Durham cathedral at the Lumière Festival 2019

After Dublin last weekend, and St Andrews the weekend before, this morning we set off by train for another historic city: destination Durham.

First of all we met our god-daughter Katie for lunch (see the first extra). Katie is now in her second year at Durham University, reading Geography and Education. After the meal, Katie led us to her college for a short tour. We saw the location of Katie's first year bedroom, the college bar, the dining hall, the chapel (closed), a small computer lab, the door to the library (I was disappointed that it was locked), and several interesting architectural features and fittings in the oldest part of the building (such as ancient heavy studded double doors).

The other purpose of our visit to Durham today was to meet Katherina the Russian Party Princess, Andrew, and Ruby to visit the Durham Lumière Festival. Sadly Andrew is ill, but Eve is back from Nottingham for the weekend, so she took his ticket for the show. Katie handed us over to the others just outside the college gates, and then we headed up the road to join the queue for the centre piece exhibits in the cathedral. (Katie went home at this point: she is visiting Lumière herself tomorrow with her parents.)

If we ignore the weather (cold and wet) and and some queuing (long outside the cathedral, and almost of motorway traffic standstill proportions on the bridge across the Wear to see Mysticète the whale), we really enjoyed our visit to the festival. The highlights for me were the fire displays in the cathedral garden - they provided a good opportunity to warm up (see the second extra) - and the whale. I also had fun talking to other people while we were queuing.

Durham railway station was packed this evening, so much so that it looked like we might not fit onto the last train back to Edinburgh tonight. Amongst hordes of others, we only just managed to squeeze onto the the late-running 21:16 service. Most of our fellow travellers disembarked just a few minutes later at Newcastle, so once they were gone it was easy for us to find our booked seats and relax for the rest of the journey.

It's been a grand day out, but I have to say that I am looking forward to a full day at home tomorrow without any fixed commitments apart from a couple of Skype calls with family members in Sussex and Canada.

Exercise today: walking (19,017 steps).