TIC enjoyed a day in the Northumberland countryside recently. They visited historic Alnwick for coffee and the ancient Blue Bell hotel in Belford for lunch. On another beautiful summer’s day, an impromptu ceili and singalong followed in the hotel’s spacious gardens.
Now a quiet village, Belford was once a thriving town before it was by-passed by the A1 to Scotland. Until the 1980’s it marked the end of the drovers’ road where Irish cattle crossed Northern England from the Cumbrian parts like Silloth to be fattened on the Irish Northumbrian coastal plain.
The trip was organised by the centre’s Welfare Committee and was part-funded by the Emigrant Support Programme.