Northeast England's anti-zombie fortress

Technically it's a priory, but Adam has on numerous occasions declared his intention to employ the fortified ruins on top of the cliff in Tynemouth as his last refuge against the zombie apocalypse.

The story so far: We find our heroes walking out of the Priory Café late on the morning of June 14, having neatly consumed an entire English breakfast and about 25 servings of toast, which Adam ordered up special because he thought he'd have a lot of sauce to mop up, but which we somehow managed to consume. First things first. Before we ate we'd had to go to the tiny Tynemouth branch library and pay a few pence to print our flight itineraries for Dublin. We'd be leaving the next day on a Ryanair flight.

But that's a story for another time. Now we were going to see the seaside. On the agenda were the old priory; the North Sea; the Collingwood Monument; and Fish Quay, just three of Newcastle's cultural hot spots. The priory sits perched on a crag overlooking the stormy North Sea, and has existed in some form or other since the 7th century. Various orders passed through it before Henry the Eighth literally ripped the roof off the place in the sixteenth century. Then the elements came in and did their job, and the priory fell to ruins. The crag, and the remains of the priory, were commandeered as a gun position during the Second World War, and a coast guard station currently sits there. But the ruins still stand, and are a treat for the eyes and the historically-minded. So in we went.
(I wish I could remember what Jeff was pointing and laughing at here. Must've been a hoot.)

The Newcastle Priory would make a rather good zombie fortress. The drawbridge isn't there anymore, but the portcullis is two-inch-thick cast iron, and there's defensible space all around the gatehouse. There's little shelter from the elements but some creative engineering (and perhaps some really big tarps) would solve that. There's lots of open lawns inside, so growing vegetables wouldn't be a problem. The yards of walls provide plenty of room for snipers and defenders, and the gatehouse has multiple stories to rain death down upon undead attackers. There's no escape route (except the cliff and the sea), but hey, if they get through the walls, you might as well shoot yourself in the head anyway, 'cause there ain't a comparably safe place for miles.

Jeff, Andrea, Adam and I spent a happy hour wandering about, peering into the old chapel, craning our necks up to look at the ruins, staring down the sights of the enormous anti-ship guns on the cliff edge, reading the nigh-illegible missives on the headstones, and (in my case) sipping ginger beer.
Adam and Jeff just had to get their pictures taken with the cannon.
Well, okay, so did I.
Eat this, Hitler!
In the graveyard we saw memorials to ancient mariners and their families, who perished in the 1830s.
In the chapel we saw stained glass windows, surely not the originals from the 1300s, but enough to give a jolly good impression of what worship must've been like when the monks roamed the premises.
In the gatehouse we saw just how easy it'd be to drop a rock on the head of a charging Viking.
And from the ramparts of the castle walls we took in a marvelous view of the coast, the sea, and the town of Tynemouth.
To summarize, I enjoyed myself immensely. This was the first time I'd been to a (mostly un-restored) building that had stood for more than 1,000 years. I'd been to a few temples in Korea that were likely 500 or so, but most of the elder stuff ain't around anymore. This was quite humbling, to stand amid the crumbling edifice of a monastery that was six times as old as the country as I was born in. Think about that for a minute. Staggers the imagination, don't it?

NEXT UP : a dip in the North Sea. Don't miss it. The water was nine degrees Celsius. I'll tell you exactly how cold it was after this quick break.