Sensory overload

While number two son and his girlfriend and her extended family are lounging round the pool in Tenerife, and hundreds of strangers endure horrific delays at Britain's airport, Mr Thorley and I have returned, smug faced, from a glorious week in - well, if I tell you, do you promise to keep it a secret? I don't really want anyone else to know how peaceful and spacious and crowd free it is in - Northumberland. Pictured is the view from Dunstanburgh Castle: can there be a finer one anywhere?

I could wax lyrical about our adventures, but other people's holiday memories, like their dreams, aren't really that interesting. Indulge me, though, as I share a few snippets that made us smile and ponder while we were away:

• Overheard: an oh-so-posh mother at The Alnwick Garden calling to her toddler son, 'Noah, sweetheart, come and see the water features!'
• Overheard: 'He can't be a dwarf, he's eating a banana.'
• Also overheard: 'Well, it doesn't bother me, I've got no sense of smell.'
• At Ford and Etal, we learnt about the fighting at Flodden Field in 1513: 10,000 Scottish soldiers were killed in the two hours that the entire battle lasted. Their king, James IV, was among them.
• Courtesy of performers Andy and Maggie Watchorn (great name), I now know that the Northumberland pipes are so much easier on the ears than Highland pipes.
• The lanes on the approach to Holy Island smell of garden peas.
• A northern Gay Pride event route mentioned on local radio was going down Percy Street.
• Grace Darling was an amazing young woman. On 7 September 1838, aged 22, she risked her life to rescue the stranded survivors of the wrecked SS Forfarshire
• It is impossible to enter a National Trust gift shop without buying either (a) a notebook or (b) a book mark.

Back to the grindstone tomorrow.