As Liz Conway notes, life feels like it’s all going downhill when you reach 70, but on the other hand, a ride downhill on a bicycle is one of the most exhilarating adventures you can actually have. Especially if there’s…
Year: 2019
“Waste not, want not”
When our daughter was growing up, just at the point of beginning school, I often took her out on a ‘special adventure’ — it was only when she was well into talking with her new school friends that she discovered…
MarketPlace: 3 in one!
It’s a Visitor Information Point It’s a Post Office with Money Machine I was just chatting with a good friend about the heroic stint Elsie Archer put in, maybe a decade ago now, when the Post Office was between owners…
The BaynesTravel enterprise . . . steady as she goes
The big ‘B’ is everywhere, as I found to my delight when catching photographs at the beginning of this little diary. All the vehicles seem to start, and finish, here in the yard around the Hen House, but they travel…
The butcher is open . . .
I had a little chat yesterday with affable Joe Mews, the butcher now running Allendale Butchers, in Kirton House next to the Allendale Co-op. Joe kicked off the New Year in fine fettle by keeping Allendale Butchers open, and he’s…
Bin Day
Maybe this diary entry should be filed under the category, ‘Rural Life is Not Really That Easy’. The bin men (and they are, always, men) drive over the Sparty Lea bridge, and collect the garbage from the bins that local…
Allendale area notices
I’m impressed! With over 1000 members, this friendly Facebook group under the unprepossessing name of Allendale area notices, features a running set of updates, queries, answers and information on things going on in Allendale and environs. I didn’t know about…
Behold: beauty and loveliness, naturally
Anna Stonehouse’s lovely establishment, the salon called Natural Beauty, faces into Allendale’s Market Square. I’ve heard that men are welcome within, but those of my generation are possibly not completely persuaded, though they might, just, indulge in a little skin…
The bus service . . . on strike or not?
In deeply rural areas like Allendale and the East Allen Valley, the only transport that links isolated hamlets with the town (Hexham and then Newcastle upon Tyne) is the bus. We’re fortunate to have a regular and useful service, though…
If a well-established rookery brings good fortune . . .
. . . then Jennifer Makepeace’s Gift Shop has been truly blessed. But on the whole, I’d say that The Gift Shop, a renowned institution in Allendale, has thrived because of its proprietor’s dedication and acumen, even though, as she…