to work for me would say this represents a "bloody waste of time"!

Anyway, we saw the milenium bridge raised and lowered (no-one went through..so another waste of time), then went to the Sage, where there was nothing on that day, then to the shops, then the pictures, and finally for a really good curry, Newcastle being the curry capital of the world. We then walked back to the boat in the rain.

We slipped around 08.15 the next morning and, without any wind, motored all the way to Hartlepool. An interesting entrance through a loch which we are only able to access when the tide is quite high.

We've now left the boat for a few days as we've sadly had to return home for the funeral of a dear friend who died very unexpectedly and suddenly. We hope to return to Fizzz on Tuesday to head towards Whitby.We managed to take quite a lot of weight off the boat as you can see.