113 Tynemouth and Whitley Bay

Friday 29th June

After a restful night in the hotel and breakfast, we managed to get Leon talking to us after his night of abandonment.  We were looking to visit Whitely Bay, see the seaside, then book into one of the coastal campsites that boasted fantastic sea views and seaside town entertainment.  We reached Tynemouth first and on parking up, the beach was lovely, the sun was shinning and no one would believe that yesterday's weather had happened, well apart from the working people who couldn't get the train or got stuck in traffic jams where the road was still littered with debris!
Where we parked up was an aquarium called "Bluereef", so we decided to visit.  After paying and being stamped with black ink on our hands for the privilege, (apparently this was so we could enter and leave and re-enter at will), we had a wander round.  We were beaten back by classes of 6 year olds' having school trips, so we walked round a bit sharpish.  It was enjoyable, small, but every effort made to make it interesting.  It also had a couple of otters, 4 seals and some monkeys.  All very cute. 

Just some of the examples of species

Check out the teeth on this!

Anyone brave enough to burst his bubble?

I'm beautiful, so why the down in the mouth look?

Err Hello, I don't do water.  Give me another grape.

Whitely Bay, was also small, but the beach was beautiful again.  Unfortunately, like everything else in this country at the moment, lots of businesses were shut down and it was very quiet.  We did the seaside thingy of fish and chips, and then went into one of the amusement arcades and became excited 10 year old's for 20 minutes. 

First time I've seen electric  points in a car park, Ray just had to recharge his batteries!

Whitely Bay

We had spent some time searching out possible campsites, and drove to two of them.  The first one couldn't take us as it was all static holiday homes, and the second one was much the same, but very expensive for one wee tent on a land rover.  Plan B.  We went inland and found one in the middle of nowhere on a farm, but after all the rain, even we would have struggled to get out. We finally found one called Derwent Holiday Park, near...........  We have been told it is only 10 minutes to Newcastle, but it took us nearly 2 hours to get here again from south Newcastle.

We did pass The Angel of the North, and weirdly enough it is in the middle of several major roads near a housing estate, I thought it was in the middle of nowhere.

Anyway we have booked in here for the next 3 days.  After rather a fraught time with the campsite little Hitler, and reading the 8 pages of don't s we have decided to be out all day and only come back when everyone else is asleep......