A visit to Beamish

Beamish Museum is not a Museum.  That is the first thing they tell you.  It's a living collection of gifts in use and a recreation of buildings extant as they were, faithfully constructed.  When we visited, as many people chatted to you being locals who loved it and came regularly for a wander, as the locals working there, in character, to tell its history,  in each pocket hankerchief sized village - the colliery, the 1940s farmhouse, the high street and professionals housed along it, the shops and the trams and old buses you can ride on between stops.  When I wasn't sure of my way, I asked a policeman on his beat. A remarkable place and enchantingly hospitable.