Year: 2024

Our 2024 holiday: Cragside

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A photo of Cragside house, looking through the trees

This is the seventh blog post about what we did on our 2024 holiday to Northumberland. Previously, I wrote about Lindisfarne, and today is about our visit to Cragside.

Cragside was built for Lord William Armstrong, who you may remember from Bamburgh Castle. Unlike Bamburgh Castle, Cragside was never a castle and it started life as a small fishing lodge. But over time, it was extended into a large stately home, and hosted many famous guests, including royalty. Also, unlike Bamburgh Castle, Cragside is no longer in the Armstrong family, and today it’s one of the National Trust’s top tier properties.

What makes Cragside interesting is its claim to be ‘the original smart home’. As you will know from my various blog posts about Home Assistant, home automation is an interest of mine. Cragside was one of the first homes to have electricity, back in the 19th century. And, due to its remote location, this was powered by hydro-electricity rather than burning coal. There’s also a water-powered lift, and an early dishwasher.

The later extensions to Cragside are the most extravagant, including a massive marble fireplace and a huge billiards room with heated seats. There’s also a ‘lab’ where you get to see demonstrations of some of Armstrong’s innovations.

Greenhouses in the gardens at Cragside

Gardens and grounds

The Cragside estate is extensive, and there’s a ‘Carriage Drive’ which is a six mile, one-way circuit that you can drive around. We did the drive to be able to access the play area to let our eight-year-old burn off some energy at the end of the day, and saw a young fox on the way.

Away from the house, across a steep gorge (which is spanned by an iron bridge), are the formal gardens. These came into National Trust ownership later than the house, and some restoration work is ongoing. The greenhouses are home to a number of tropical plants that wouldn’t otherwise grow in the Northumberland climate, and again, technology is in use here. The huge plant pots sit on metal turntables, so that the pots can be easily rotated to ensure even growing.

We spent all day at Cragside, and still didn’t get to see everything. Thankfully, overnight accommodation is available in some of the old worker’s cottages, should you choose to visit for more than one day.

Accessibility

Although Cragside house was one of the first to have a lift, it’s currently not in use, and there are some quite narrow corridors. If you’re unable to climb stairs, then you’ll only be able to see the ground floor of the house. There’s a free shuttle bus that travels between the main car park, visitor centre (in the stables), house and formal gardens.

Entry is free to National Trust members, but as it’s one of their top tier properties, the prices for non-members are comparatively high – around £25 each for adults. It’s also exempt from many of the promotions that offer discounted entry. But it’s a full day out with plenty to see.

Our 2024 holiday: Lindisfarne (Holy Island)

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A photo of Lindisfarne castle on Holy Island

This is the sixth blog post about what we did on our 2024 holiday to Northumberland. Previously, I wrote about The Farne Islands, and today is about our visit to Lindisfarne.

Lindisfarne, also known as Holy Island, is an island just off the Northumberland coast, further north (and separate from) the Farne Islands, which we visited earlier in the week. Unlike the Farne Islands, Lindisfarne is inhabited all year round, and connected to the mainland by a causeway.

Lindisfarne Castle

From a distance, the standout feature is Lindisfarne Castle, on the eastern tip of the island. Now in the custody of the National Trust, this ancient castle was converted into a holiday home in the early twentieth century. The interior is laid out as it would have been around 100 years ago, and each room is full of objects of interest. There’s plenty of information on offer about the history of the building, as well as its owner and architect. You can head up to the top for great views back across the island and up the coast.

The National Trust is also responsible for Gertrude Jekyll’s Garden, which overlooks the castle. It’s an interesting example of a garden that’s designed to both look pretty, and withstand the exposed coastal conditions. The plants have been specially chosen for the hardiness and their ability to survive sandy soil and strong winds.

A view of the village of Lindisfarne with the ruins of Lindisfarne Abbey to the left.

The village

There’s a small village on the island, which is home to a few pubs, shops, cafés and a post office, should you wish to get a special postmark on your postcards home. There’s also St Aidan’s Winery, best known as the producers of Lindisfarne Mead, which is produced on the island. We may have bought a few things there to take home.

Lindisfarne is also a very religious place, and you can go to the ruins of Lindisfarne Priory, which is now looked after by English Heritage. We didn’t go; having been to the castle, had lunch and done a bit of shopping, time was slipping away and we needed to get back across the causeway.

The causeway

The causeway disappears under the sea at high tide, so it’s worth checking the safe crossing times. Thankfully, these allowed for a decent day out when we visited, but we needed to have left by 3:30pm, otherwise it would be after 10pm until we could leave the island again by road. You’ll probably find that the shops, cafés, pubs and attractions vary their opening times to match the tide times, which means that if everything is about to close, you probably need to get back to your car and get away. There are warning sides all over the island about the dangers of getting stranded, and yet it’s still approximately a monthly occurrence.

Whilst raising the causeway, or building a bridge, has long been discussed, it’s opposed by residents. I suppose being able to drive onto an island that it regularly cut off from the mainland has its charms. Although personally, I think the French had the right idea with Mont St Michel, where you park on the mainland and travel across on a shuttle bus.

Accessibility

As well as the causeway, the island is reachable by boat from Seahouses. There’s also a bus service from the mainland. The main car park on the island charges £10 for all-day parking. The village is mostly on flat ground and shouldn’t present too many issues for people with mobility issues.

However, if you do have mobility issues, maybe give the castle a miss. It’s up a steep hill with uneven cobblestones, narrow doorways and lots of steps. Entry to the castle is free for National Trust members, or £11 for adult non-members.

Max Card – discounted days out

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A photo of a Max Card - which is a green, credit-sized shaped card. The serial number has been partially covered up.

If you’ve been reading the reviews of the places we’ve visited on our recent trip to Northumberland (especially to The Alnwick Garden and Bamburgh Castle), you’ll note that I mention whether there’s a Max Card discount available. A Max Card is a discount card available to parents of children with special educational needs or disabilities, and/or children who are ‘looked after’ (i.e. in foster care).

We recently got one, as our eight-year-old has additional needs. Each Max Card is valid for up to two years, and offers discounts to various attractions across the UK. The discounts vary – sometimes it allows free entry for the child, or it may be 25% off. The aim of the card is to make fun family days out more financially accessible to families with children who have additional needs, or who are being looked after. Having a child with additional needs can incur additional expenses – we recently paid out £400 for one of our eight-year-old’s assessments – and so being able to have discounted days out is helpful. It also offers good experiences for looked after children who may have experienced trauma.

Where you can use your Max Card

The list of venues is quite extensive. Many (but not all) National Trust properties are on there, and locally to us is Eureka, the national children’s museum. Whilst we were in Northumberland, we were able to get discounts on three of the places we visited. As well as museums and zoos, there are discounts available at places like Go Ape, theme parks and Haven resorts. All of the Merlin sites are included too, such as the Sea Life Centres, Warwick Castle and Alton Towers.

The discounts available vary by venue. In some places, it’s a percentage discount, whilst others may allow a certain number of people in your party to go in free as long as at least one full price ticked is purchased.

It’s worth noting, however, that most places will only accept a Max Card if you buy tickets on the day in person – many will not offer the discount if booking in advance online.

How to get a Max Card

Because of the eligibility criteria, you can’t simply order a Max Card online. Instead, they’re are available through a local distributor, which is usually the local authority or a charity. For Calderdale, where we live, the distributor is the charity Unique Ways, which supports parents of SEND children. There’s a £6 administration charge to collect the card, but we have already saved far more than this on our Northumberland holiday alone. It has also meant that we could join Unique Ways as members, and access their workshops and training courses, which I hope will be helpful to us in future.

Our 2024 holiday: Warkworth Castle

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A photo of the entrance gate to Warkworth Castle

This is the fifth blog post about what we did on our 2024 holiday to Northumberland. Previously, I wrote about The Farne Islands, and today is about our visit to Warkworth Castle.

One of the things that Northumberland is known for is its castles. We’d already been to Bamburgh Castle, and passed near to Alnwick Castle. Warkworth Castle is further south, and to the east of Alnwick and near Alnmouth. It’s an English Heritage property.

Unlike Bamburgh, Warkworth Castle hasn’t been extensively restored. Whilst the outer walls remain, most of the interior buildings have gone. The keep is still there but it’s not furnished inside – just a series of empty rooms. Although each room had a metal plaque labelling it, there was a real lack of information about what each room was used for. I’m sure Warkworth Castle had an interesting history, but I didn’t feel like I learned much whilst there.

Thankfully, there was a medieval falconry display by Raphael Historic Falconry taking place when we visited. Whilst I’ve seen plenty of falconry displays over the years, it was good to learn about how birds were used to hunt during the medieval period. They’re back again next week; if you are going to visit Warkworth Castle, maybe do so when there’s an event on, as otherwise you may struggle to fill even half a day there.

Accessibility

Wheelchair access is possible to ground floor, but not to the keep or any other indoor areas. Alnmouth is the nearest railway station, and from there you can catch a couple of bus services – there’s a 15% discount if you arrive by public transport. A car park is available on site. English Heritage members get in free.

Our 2024 holiday: The Farne Islands

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A photo of the Farne Islands.

This is the fourth blog post about what we did on our 2024 holiday to Northumberland. Previously, I wrote about The Alnwick Garden, and today is about our visit to The Farne Islands.

I’ve mentioned the Farne Islands in my previous posts about Seahouses and Bamburgh Castle. They’re a collection of 15-20 islands just off the Northumberland coast – the number of visible islands depends on the tides. People have lived on the islands in the past, but nowadays there’s no year-round human residents. They’re now looked after by the National Trust.

Whilst humans may no longer live there, plenty of birds and seals make it their home instead, and so there are plenty of boat tours from Seahouses to go and see them. We went on a two hour tour with Billy Shiels; ours was a ‘non-landing’ tour that visited several of the islands but didn’t dock at any of them. Other tours do land at one or two of the islands; if you’re a National Trust member then you can land for free but non-members have to pay a landing charge.

A photo of an Atlantic Puffin sat on a rock on the Farne Islands

Bird life on the Farne Islands

Probably the biggest draw for people visiting the Farne Islands is the opportunity to see Atlantic Puffins. They’re not there all year round – indeed, when we visited a couple of weeks ago, they were grouping up to get ready to fly out to sea. They’ll stay out at sea until the spring, so we were lucky to see them. Indeed, we probably saw thousands of them – swimming, flying, eating or just lounging around on the rocks. Puffins are one of my favourite birds – I’ve seen a few at a distance at RSPB Bempton Cliffs in East Yorkshire, but I had never been this close to them before. I managed to get lots of photos of them, and it was amazing to see them flying overhead.

Besides the puffins, we saw shags, razorbills, cormorants, oyster catchers, eider ducks, terns and kittiwakes. Indeed the kittiwakes still had some quite fluffy chicks in their nests on the rocks when we visited.

A photo of a grey seal sat on a rock, on the Farne Islands

Grey seals

As well as the birds, there were hundreds of grey seals. Many of the females were pregnant, so there will hopefully be lots of pups in the autumn. Whilst we saw plenty lounging around on the rocks, there were a few out swimming as well. At other times of the year, it’s possible to see thousands of seals on the islands.

The boat trips are not cheap – expect to pay around £25 per person for a two hour trip. But it was absolutely worth it – I keep using the word ‘amazing’ but I can’t think of any other words to describe what an experience it was. We got really lucky with the weather too – nice and sunny with not too much wind. It was definitely one of my top life experiences.

Creating a Bluetooth proxy with ESPHome

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A photo of an m5stack Atom Lite which has been flashed with ESPHome firmware to act as a Bluetooth Proxy for Home Assistant

My latest Home Assistant project has been creating a Bluetooth Proxy – a device that essentially extends the range of my Raspberry Pi’s Bluetooth signal. To do this, I’ve purchased a small device with a ESP32 chip on, and flashed it with firmware from ESPHome.

Okay, so that introduction has a lot of jargon. Allow me to break it down a little.

What is a Bluetooth proxy?

Because Bluetooth connections are point-to-point, you can’t use range extenders like you can with Wifi, Zigbee and Thread networks. That means that any Bluetooth devices that you want to connect to Home Assistant need to be in range of the device that you’re running Home Assistant on. I recently moved my Raspberry Pi to a different location, which meant that it was out of range of one of my Bluetooth thermometers.

A Bluetooth proxy acts as a kind-of bridge between Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. You place the proxy device within range of the Bluetooth devices that you want to connect to Home Assistant, and connect it to your home Wi-Fi network. Once set up, Home Assistant should see your Bluetooth devices as if they were in range.

If you’re running Home Assistant Container, then a Bluetooth proxy may also be easier to set up than a USB Bluetooth dongle. Passing USB devices into a Docker image doesn’t always work well.

It’s worth noting here that Bluetooth proxies are just a Home Assistant ‘thing’. They won’t help you connect a Bluetooth speaker to, say, a smartphone that’s out of range. Also, you can’t buy a device that works as a Bluetooth proxy out of the box. Seriously, if you go onto Amazon and search for ‘Bluetooth proxy’ (sponsored link), all you will get is results for Bluetooth adaptors and development boards with ESP32 chips.

The M5Stack Atom Lite

Whilst there are lots of boards that you can buy, a good option is the M5Stack Atom Lite (also available from AliExpress, where I got mine). This is because it comes with a plastic case, and connects easily using a USB-C cable. You could buy a different board and make your own case for it, but I don’t have a lot of time right now and don’t own a 3D printer. Besides, it costs less than £10 delivered.

The device is tiny – about the size of a 50p piece, and less than a centimetre thick. Because it’s a development board, it also comes with several pins to connect to other devices, but these aren’t necessary if you’re just using it as a Bluetooth proxy. Inside, is the Espressif ESP32 chip.

There are other ESP32-based products in the M5Stack Atom range, that add (for example) a microphone or GPS chip, but again, we don’t need these for a simple Bluetooth proxy.

Installing ESPHome

ESPHome is a sister project to Home Assistant, as they’re both managed by the Open Home Foundation. It’s similar to Tasmota, which I’ve blogged about before, in that they’re both custom firmware packages that you can flash onto ESP devices. Whilst Tasmota and ESPHome can do many of the same things, if you want a Bluetooth proxy then you’ll need to use ESPHome as Tasmota doesn’t support it.

Probably the easiest way to install ESPHome is using one of the ready-made projects. These can be flashed directly from your web browser, as long as you’re using Chrome or Edge (Firefox doesn’t yet support WebSerial so won’t work). You’ll need to connect your Atom Lite to your computer using a USB-C cable that supports both data and charging. You may also need to install the USB drivers – on my Windows 10 machine, the ‘CH9102_VCP_SER_Windows’ download worked. You should then be able to install the firmware, which will take a couple of minutes. Once done, you’ll be prompted for your home Wi-Fi network name and password, and then you should be good to go. Home Assistant will hopefully detect your new Bluetooth proxy automatically.

Managing your Bluetooth proxy in ESPHome

I used ‘hopefully’ in the previous sentence, because this didn’t happen in my case. As I used Home Assistant Supervised, I was able to install the official ESPHome addon; if you use Docker, you can just run docker pull ghcr.io/esphome/esphome to install it. Once installed, the ESPHome addon/docker image should detect your Bluetooth proxy and allow you to ‘adopt’ it.

This will let you view the hostname of your Bluetooth proxy device, which will be something like ‘atom-bluetooth-proxy-wibble.local‘. You can then add the ESPHome integration to Home Assistant, specifying the hostname, and you’ll be good to go. As soon as the integration was working, Home Assistant was able to see a new Bluetooth device and allowed me to configure the integration.

Going forward, you should find that Home Assistant is able to automatically update your ESPHome devices whenever new firmware is available – this is a new feature from the 2024.07 release. But you can also use the ESPHome addon/docker image to add or change features on your device. You could, for example, allow your device to act as an iBeacon as well (I think).

One thing to bear in mind is that Bluetooth and Wi-Fi both use the same 2.4 GHz frequency band. So, if you’re comfortable building your own board with a wired Ethernet connection instead of Wi-Fi, then you may get better performance.

Our 2024 holiday: The Alnwick Garden

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A photo of the water cascade at the Alnwick Garden.

This is the third blog post about what we did on our 2024 holiday to Northumberland. Yesterday was about Seahouses, and today is about our visit to The Alnwick Garden and Lilidorei.

Alnwick is probably best known for its castle, and the gardens are adjacent and on land that was owned by the dukes of Northumberland. Whilst there have been formal gardens here for many years, these were mostly in a state of disrepair for much of the 20th century. Work to renovate the gardens started in the 1990s with a public opening in 2001. Since then, further phases have seen the gardens expand.

The Poison Garden

My wife Christine is a pharmacist, and so there was no question about us visiting The Poison Garden within the Alnwick Garden. Opened in 2005, this locked garden is full of poisonous plants; as such, entry is only permitted as part of a guided tour in small groups. The tour is good, as it underlines how many of the plants have legitimate medicinal uses as well as being poisonous. There are also posters about famous murderers who poisoned their victims, and what they used. It’s an opportunity to see a cannabis plant, as the garden is also involved in drug education and so has a license to grow one legally.

Elsewhere within the Alnwick Garden there’s a willow maze, which makes for a dark, tranquil space as the willow has grown over it, and plenty of water features. There’s also a more traditional walled garden at the top of the site, and a cherry tree orchard that would be fantastic to see in the spring. The Treehouse restaurant is in a massive treehouse – but you need to book table in advance. Other places to eat are available.

A photo showing an overview of Lilidorei at the Alnwick Garden

Lilidorei

Adjacent to the Alnwick Garden, but with a separate entrance, is Lilidorei – a new attraction opened in 2023 as essentially a huge kids play area. It has probably the biggest climbing frame I’ve seen, as well as sandpits and a walk around a series of themed huts. Each hut is supposedly home to a tribe, such as goblins, dwarves, elves, sprites and others. It’s probably most suitable for kids aged 4-10, and our eight-year-old loved it. There was an Olympics themed activity whilst we were there too.

Taken together, the Alnwick Garden and Lilidorei are a full day out. You can view the rest of my photos on Flickr.

Accessibility

Being a newer attraction means that accessibility is really good – there’s wheelchair access everywhere and a changing places toilet is available. Extensive accessibility information is available on the Alnwick Garden web site. There’s a car park nearby shared with the castle, and you can buy combined tickets for the garden and Lilidorei (but not the castle). A discount is available for Max card holders.

Alnmouth no longer has a railway station – the building is now home to Barter Books, famous for re-popularising the Keep Calm and Carry On poster. The nearest railway station is Alnmouth, from which you can catch a bus to Alnwick, and then there’s a free Alnwick Attractions bus that runs around the town during the summer months and school holidays.

Our 2024 holiday: Bamburgh Castle

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A photo of Bamburgh Castle taken from the car park

This is the second blog post about what we did on our 2024 holiday to Northumberland. Yesterday was about Seahouses, and today we’re going just a couple of miles up the coast to Bamburgh Castle.

Bamburgh Castle sits on a raised bit of rock by the sea, and there has been evidence of a castle on the site since around AD 547. The current castle is based on one built by the Normans in the 12th century, but much of the interior dates from the 19th century when it was used as a hospital. It then became a private residence for Lord William Armstrong, and it remains in the Armstrong family to this day.

As such, inside it is furnished as a stately home, although you can still go into the castle’s keep, and see some armour and weapons. Its long history means that plenty of archaeological digs have taken place, and some of the artefacts are on display. There’s also a separate museum focussing on Lord Armstrong’s inventions, in particular around aviation, although we didn’t go into it. There’s plenty of interactive things, which helps to keep it interesting for kids.

At present, there’s an exhibition about the Netflix series The Last Kingdom, for which the castle both serves as inspiration for the story, and a filming location. This is in the King’s Hall.

Outside the castle, there are the grounds, with a series of cannons and probably the best view of the Farne Islands from the mainland. The beach (which is publicly accessible) is also one of the best in the UK – we had a picnic there, although there is a café at the castle.

You can view the rest of my photos from our visit on Flickr.

Accessibility

Being such an ancient building, access to the upper floors is only via stairs. However, the downstairs area should be accessible to wheelchairs, and there’s a video to watch for those unable to access the rest of the castle. A discount is available to Max Card holders.

If you arrive by car, then you’ll need to pay £5 to park. However, your parking ticket is transferrable to other car parks in the village, including one by the beach. The same infrequent bus services (418 and X18) that call at Seahouses also serves the village of Bamburgh.

Welcome to August

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It’s the 1st August today. That means that it’s Yorkshire Day, and for once, I’m actually in Yorkshire as normal on Yorkshire Day for the first time since 2020.

But August is also my busiest month of the year at work. I work in university admissions, and the 15th August is the date when most 18-year-olds get their exam results, so there’s a lot of work to be done either side of this date. I’ll be working longer hours that day, as well as a couple of weekend days.

What this means is that most blog posts this month will have been written in advance. I still have the rest of our holiday to write up, which you’ll hopefully see over the next couple of weeks. And I’ll try to intersperse these posts with other topics. But there’s also a good chance that I may fall behind on my aim to publish a new blog post every other day, if I don’t manage to get enough posts written ahead of time.

Playlist of the month: Actors turned artists

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Screenshot of the actors turned artists playlist on Spotify

Last month, I shared with you some appallingly bad cheese. This month, the theme is ‘actors turned artists’ – actors who have gone on to release music. There were quite a lot to choose from, although some are technically from musical films. Here’s the link to the playlist on Spotify.

  • ‘I’m Just Ken’ by Ryan Gosling. Gosling showed his singing talent in La La Land, but his solo in last year’s Barbie movie brought greater awareness. Especially to those who don’t remember him being on the Mickey Mouse Club.
  • ‘What If’ by Kate Winslett. Winslett sang this for a 2001 animated adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and it was released as a single to promote the film. She has such an amazing singing voice, so it’s a shame that there aren’t more songs out there that she has recorded and released.
  • ‘Yellow’ by Jodie Whittaker. Whittaker is probably best known as being the 13th Doctor, and released this lovely cover version of Coldplay’s debut single for BBC Children in Need in 2019.
  • ‘On the Floor’ by Jennifer Lopez. JLo is probably as well known for her acting as for her singing. This song is probably my favourite of hers but ‘Waiting for Tonight’ is also top tier.
  • ‘The Greatest Show’ by Hugh Jackman. Oh no, another excuse to have a song from The Greatest Showman soundtrack in a playlist! Jackman was well known as musicals star before taking on the role of Wolverine in the X-Men films.
  • ‘Wild Wild West’ by Will Smith. There was a time when every Will Smith film had a song that accompanied it, although I’ve not seen Wild Wild West myself.
  • ‘Boy You Knock Me Out’ by Tatyana Ali. Ali was Will Smith’s co-star in the Fresh Price of Bel Air, and released a solo album in 1999 featuring a guest rap by Smith on this song.
  • ‘Under the Broadwalk’ by Bruce Willis. A friend at university had this on cassette tape, along with other novelty songs such as ‘Star Trekkin’ by The Firm.
  • ‘Looking for Freedom’ by David Hasselhoff. What can I say other than it’s David Hasselhoff singing?
  • ‘Falling Down’ by Scarlett Johansson. I could have chosen any number of other Marvel Cinematic Universe actors here as it seems that many of them have released albums (either solo or in bands) but I chose this one.