Thursday 28 February 2019

Visiting my Great Aunt over half term.

My Aunty Jean has been a huge part of my life. She is my dad's aunt and my great aunt but we all call her Aunty Jean. As a child we would visit her every Friday night, she would take my brother and I for days out, we'd have sleepovers and she has always been there. She's the person I ring for advice and just for a chat.


Whenever my dad comes to visit he always pops into my Aunt Jean's house, picks her up and brings her to visit too. When my brother's ex, Louise comes to visit with my nephew she does the same. It's a strange situation but we are still in touch with my brothers ex girlfriend even though he is not. Family is a strange thing.

Due to us going away over Christmas we didn't see my Aunty Jean like we usually do in the run up to xmas as my dad didn't come to visit us. She hasn't been too well over the last few months. She's 86 so it's sort of expected. She's had aches, colds and many trips to the doctors. She sounded really down a few weeks ago and I came up with the idea of visiting her during the half term holidays. She was overjoyed when I asked her if she was up to visitors.

It has been years since we visited her. The last time we did was when I was pregnant with Ellie and Becky was about four years old so Ellie has never been to her house so the prospect of visiting was very exciting.


We had planned on getting the Bus and Metro to her. We live up in Northumberland, don't drive and she lives in Hartlepool. It's only about 50 miles away but that is a long way when using public transport.

I looked at the prices of the train tickets and with the friends and family railcard we have they were just over £10 from Newcastle to Hartlepool and it took about an hour off our journey time. We went for them.

We got the bus to just outside of Newcastle, the Metro to Central Station and it had to be the slowest metro ever. I could have walked quicker. lol We arrived at the train station with 10 minutes to print out the tickets and get to the platform which obviously was one at the other side of the station. There was no time for a toilet break. We ran, got to the platform and typical the train was late. 15 minutes late. Ugh!

We journey was a nice one to Hartlepool. The views were lovely. As soon as we got past Sunderland we saw the sea all the way until we got off the train!


After we got off the train it was a 10 minute walk to the bus and then finally we arrived at my Aunty Jeans after over 3 hours of traveling.

We spent a good couple of hours chatting. She was so happy to see us and the kids loved seeing where she lived. We had lunch and then my brothers ex, Louise rang. It had been her birthday earlier on in the week and she had been to Whitby for the night and wanted to pop in to see Aunty Jean. She had no idea we were there so it was lovely to catch up with her too. It was such a strange coincidence that we'd all decided to visit on the same day and my Aunty Jean loved it. She is in her element when she is playing the host. 

When we arrived I was shocked at how she had looked. She looked old and frail but by the time we had left she had a bit of her spark back! We have already decided to go to visit her again over the Easter holidays. We arrived home just after 7pm and had been out of the house for over 11 hours. It was a long day but it was totally worth it just to see my Aunty Jean so happy.

 

3 comments :

  1. Love your pics of the bridges from the train. It sounds like you had a nice visit and the journey wasn't too bad. So nice to catch up with relatives.

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  2. This is just lovely Kim, it sounds like you've lifted her spirits by visiting. The journey sounds like it was a good one too, it's so nice that you made the effort to visit her.

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  3. How lovely! So nice to hear that your great aunt is well. I bet she was so pleased to have a catch up with you all. x

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