De avonturen van Draakje en zijn vrienden: Last night in Newcastle, before taking the ferry back home

We decided to spent our last UK night in Newcastle, having some drinks and eating out. Plan was to find a legal and save camperstop in the city and sleep in the Van there. Google didn’t give us any spots so we decided to drive to the center and go to tourist information to ask were it was allowed to camp over night. After asking several people if they new were the tourist information was we ended up in the library. There was this service point of the city counsel. Almost the same as where I used to work in The Hague. They probably know a lot about city tax, parking permits and possibilities for eldery, but they knew nothing about tourist information or camperstops. She did give us a phone number on a paper and the possibility to call the parking devision for free. And that was it, we had to find out the rest ourselves. So Tanguy made some calls and we could park on this coach parking near the Arena.

We drove over to the parking and after one look decided that this was not a very save place.

So after two hours of searching we ended up on this small farm camping about eight miles outside of Newcastle. Between cattle and sheep, even with real sheepdogs.

Sheep

Our camping spot

A dog was driving the sheep

After settling in we called a taxi and went to town. The taxi driver was a really nice guy and droped us off at the “under the bridge tavern”. Which was litterly under the bridge and a really nice place with their own brewery.

Tavern Under the Bridge beer

Unfortunately the beer wasn’t really my tast, but the pub was very nice.

We left for some Italian, and then came back for some more drinks. Then the pub closed and we had to go back to the campsite. We phoned the taxi company and had a whisky while we waited. We didn’t want to take the taxis outside because they would be twice as expensive. We rather spend our money on whisky.

This morning after paying for the campsite (we couldn’t find the owner yesterday) we went to this large Asda and then to the largest shopping mall in Europe for lunch. They had a Wagamama there, so that’s were we had lunch 😋.

Wagamama lunch

It was delicious. After lunch there was no time to do some more shopping, we had to go to the ferry.

Driving over the Tyne bridge. One of many bridges in New Castle Upon Tyne

On time at the ferry terminal

We start to learn the drill and were nicely on time at the ferry terminal. Checking in went quick, but then it took forever to get all the cars on board. Looked like they were making this 1000000 jigsaw puzzle. Fitting in one car at the time, then two motorbikes etc. etc., and we were almost the last car to fit in. Just five minutes before setting sale we were onboard the ship.

Boarding the ferry

Finally on board we went to the sundeck to wave the UK goodbye for now.

Bye New Castle, bye UK

Later that night we had a lot of fun on board, I am sure the two bottles of Prosecco had nothing to do with that 🤪. We played Bingo as proper Scots. And lost of course.

The band was good, and the drunken English girls were great entertainment. In Holland you would think she forgot to put on trousers, but after living in Scotland for some time I know that is not the case 😂.

A good last evening of a great holiday.