Tourist & Leisure Attractions: Beamish Museum

In a mock-up of a 1913 classroom, Mike and Bob acted like misbehaving school kids and got told off by a 1913 teacher!  The school was part of the Pit Village colliery village at Beamish living and working museum, complete with realistic actors in character.

This lady is demonstrating bread making in an early 20th century kitchen at Beamish Open Air Museum's pit cottages, chatting to all the visitors and making everyone feel like they'd just walked into a time warp.  We also toured the colliery itself.

Mike tried to show how they dried their clothes in the olden days at Pit Village, but the mangle won in the end.  It's enough to turn your hair white!  The excellent Beamish Open Air Museum website is is well worth a look, see our UK tourist links page.

Here we have one of the vintage trams that takes visitors around the various areas at Beamish Museum.  There are also historic buses running too.  As you can see, the weather wasn't any better in County Durham than in Scotland the previous day!

The Town is the award-winning recreation of a typical Edwardian northern market town, complete with 1913 shops, bank, offices, doctor's, garage, dentist, pub, etc.  We had lunch in the 1913 café, but they charged 2001 prices (very reasonable though).

Here's the Jubilee Sweetshop and Sweet Factory at Beamish, with jars of sweeties behind the assistants in period costume, old scales and till to the right foreground.  We viewed the sweet making and sampled them too in the small adjoining factory.

A view from the other direction of the Edwardian northern town at Beamish living and working museum.  The vintage car crossing the tram tracks is heading for Beamish Railway Station with its 1896 signal box, goods yard, shed and coal office.

The garage man here at the Motor & Cycle Works explained the workings of the 1913 garage at Beamish Museum.  This place was fascinating, with lots of historic motor signs, vehicle bits and so on.  Notice the van in the back loaded to the hilt with stuff.

This statue is called 'The Angle of the North' and it's situated just off the A1(M) highway.  It's supposed to signify your arrival in the far north of England; note the people at its base which gives an idea of its sheer enormity.  Video clips are on our videos page.

Here we are enjoying a drink in the bar before going in to dinner at the very comfortable Gateshead hotel we stayed in.  It wasn't too far from Beamish Open Air Museum in County Durham which we thoroughly enjoyed and can wholeheartedly recommend visiting.