July 16

It’s great to be back on the road again. We caught the Virgin East Coast train up from London to Newcastle and picked up our rental car. There was a slightly awkward conversation at the Europcar desk, with one guy a Brexit “Inny”, the other an “Outy”. The Outy loudly explained why he wanted out, while serving a German couple that were his customers. We got in the car giggling and kicking ourselves we didn’t film this.

We had a Geordie guide by text – an old ski buddy I was meeting in Carlisle for dinner – so we headed to Corbridge for lunch on her suggestion and had a chat with Joe, a strapping young tree surgeon. He’s an Outy. ‘It’s not working is it, we need to change something.’ We met two young girls by the bar, “mortalled” (drunk) from a night out in Newcastle – they still hadn’t slept; one voted, the other didn’t. She voted “out” on the basis of ‘eenie meenie minie mo out’ she said, but voting was difficult because she walked in on a funeral thinking the funeral parlour was a voting station, LOL.

At a county cricket game in Lanercost we came across a very well-reasoned Outy: ‘I’m old enough to remember becoming part of the common market, I support that, but I don’t want to become part of the United States of Europe. It’s got too political; I’m all for a common market, but I’m not for us losing our political autonomy. I understand that, and it’s nice to hear a sensible reasoned argument for “out”; but to be honest some people up here voted out just to send a ‘Fuck You’ to London, or because they think it’ll stop, or slow down, immigration.’

Carlisle was fun – what a crazy wild place on a Saturday night.

At the Lanercost church and ancient cathedral ruins we learned about Reivers, the lawless raiding parties from the Scotland/England border region. My guide for the night, a Geordie, warned me, ‘Carlisle people are descended from Reivers; they love a fight – they can be really nasty’.

Then the show started. Two men chased a 60-year-old out of a pub and smacked him in the head, sending him crashing to the pavement at Max’s (my cameraman for the trip) feet. Horrified, Max was texting me while giving a statement to the police.

Walking around Botchergate on Saturday is like a circus meeting a war zone: hen nights, stag nights, and everyone “mortalled” by 9.00pm. By midnight there are running street brawls, with small groups of youths being chased from one end of the town to the other by a heavy presence of police. It was quite something to watch, but I kept my head low; people who like to fight love to pick a tall guy to take on.

On the way home we found about 20 goth/gamer misfits all together. I was texting and one called out ‘Pokemon?’ We’d stumbled upon a “Lure”; these guys had never met – one in a wheelchair had pushed almost a kilometre to get there. This morning it’s been upgraded to a Pokemon “Gym”, so we’re going to head back to check it out.