Just below the bridge on the ovingham side most of the lads learned to swim and through stones at what we thought was rats now I know they were water voles a much endangered species .Waste from Corbridge and other places flowed into the Tyne untreated we would be there all day with a fire going and you had to bring some (...Read full memory)

My friends and I would climb what could have been the old gardy loo shaft inside the outer walls and scrump the orchard with alacrity. We had the run of the castle so I guess we did conquer it in a way... heady days indeed. I do remember about possibly the Normans stripping the bark of the apple trees because they could not take it... well, they were French weren't they!