A Very North East Adventure

Just after we'd been to London and our hearts were full with adventure, we received an invitation to collaborate with the Tyne and Wear Metro, we were being sent on a dog friendly day out...to Sunderland.

Now, I should state that it's not the first place I would have thought of but Holly loves going on the metro and I wanted to test out my new PAYG Pop Card which I didn't even know existed until a couple of weeks ago, it's a great way if like me you don't carry cash and you use the metro a lot but not enough to justify buying a monthly pass, you can get one free as long as you top up by £10, it magically chooses the most economical tariff too so you always know you're getting the very best deal.

We got the metro from our nearest stop, the salubrious Byker station and we travelled to Seaburn changing at monument, travelling to Sunderland has become so much more convenient since the advent of the metro line and I quite often use it when I'm going on photo shoots.  This day wasn't a photo shoot though, we were excited, we were finally going to the Doggie Diner!

Holly loves a good dog friendly cafe, especially when it means she can have a "woofin" and the Doggie Diner is like doggy heaven, they even have an off lead play pen, there were a serious amount of cute puppies in there which I could have quite easily taken home, not sure Holly would approved, Looby would though!

After the doggie diner we walked, and walked and walked all the way to the marina at Roker via the sculpture trail, the harbour and the sea front with a beach stop so that Holly could play in the sand for a while.  For me, it really was more than just a dog friendly day out, it was a chance to run free and wild, to let Looby enjoy the sea air whilst we chatted along the way, home education is the most freeing thing we've ever done and I'm so grateful for this life we lead with daily adventures and lovely companies to collaborate with which facilitate the fun and new experiences we get to have along the way.

Roker seems to have really upped it's game, the harbour is delightful with pretty cafes and restaurants and the most beautiful sculpture garden, there's a playground for the small people and huge wide paths for running or scooting or hopping and skipping.  We're so lucky to live so close to so much beautiful coastline and one day I might actually walk along the pier at Roker, at the moment it's completely closed off to pedestrians, it looks like they might be renovating and restoring so we'll just have to make another day of it when it reopens.

I have been to Seaburn and Roker before but it's not somewhere I regularly go, having that day out though convinced me that it's near enough to hop on a metro, we got our metro home again from St Peters and we'd walked 10k or in beagle terms that's 20k and what you would call a very good walk. 

I want to thank Metro for helping us have a very lovely dog friendly day out and all of my thoughts and words are my honest views, we really need to treasure this transportation system we have, the metro is 30 years old and they still use the original rolling stock, I remember when I was small, my granny would take me on days out on the metro and we'd always go to South Shields because it was the furthest you could go at that time, I loved those journeys so for my own nostalgia I hope one day to take my future grandchildren on grand Metro days out!