I got to spend some time in Falmouth where we played the Princess Pavillion.
 
That was just unbelievable gorgeous, and ooooooooold. There's pictures of me hanging out in the booty caves carved into the cliffs overlooking the sea. The walls adorned with seashells and varioous bobbles.
 
I still have some of the stones/shells I collected froom the beach but I gave most of them to my mom who LOVED them. Put them in a fancy blown glass bowl and put them on display... which is much better than mmy display... which is in a dingy old box buried in some random storage bin.

Yeah, Cornwall is beautiful. Ah, England. I miss it.

And of course the gardens are unreal. I guess at some point some rich/powerful muckity muck from history imported all the plants from various parts of the empire at the time so it's all totally out of place tropical/exotic type plants that I guess manage to survive in that climate. The gardens are in this kind of weird natural mini canyon in the cliffs/rocks so they are sheltered from the sea winds. The temperature rises when you enter them due to the little sheltered eco system they created. Really cool stuff.
 

We also took a jaunt out onto the rocks surrounding the lighthouse in Newcastle. Our singer was from there so we got a pretty proper Newcastle experience in general. Even got to hang out in an OLD school English social club because his dad was a member. Lots of old navy and local characters who were getting SLASHED (and getting us pretty hammered too).
 
Couldn't understand a bloody word ANY of them were saying... except that they kept calling me "Tin Ribs" and I was getting the felling that was not out of respect.
 
Then I brought out the acoustic and started playing some old Pogues tunes (and The Who, Johnny Cash, etc) and boy howdy did that room liven up. The other band members had to literally drag me out of there because they didn't want me to leave (they were COMPLETELY shnozzled at that point... as was I). This one big huge navy guy in particular was almost in tears, grabbing at me and begging me to take him with us.
 
I think that was probably the most bizarrely awesome crowd I've ever played for... and it was only a dozen or so Geordie lunatics hanging out in the place they hung out in every day.
 
Yeah. I really liked that one. Totally improptu shiz on our day off.
 

Oh and the night before we had played the Newcastle Opera House which was not only PACKED and an awesome gig but I'd say probably the most historically significant stage I've ever played on. I think I've got some VHS tapes of some of it but the sound is totally ****e (recorded through the camcorder mic... and we wuz LOUD).
 
okay I'll stop reminiscing now.
 
;-)