Euro tour day 5

Euro tour Day 5

I had a good nights sleep and needed it too as I was getting sluggish especially when I had not had decent sleep since I had arrived in England. I looked up the records office I was going to visit and found you had to make an appointment. I decided I should turn up just after it opened and see what happens. It had been raining when I first walked out to get to the train station and crispy too.

The Durham records office was a nice walk from the train station and was sign posted all the way. 

Not many places do stuff like this with decent directions for those on foot. I had to sign a visitors pass and walked in as I knew “I needed an appointment and the records person told me it was alright as they did not have huge amount of bookings so there were machines that would be available. They took me around to where the microfiche are and explained how I search the ones I am after through the catalogue they have on the benches especially since the country registration districts do change. They had newspapers archived too from various areas. The records do include non conformists too which is good. I searched through the records for several hours and could not find anything I was after.  It doesn’t mean that its not there it could mean i am looking in the wrong area.

Afterwards I wandered around the city of Durham and wanted to have another look at Durham Cathedral. I was able to get a picture with the knocker. The food is different as I had chips and a sausage and the sausage was actually battered. Different, but edible. I was happy to wander around and see things that I had not seen before. I bought myself a Durham University tshirt and the lady who used my card couldn’t see my signature and wanted something that had it. I showed her my license as it has my signature on it. If she had a problem with that then I could show my passport. The signature on my card has faded. Afterwards on my way back I was stopped by a lovely lady who was from the WWF and wanted me to give money through my bank to pay for the tigers that are vanishing. I let her speak then told her I am on holiday. She thought it was pretty cool that I was from Australia and that I thought it was not cold yet.

After Durham I went back to Newcastle where I went to Jesmond by the metro as i wanted to visit Jesmond cemetery. This is a historic cemetery, but as I found out not really big at all. At one point it must have been, but not now. I had half hour there before they closed the gates and I left with 5 mins to go. By this time I was sore and tired. I was in for a surprise when I got back to the hostel and found I was still the only one in my room. Tomorrow there maybe others, but now it doesn’t bother me at all.

Before heading back to my room I went to see if I had won any money on the 12 pounds I put on the horses for the melbourne cup. I only won 2 pounds. It had been annoying the day before as I was trying to explain about the cup to the lady and she had no idea what it was. There was a betting form on the table and she told me to have a look and see if its in there. It was and I put money on a couple of the horses.