Dublin to …

… Newcastle, UK. 

As I mentioned yesterday we arrived in Dublin at 5:30 am for our connecting flight to Newcastle International Airport, England.  And I was sure glad for the assistance at this huge airport.  We wouldn’t have had the foggiest idea of where to go and how to get to our connecting flight gate without the help. But our lovely assistant got us through Immigration where we had our passports stamped and through to our gate in no time at all. And the funny thing is when we mentioned we were on vacation to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary she told us that she and her husband will be celebrating theirs later this year!  What are the odds!?!

The flight from Dublin to Newcastle was thankfully a short one (although very loud!) and we arrived in Newcastle by 9:15 am local time.  The wait for our luggage was also short but then we had to wait at the car rental office for our rental to be ready.  We got in earlier than we anticipated so the car wasn’t quite available yet. But after getting our car rental we were soon on our way!  YAY!

Ironically the first place we stopped was at the Costco in Gateshead, Newcastle!  Are these warehouses everywhere?!?

Since we couldn’t check into our holiday cottage until later in the afternoon we decided to check out Hauxley Nature Reserve before our blipmeet there on Sunday.  We got to the reserve in time to have lunch in the café … which was quite good.  We then walked a little bit into the reserve to check out some of the bird hides that are placed along the trail. 


When we returned to the car park Richard moved the car closer to one of the many bird feeders that are at the reserve.  He took a nap in the car whilst I photographed the many birds coming to the feeders.  My collage shows only and handful of them.  Being unfamiliar with European birds I had to use Google Lens to identify most of them so if I’m wrong on the ID please correct me!  I’ve identified them as follows clockwise from upper left:  Eurasian Blue Tit, European Goldfinch, Eurasian Bullfinch, female Eurasian Chaffinch (in front) and European Robin.

After leaving Hauxley we started the drive north to Lucker, Northumberland toward our holiday cottage.  We stopped at a couple of stores along the way to pick up some groceries for the week ahead. We got to our lovely cottage shortly before 4:00 pm and settled in for the night as it was a long journey that brought us to this wonderful place.