Skip to main content

Northumberland


The week before last I spent a few days in lovely Northumberland. I have relatives who live in Ashington {about 18 miles from Newcastle} and although I wish we didn't live at opposite ends of the country it is nice to be able to visit such a beautiful part of the UK to see them.

One of the places I wanted to visit was Seaham in neighbouring County Durham, as it's a beach that's known for its sea glass. It's about half an hour from Ashington and the first thing we saw when we arrived was a beautiful steel sculpture of a WW1 soldier called Tommy on the seafront. It's by Ray Lonsdale and shows the soldier reflecting on the sheer horror of World War One shortly after peace is declared.




The detail and texture is stunning and the rust coloured patina reminds me of the Angel of The North. It was originally meant to be a temporary installation but the residents of Seaham raised money so they could keep it there permanently.

So.......the seaglass. Well I wasn't expecting to leave with a bucket load but I didn't find a lot of seaglass and definitely none of the gorgeous coloured stuff you see if you Google Seaham sea glass!
There are several beaches at Seaham and we tried two of them but I just found a handful of small but still lovely pieces. I managed to find more glass on the beach at Whitley Bay in about 20 minutes than I found at Seaham in a couple of hours. The Seaham glass is more rounded and pebble like compared to the Whitley Bay glass though.


Seaham sea glass. I did find one small yellow piece and some mint and yellow milk glass.


Flatter and less smoothed Whitley Bay sea glass. The pebble with the hole was found at Seaham. The hole is definitely man-made but how old it is I just don't know.

I also found this...



I first thought it was fossilised "worms" but after a bit of investigating on Google I discovered it's fossilised coral.

We also visited the Northumbrian Hedgehog Rescue Trust where my uncle volunteers one morning a week. He helps to clean out the cages and weigh the hedgehogs. I've never been as close up to one before!



Uncle Barry not smiling...I'm sure the hedgehog is though... 

We also visited Durham where we wandered around the shops for a while then went into the cathedral. 


You weren't allowed to take photos inside unfortunately but I noticed some of the columns were made of a black stone full of fossils and were beautiful. I've since found out it's Frosterley Marble, a black limestone similar to this photo.


Photo: Iain Biggs

We also drove up to Kelso in the Scottish borders, ate 99's and a mountain of fish, chips and mushy peas. I'd been looking for some fudge to bring back with me and hadn't managed to find any until we got to Newcastle train station on my way back home where there were a few stalls selling handmade stuff and fudge! It was made by a company called The Northumbrian Fudge Parlour and I tried the Chocolate and Caramel flavour. It was the most delicious fudge I've ever tasted. Sadly they don't seem to sell online or I would have put in a bulk order!





Copyright © 2015 Cinnamon Jewellery. All rights reserved.
Labels:

Comments

  1. Miss Val's CreationsWednesday, June 17, 2015

    Looks like a fun visit. I love the pieces of sea glass you found. The fossilised coral is really interesting. There must be a lot of hedgehogs there for there to be a rescue. They are cuties! Old cathedrals are always amazing. I'm sure it was gorgeous inside.

    ReplyDelete
  2. littleRamstudioThursday, June 18, 2015

    Do love beach finds, you've made me want to visit the beach now!
    Heather :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cinnamon JewelleryThursday, June 18, 2015

      Thanks Heather! I live by the beach at home but always find more interesting stuff on beaches that are miles away!

      Delete
  3. Kalaya SteedeWednesday, June 24, 2015

    Those sea glass finds are AWESOME!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cinnamon JewelleryWednesday, June 24, 2015

      Thanks Kalaya! They're still sat in a bag in my shed waiting for inspiration to strike!

      Delete
    2. Kalaya SteedeSaturday, June 27, 2015

      LOL! That sounds about right. I have a bag of shells to contend with and had them for over a year now!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Your comments and questions are very welcome!
If you would prefer to contact me directly please use the contact form on my "get in touch" page.
Any comments containing links will be deleted so please don't waste your time.....

Popular posts from this blog

Combining Soldering And Enamel

The need to make cute, brightly coloured enamel studs propelled me into the world of combining soldering with enamel a couple of years ago. I knew from reading up on it that it was possible to enamel and solder on the same piece but wasn't too confident I was able to do it back then. It was a slightly embarrassing occurance that made me just get on with - I'd made some enamel studs with glued on stud posts. I'd used 2 part epoxy resin which was a job in itself as it set hard after 5 minutes so I had to keep mixing more up. The finished studs looked ok but that little voice in my head kept asking "are you sure you want to use glue?" I wasn't but didn't think I had any other way to do it so I used glue. I sold my first pair and merrily sent them on their way to Canada. A couple of week later the buyer got in touch to say the stud post had come off one of the earrings and the other was hanging off. I was mortified, apologized profusely and refunded her m...
32 comments
Read more

Amazing Enamel Effects

Buying a kiln recently has given me the chance to experiment with enamelling on larger pieces of copper and to produce some really cool effects. These effects happen when you combine different types of enamel. I usually use smaller flat pieces of copper for making enamelled earrings and have had some of these effects happen when firing with a torch but they are much more obvious when you use larger pieces. I made a few practice pieces which you can see in the photos below. This was flux {a transparent enamel not to be confused with soldering flux!} applied straight onto copper and fired until the copper was a bright golden colour. Then I added a layer of liquid enamel in green and red over the flux and fired again.  The lines and spots form when the enamel becomes hot enough to start moving and in this case the transparent pushes through the liquid enamel layer forming these cool lines and spots. The effect is better in the green liquid enamel than the red.  N...
31 comments
Read more

Etching Silver Using Nail Art Stamps

So my love/hate relationship with etching sterling silver continues. I've tried a few times now and always end up with different results most of them not that great to be honest. I've tried connecting the silver and a piece of copper to a 9v battery and also heating the ferric nitrate. Sometimes the results are good sometimes not so good. I currently have an etched piece of silver sheet waiting to be reticulated and rid it of the mess that is the etched "pattern".  I now know that using stamps and Stayz On ink just doesn't work with silver - the time needed to etch using ferric nitrate is much longer than etching copper and the ink starts to wear away after about an hour. This results in the pattern being patchy as the resist is eaten away and the silver ends up quite lumpy and course looking. I have yet to try using pnp paper. I don't know why but it all seems a bit of a faff to do. I don't have a laser printer so would need to find somewhere or...
34 comments
Read more