CASTLE INFO & FAQs

The Castle is 2½ hour's drive north of Manchester, near the Scottish border, close to some nice stretches of Hadrian's Wall. A great space, shared with mates old & new. Unlike most places in the country you'd hire, this sleeps 80. It's a little more battered than a typical holiday cottage, an interesting place, but not the swishest joint in the world. Many of our friends know it now, but we don't broadcast on the net out of respect to the owner & as we can only have those who've bought tickets for the weekend attending.

One thing we don't want to undersell is the beautiful surroundings; if it doesn't rain we'll be out & about in fantastic autumnal colours. If it does rain, while the place will keep you warm and dry & gives somewhere to sleep, it isn't fantastic inside. We're 100% certain to have a laugh in there, but our best way of indicating the condition is to say while there are beds & the leaflet for the place says bring either a sleeping bag or bedding we go with the bag. Make sense? The beds are arranged from several 12 bed dorms to a few 2 person rooms, it's very communal. There are good kitchen facilities; cookers, freezers, dining area, utensils & crockery. There are about 6 showers, plenty of loos etc. (though bring your own towels & loo roll). The place is heated in various ways, most rooms centrally, some have their own heater. The nearest shops are 3 miles away, a pub just up the road.

You can arrive any time after 5pm on Friday, people who take the Friday off ask about rocking up earlier, but the owner needs that time to get the place ready for us. If you want to at least get up to the area early you could check out the lovely market town of Alston or the sections of Hadrian's Wall nearby.

One important thing: the owner expects it handing back in a good state. At the price we're charging that means we all have to get stuck in & clean it before leaving, we can't pay anyone to do this. So on Sunday lunchtime we need to have our act together & all clean our rooms & the communal areas. Staying past 2pm Sunday is NOT AN OPTION (so if you're driving you need to be ready to do so at that time) so this clean & tidy will take place a couple of hours before.

POSTCODE IS NE49 0JG, HERE ARE DIRECTIONS: North up the M6 (so from Manchester take M61 toward Preston & jon the M6 there) to junction 43 near Carlisle, then take the A69 toward Newcastle for about 20 miles. Turn right off that just after Greenhead, about 2 miles before Haltwhistle.

Trains: nearest station is Haltwhistle, 3 miles away, from there you can get a £5 taxi (or someone to pick you up). If you get a ticket well in advance it's just over £20 each way from Manchester. But if you leave it near the time unfortunately a normal off-peak return costs an eye-watering £84.

SOME FAQs ANSWERED

• What are your Covid 19 measures? While relaxed from 2021, we still ask you take a lateral flow test immediately before setting out & act sensibly - on this front at least - while at the event. If you have symptoms or aren't sure, don't travel. Let's look after each other, it's still out there.
• Do I need to bring a printed ticket? YES, either that or make sure it's saved "offline" on your phone. This is a change to previous years. Up till this year we mostly worked off a list of name, however this is has become unwieldy & we're going all modern & scanning QR codes. MAKE SURE YOU HAVE YOUR QR CODE & don't rely on phone signal for this, as you may well not get that at the castle door. Eventbrite will still ask you to (if possible) add a name per ticket, this is to help in sorting out last minute confusion (frequent at The Castle).
• TICKET RESALES/PASSING YOUR TICKET ON: In past this has largely happened through Facebook. There is now a massive amount of attempted scamming on this, we try our best to monitor & delete fake posts, but we've now made changes to facilitate TICKET RESALE VIA EVENTBRITE
  If you are looking for ticket(s) put yourself on the Eventbrite waiting list (click “get tickets” to add yourself to the list).
  If you want to sell a ticket go to Eventbrite (you'll need to log in) & request a refund. We'll OK this pretty quickly (at the moment*) & you'll get your money back, minus the booking fee (£7). No waiting for someone to say “Yes please”, pay & any other back-&-forward. Yes, you lose that £7, but we'd strongly advise you suck this up for a simpler way of doing things - plus we're (as above) telling people to only buy this way to avoid scams. If you want the ticket to go to a particular person, we can sort that too, AS LONG AS THEY ARE ON THE WAITING LIST. Check that & then drop a message to That Amazing Thing (Facebook page) saying who you are & who the tickets are to go to & we'll sort that.
  If you decide you want to resell another way (probably to get the booking fee back) still PLEASE LOG INTO EVENTBRITE & CHANGE THE NAME FOR THE TICKET. If you buy from someone selling this way BEWARE SCAMMERS (we'd only buy from someone you know) & make sure the seller changes the name on the ticket in Eventbrite.
  * big point on buying/selling tickets (hammered home many times in previous years). DON'T LEAVE SELLING TO THE LAST MINUTE. People hoping to buy will have given up & made other plans (& you will be in competition with others in same boat as you). IF YOU WANT TO GO TO THE CASTLE & MISSED GETTING A TICKET YOU CAN 100% GO. You just need to be patient, hold your nerve & there will be tickets aplenty on sale in last week - when people's boilers break, children get ill (only 2 examples from my life recently) etc. WE'VE NEVER KNOWN ANYONE WAITED IT OUT, DIDN'T GIVE UP, NOT GET A TICKET. Due to the change from "sellers market" (people are desperate for tickets) to "buyers market" (you can't get rid of them) about a fortnight out from The Castle, we will stop automatically issuing ticket refunds at end of September (we will still do so if we know there's a buyer).
• Saving a particular room or bed: you do this on arrival, first come, first served. The only place we save is for ourselves! If you want to save a place for a mate make sure they know & are not taking a bed in another room. It's happened before that the last to arrive can't find a place until we sort out these double takes.
• Arrival time: after 5pm Friday (see above) & remember we have to be cleaning up at 12pm Sunday to be away by 2pm.
• Can I bring a dog? Not out the question, but there are obstacles - farm animals graze in the grounds of the castle, with no fence that stops your dog getting involved. Even if your dog wouldn't harm them, by just running around it can (literally!) frighten sheep to death. Locking your dog in a room has the hazard that people are always roaming trying to find their room & are likely to open the door. Leaving the dog in a vehicle seems cruel. Also the place will be very lively much of the time & might not be a good environment for anything other than human animals.
• Can I camp or bring my camper van? Camping is out we're afraid - the owner only wants the people staying in the castle there. If you have a van & prefer the privacy or facilities of that chat to us, generally you can come, but would still have to buy a full ticket & be included in the capacity of the event/venue.