Corbridge - Part II

So, what else did we see and do in Corbridge?  Bill had recommended lunch at the Black Bull, which turned out to be excellent advice.  

 

It was a traditional olde-worlde place with coal-burning fireplaces and leather chairs that made me think 'Gentlemen's Club' (Except these days the lap dancing parlours have usurped that name.  

I feel a rant coming on, so we'll move on now...)

 

After lunch we headed to Bishop's Yard, which was a major find.   You'll never know how much discipline I had to use.  

 Actually, given we were on the train I couldn't really buy much, but boy did I see loads of temptations.  

Lawrence Stephenson Antiques was in the

most beautiful building, light and airy.  They had loads of lovely old furniture.  

 
It was rather conservative compared with the other places we found.  

I took their business card as they do furniture refinishing and some of mine could do with a touch up.  Mind, ever since I had my buffet refinished I've lived in terror that someone will put a wet glass on it, so maybe it's better to leave it shabby.




Then we visited the folks I'd read about in Country Living.  Their shop was fairly amazing.  It's call REfound Objects.  Their website is really clever, I think; all those words that end up having RE in them. 

Yes, that is a light fixture made from wine bottles...

The warehouse is an amazing space, particularly in the sunlight.  

 

I have found that sunlight can make even the worst streets look almost inviting.  

I did my best to get excited about the goods they were selling, but interesting as some of them were, in person they looked 

a little weird, or at least not of a style that would fit into my house at all.  

I couldn’t get excited about any of it, even to things 

that looked very attractive on the website.  The article did emphasise that the buyer didn't chase the market, but stocked what 

appealed to him and perhaps we just don't like the same things.  Or, it may well be that it was such a jarring contrast to the 

place we'd visited before I couldn't adapt to what I was seeing.  

Looking at some of my photos I think this is most likely the case and I've just about talked myself into some of the items in building this blog post!  

However, given how drawn I was to the magazine article and to the website, I found that a salutary lesson to remember about shopping on the internet.  

All that said, I'd go back again to see it, because it is a fascinating place.

I have two or three more wonderful finds I want to share, and Blogger is not behaving well, so we'll just have to continue this in the next post!