This was the one challenge that I really did not want to do and questioned every day why it was on the list, the answer is peer pressure. This suggestion, from my lovely colleague and friend Corinne, caused THE most interest out of all the suggestions that I couldn't possible not include it. So here it is, the hideous need to a, find a pig and b, lick it! This was to be a very difficult task, pigs, alive, are really difficult to come by and the temptation to lick a piece of bacon or an M&S Percy Pig was strong, I knew I needed the real thing. This led to a twitter and facebook campaign in search of someone who owned a pig or pig farm - nothing. I asked friends and family and possibilities turned into nothing. I even emailed a local country park who I never heard back from - surprise surprise as I am sure it is not every day that someone asks to lick one of their pigs.
I had heard from a friend that Aldingbourne Country Park had pigs and it was decided that if we couldn't get to the pigs a good day out could be had there, it was cheap and the cafe was meant to be lovely. So armed with the suggester, Corinne, and Jo and Sophie to witness and take photos, we headed off to Aldingbourne Country Park. Now this place is five minutes down the road from me and I had never ever been there and what a wonderful place it is. The country park has a lovely little farm where you can walk amongst the animals, apart from the pigs (I will explain!) as well as farm shop, cafe, mini-golf, play area, beautiful gardens, a woodland walk and it's just delightful. And all this for just £3.If you have children I thoroughly recommend you going and if you haven't just go anyway - we had a great time!
So down to the pig licking. We soon discovered the animals at the farm - turkeys, geese, chickens, goats, alpacas and donkeys all roaming around for the public to stroke and feed. Our hopes were high for the pigs too but there were soon dashed on seeing them fenced off. Not just fenced off but electric fenced off - there was no way I was going to be able to get near the pigs to stroke them let alone lick them. We could see them, three huge and rather hairy and ugly looking pigs, wallowing in the mud but there was to be no licking today. It was then that Corinne exclaimed that as she suggested the challenge she was free to change it slightly and an alpaca became the target. Now we had already discovered that the alpacas liked yellow and seemed drawn to my yellow phone and nails and had previously let me stroke it, if not briefly, how easy was it to be to lick it. Corinne had also agreed to lick the alpaca so we both tried our luck at alpaca rustling! Well I shall say no more and just let you watch the events unfold, pleas enjoy and think no less of me, remember this is for charity and if I stumble across a pig I will still lick it!!
Can also mention Aldingbourne Country Park had no idea we were licking their animals and if they did would probably have thrown us out. Animal licking is not recommended as you can actually catch some very nasty illnesses!
Thank you to all those who have sponsored me so far- £250 is amazing! Thank you!
Fitting in these challenges is really not easy and quite stressful but I do them knowing that lovely people are sponsoring me for them and the money is going to a great cause.
There are probably not many girls, who can honestly say, that one of their dreams in life is to stand on the pitch of the football team they support; yet I am one of those girls. I remember writing a list (I think I am addicted to lists!) as a teenager of all the things I wanted to do when I grew up. It included stand on Uluru and go to University however it also included go to St James' Park which developed into stand on the pitch at St James' park. Now I have been to St James' park a few times now to watch the football, Newcastle for all those non-footie fans! However I had yet to step foot on the hallowed turf. I had been on stadium tours of other clubs: Preston and the mighty Barcelona, two VERY different stadiums I can tell you, but equally enjoyable. However, I was yet to tour around St James'. So I came up with a plan. A plan which would not just allow a stadium tour but also the opportunity to watch a pre-season friendly game taking full advantage of the cheap, pitch side seats.
I set off early one Saturday morning, with my sister Nicky, who had never been to Newcastle. We decided to drive as planes and trains were deemed exceedingly expensive and the National Express exceedingly long! The journey north went well, and with a quick brunch stop for the world's most overpriced yet basic and luke warm breakfast ever, we arrived in Newcastle 5 1/2 hours later. We checked in to our very basic hotel near the city centre before heading into the town centre for some sight seeing and lunch. For those of you who have never been to Newcastle, it truly is a beautiful place. My sister was surprised by how different she thought it was. Newcastle has a rich heritage and boosts some amazing streets and historical monuments. Greys Monument and the surrounding avenues and streets are architectural gold. Heading down towards the river provides snippets of ancient buildings and keeps. The river cutting through the city is something to marvel at with it's many bridges ranging from the colossal Tyne bridge to the more modern millennium bridge. And I know I have not seen all that Newcastle and it's surrounding area has to offer and I will be back and will hop on to one of their sight seeing buses.
Anyway, I have digressed, again and must get back to the purpose of this post - St James' park. or now renamed as the Sports Direct Arena!! So we went to watch them play their pre-season friendly against the Portuguese club Braga, in which the final score was 1-1. We really should have won 2-0, however 1-1 stood due to a dodgy penalty decision and a disallowed goal! Anyway, it was lovely to be in the stadium, in the Leazes stand, watching Pardew run out a number of players.
So it was the next morning that we headed back to the stadium and joined a small group of others in the reception area of the main stand. What I soon realised was that there was only a few of us in the group that actually supported Newcastle and many were holidaying from all over the country and were visiting the stadium for fun. I was really hoping that our guide would be an older man, someone who knew the club and was passionate about it. Thankfully this was to be and we had a fantastic tour guide who added great humour to the tour as well as being a fountain of information about the club. We started off heading to the top of the stadium, the Leazes stand in the family section. It was here that we climbed to the very top of the stadium and the view was quite literally breathtaking, those steps were hard work! Now it is a little known fact that St James' park is the tallest stadium in Britain and from its highest seats you can see out to the North Sea.
The can never build up the stadium the other side due to planning permissions and I for one am glad, the view is amazing. From here we headed down the corporate and executive suites and sections. We even were able to look inside the suite Mike Ashley bought for his parents. It was amazing and they even had padded seats overlooking the pitch! Oh the lives of the rich and famous. Alan Shearer has his own suite and and box. I had two favourite parts to this area. Firstly, the Number 9 hall of fame which showed photos of the great players of the decades that had worn a number 9 shirt. This including Jackie Milburn, Gallacher, Les Ferdinand and the last one on the wall, Alan Shearer. There has been no over number 9's since him worthy of earning a place, and I doubt there will be for a while! My next favourite part was a painting of Newcastle's greatest games since the 1980s. This included and 3-2 win over Barcelona, a 5-1 thumping of Sunderland and most recently a 4-4 draw with Arsenal. I remember this game so vividly. I had been listening to it on the radio, like many of the games, and by half time we were 4-0 down. It really looked hopeless and fans were even leaving. However I don't know what was said at half time but in the second half Newcastle performed the greatest ever come back to draw level 4-4. It was literally the most exciting game I have ever listened to and we almost won on the final minutes of the game. This is why it makes the list of greatest games ever.
From here we went to the bottom floor and the players entrance. We headed first into the away changing rooms. Now at this point it is important for you to know that our guide had told us to sit anywhere, so we did. Once inside he proceeded to talk about how this room used to be the home changing room until Alan Shearer's testimonial match where they then moved to a much bigger and better room. It was at this point that he turned and pointed to where I was sitting, had chosen to sit, and said "And right where this young lady is sitting is Alan Shearer's peg". Of all the pegs to sit under I had chosen my hero and idol Alan Shearer's! Spooky! I was sitting in the same place Shearer sat for many years- to say I was excited is an understatement.
From here we headed into the home changing room which far out shines the away one, purposefully. No away changing room is meant to be welcoming, it's meant to be as uncomfortable and unfriendly as possible unless your Chelsea under Mourinho! The home room was great and it was lovely to have photos with the current teams shirts.
Then from here we headed out along the tunnel pitch side in the dug out. As you emerge from the tunnel the view is out of this world. The stadium looked magnificent. I would imagine as a player running out on to pitch, the feeling must be exhilarating particularly when the stadium is full of passionate, cheering Geordies. And all I wanted to do was run out on to the pitch. To stand in the centre circle and be in the middle of this epic stadium. Here is where the problem lay. Our guide, seriously repeated several times that under no circumstances must anyone stand on the pitch. My heart fell. I wanted so much to but my respect for the club, the hallowed turf and amazing work of the groundsman meant I adhered to his request, well kind of. I did manage to stick my big toe on to the grass and hover my foot over it. That is as close as I will ever get to standing on the pitch at St James' Park and I am very happy with that. Just being pitch side and in the dug out was enough for me, the whole tour itself. I learnt loads about Newcastle's heritage, how it began as two teams the West end and the East end, and how for years they played in red before switching to the legendary black and white stripes. I felt a stronger bond with my team grow and despite our recent decline I am proud to support a club with such history and passion. Yes we may have no silverware but we have won the hearts of millions in Newcastle and all over the world which makes us one of the biggest clubs in the UK. I will continue to follow and support and cheer and cry, probably the latter the most, as that is what we do as football supporters. I will always hope and dream that one day we will win a cup and relive the glory days of our early history, well it's good to have a dream!
I must extend my thanks to my sister Nicky for coming with me and to Jo Payne (@MrsPTeach) for buying me the tour tickets for a birthday present. To everyone else thank you for reading and I hope I may have inspired you to find out more about the club you support and perhaps go on a tour yourself. Enjoy! :-)
Please also enjoy my video of my trip to Newcastle.
SPOILER ALERT - All I haven't named the geochaches and where exactly they were found I do have pictures showing them, so only read on if you don't mind knowing!!
On Monday 5th August armed with a fully charged Iphone and the geochache app installed, my family and I headed out in the rain in pursuit of our first geocache find. I had high hopes of geochaching, having heard many good things about it and eagerly looked forward to hunting out some treasure.
We had decided to start easy for our first adventure and headed to the local woods at Slindon parking in the Dukes road car park. Advice from the website said it is best to start with easy ones. At home it, my app showed that there were several caches in this location so thought this would give us a good start. However, on arrival to the woods by GPS signal failed and it took me at least 5 minutes, in the rain, to load the app and select the first cache to navigate to. Eventually I found a pocket of signal amongst the tree coverage and we used the mapping tool to navigate to the hidden cache. We tried to work out the coordinates and use the compass however it all seemed tricky and we couldn't do it (and I am supposed to be a geographer! Give me a real map any day!) We found the first one using the description and the hint, slightly cheating, and discovered a cache full of small toys and treasures. We signed the log book and I left a slip of paper with my blog address on. Our first geochache found relatively easily, hmm surely there was something more to this?
I tried to log that we had found the cache and leave a message however my lack of GPS meant this failed after a few minutes of freezing my screen. Then again I had to wait until I hit pockets of GPS signal to be able to navigate to the next cache, however again we found this one relatively easily as well.
The third cache proved very tricky to find and we spend a good well waded through the undergrowth and bushes hunting for the right tree. At one point I even thought I had found a hidden door in a tree, but it was not to be! Now this is what I thought geocache was all about, getting off the beaten track and trudging through brambles, getting cuts and scratches. Eventually my mum found it hidden amongst the leaves at the base of an oak tree. This time we had found a microcache which was a camera roll with a scroll log book in it. We duly signed it and returned the cache. One of the rules of geocaching is always ensure you return the cache to the place where it is found and sign the log book.
The next cache we found was a delightful cache full of toys that had been hidden by a junior cacher. It was great seeing all the bits and pieces people were leaving behind from marbles, bouncy balls, keyrings to fir cones. All pieces treasure in someone's eyes.
The next cache proved to be a tricky find and we ending up searching the wrong area over tree stumps! Eventually I found this one and thus ended our final one in the woods.
Our next destination was to be a hike up the hill towards Slindon folly. Despite the trek it was worth it for the amazing view at the top. You could see out as far as the Isle of Wight and it was beautifully peaceful up there. The folly we discovered was a gateway to nowhere, a monument built because they could, quite literally a folly. I had always found the folly a creepy landmark however today, with the sun shining and the peaceful stillness, it was a beautiful, calming sight. We easily found the cache up there and spent some time going through the treasures it held. This was by far the best cache so far. It held items such as a pair of sunglasses, nail files, pencils and toys and the log book held messages from people all over the world who had come to find this cache. It really was extraordinary to know that people had travelled far to walk up the hill to this folly and leave a message. We decided to do a treasure swap so left a keyring of Cleopatra for a small 'Little Miss Naughty' car sticker thing.
Now I must say that we have been caching for a few hours now and the battery on my phone was now drained to under half. I did not have much hope it would last much longer. The app really drains your power and the lack of GPS really hampered the speed of us finding each cache. I really wan't expecting it to be so difficult to work but it was and left a real disappointment to the experience. I knew I probably had enough battery for a few more so we headed off into Slindon village where several were hidden in close proximity to each other. we quickly found the micro one hidden at the church before heading down towards the pond where we located another micro one.
Slindon is really a beautiful little village and is really a must visit destination.
However it was at the pond where my phone died and thus ended our geocaching for today. I knew there were other sites in the village however it would have been looking for a needle in a haystack. So we decided to call it a day.
So what did I learn today? Geocaching can be fun when you have GPS navigation and it is not raining. That it is great to see who has found the cache before you and where they have come from as well as looking at the treasures left behind. It also have me a desire to want to go out and find harder caches in places I had never been before. I realised this would be a great way to explore the countryside, the beautiful English countryside, because it is just that and we really need to take time to appreciate it and explore it. I spent most of my childhood roaming the countryside and today was a reminder that just because you get older doesn't mean you should stop being a child at heart.
This challenge is only partially complete - I have achieved the seek part, the next step is to hide a cache. Well I have to climb a mountain so maybe that's a good place to hide one! :-)
