Scotland 2009

This year we took ourselves off to Scotland for our summer holiday. It reminded me of home: grass, trees, sheep, and it rained a lot! The people were really friendly, even when it took a minute or so to realise that they were speaking English even though I couldn't understand much of it :-)














We started off in Edinburgh, which we liked. The highlight for us was the Camera Obscura museum which has loads of sciency gimmicks. Not exactly traditional Scottish entertainment, but lots of fun for the whole family - and here we are below, in infrared:


From Edinburgh we drove out to North Berwick, where there's a beach - an exciting novelty now that we live almost as far as it's possible to live from the sea in England. They also run Seabird Safaris where you travel on a jetboat out to Bass Rock, which is the world's largest gannet colony. We saw puffins and a seal too.

Then we spent a week in a cottage on the Carmichael estate in Lanarkshire.

It was close to Tinto Hill, which Mike and our friend Alison climbed one day. Apparently you can see for miles on a good day, but not the day they did it!

We also visited the town of Peebles nearby, and the world heritage site at New Lanark where you learn about life in the 19th century cotton mills. One day we took the car ferry across to the Isle of Arran - a big adventure!

And now we're ready to exchange the walking boots for some heavy lifting as we move into our new house. Watch this space...

Summer 2009 - playing in Bow Brickhill

Earlier in the summer (back in June) we had some glorious weather and spent a lot of time playing around the village. Luke's been learning to ride his bike without training wheels:

and we have a good swing on a tree in the woods:

plus the playground is still good value.

Foxton Locks

On Monday Luke and I went with some friends to Foxton Locks - ten locks on the Grand Union Canal, all in a row, making a kind of staircase. It takes forever (well, about an hour) for each boat to get through all the locks, not least because it's a one way system and there's only one passing bay! It's pretty much impossible to photograph, but you can have a look at their website to get a better idea: http://www.foxtonlocks.com/

Hartwell House

Last weekend was the tenth anniversary of when Mike and I met, so to celebrate we went away for one whole day together...without Luke! We saved all our birthday money (and then some) and went to Hartwell House, a historic hotel now owned by the National Trust but still run as a luxury hotel. It's only 45 minutes from where we live but it feels like another world...

Our room was amazing. We got upgraded as part of the deal for National Trust members. The room we had is called the 'Tapestry Room', for obvious reasons (look at the picture). It had enormous mullioned windows overlooking the main entrance to the house. And then on the other side of the room, what looks like a window in the second picture is actually a trompe de l'oeil painting. Apparently there was an original window there when the house was first built, when it was only one room wide. The painting depicts how the view would have appeared at that time.

The best part of the house, architecturally speaking, was the staircase. It is all carved with figures each a couple of feet high. And each individual balustrade is a different carved figure too.

It's all terribly civilized. You go down for dinner and sit in the lounge (or the library, or the morning room, all with lovely furniture, ornate carvings, oil paintings etc etc), and while you're having your pre-dinner drinks they bring you the dinner menu and you can choose what you want. You get (very politely) taken through to the dining room later. We decided to be really decadent and have the tasting menu for dinner - all six courses of it! Actually we thought there were more like nine courses, especially if you counted the nibbles at the start and the sweetmeats that came with the coffee at the end, but they paced it well and the courses were all very small so we didn't end up feeling too full. Here's the menu:

• asparagus with hollandaise sauce
• beef carpaccio with horseradish icecream - I was deeply sceptical of this but actually it was brilliant, smooth and tangy and a great complement to the beef
• scallops with bacon
• rhubarb sorbet with champagne - the sorbet was put in one of those old-fashioned cone-shaped champagne glasses and the champagned poured around it: superb
• duck confit
• pan fried goats cheese terrine with shallots, rhubarb and rocket salad - I was pretty sure I wouldn't like this, especially as I normally don't like goats cheese, but even this was great
• a selection (basically just a couple of bites) of four different deserts, a pannacotta and something peach flavoured neither of which we liked much, a hot chocolate pudding that was good, and a pistachio and vanilla icecream in marzipan which sounds bizarre but was fabulous

The next morning we took advantage of the opportunity to laze around and read the newspaper, without having a small boy demanding breakfast and someone to play with him at 7.30! Eventually we did have breakfast (also brilliant) and then went for a walk around the lake in the grounds before leaving. There were quite a few birds on the lake including this family of coots and four herons.

Now we'll just have to spend the next decade saving up so we can do it all over again!

Before going home (trying to squeeze every last minute out of our babysitting time) we went for a walk around the village of Ickford. The weather was utterly gorgeous - poor old Mum and Dad had wintry temperatures the whole time they were here and then four days later we get 25 degrees! The walk was nice - we saw foals and cygnets and fields of buttercups, and then followed it up with lunch at the local pub.

Waddesdon

Mum and Dad came back to see us for another week in May before heading back to New Zealand. This time we took them to Waddesdon Manor, which is a very grand house once owned by the Rothschilds.

We'd been a number of times before, but this time was special because there was a convention of Morgan car owners meeting in the grounds.

They are particularly beautiful sports cars...

...with some slightly bizarre exceptions like this three-wheeler.

Some of us like Waddesdon mainly for its excellent playground.

Bluebells

Early May is bluebell season. This year we went with some friends up to Coton Manor, which is about an hour north of where we live. It has a very pretty house (which you can't go into as it's still a private home) with a nice garden...

...and an absolutely stunning bluebell wood. The pictures don't really do it justice - it's just a sea of vivid colour.

Our intrepid reporter covered the story...

Later we went for a walk in our local woods, which also had nice bluebells...

...and the world's most confusing circular walk signpost:

Gran and Grandad

Luke's Gran and Grandad from New Zealand came to visit us in April for a week. It was the first time they'd been to Bow Brickhill so we showed them all the local sights - the school, the playground and the woods. We did a few touristy things - Bletchley Park (home of the World War 2 codebreakers), Stoke Bruerne (canal boats) and the Woburn Safari Park. The photo is of Gran and Grandad with Luke and Penguie, Luke's favourite toy.

Nightingales

In early May my friend Alison and I went to Fingringhoe nature reserve in Essex to hear the nightingales sing. They only sing for a few weeks each year, while they are establishing territories in the spring. I recorded a minute of birdsong on my phone - the quality's not great, but it gives you a pretty good idea of what they sound like. I was about ten metres away from the bird when I recorded this one. They're pretty hard to see, being small and brown and fond of hiding in the middle of dense bushes, (so the picture on this movie is not, sadly, mine), but very very loud!

There are two birds in this second recording, plus the occasional BANG from the crop scarers in the fields nearby!

Snow!

We've had A LOT of snow lately. Andrea has bravely made it in to work every day (and is learning how to drive in the snow) while Luke's school was closed 4 days last week, to Mike's dismay. Our house has grown icicles where the guttering leaks!

This weekend was a chance for us all to play in the snow. As you can see from the pictures it was pretty deep in parts - over the top of Luke's boots.

Our woods are absolutely beautiful with all the snow on them, as well as being a fantastic playground.

Luke got blisters (from having wet socks, with all that snow in his boots!) I don't usually carry him these days, honest...

And then today our friend Sue in the village lent us a sledge. Our woods have got the best sledging hill for miles around (don't tell anyone). Little legs get a bit tired climbing all the way to the top...

...but it's worth it!

Wales 2008

After Christmas we spent 3 nights in south Wales, staying in a cottage on a farm near Abergavenny. We were very close to Raglan so we visited Raglan castle. Luke enjoyed running around finding all the different rooms, and petting the very obliging castle cat.

We were staying not far from the English border and the Forest of Dean, so we drove down and visited Tintern Abbey. We timed it perfectly so that the sun was streaming in the 'windows' of the nave.

Again I think Luke mostly enjoyed clambering over things.

The next day our friend Alison joined us and we went for a walk in the Black Mountains - up a hill called Skirrid Fawr. It was very very cold, but we wrapped up in our winter woollies.

The view was spectacular, even on a rather grey and misty day. Luke made it most of the way on his own legs, which was a pretty good effort!

In the afternoon we visited the Big Pit mine at Blaenafon. This was a working coal mine until the late 1970s and then was turned into a museum shortly afterwards. You get taken 100m underground by a real miner (ie ex-miner) and certainly our guide was brilliant - funny, down-to-earth (no pun intended) and very knowledgeable. Last time we went underground with Luke, in a slate mine in Wales a couple of years ago, he was terrified and had to be carried through the whole thing and couldn't get out fast enough. This time, though, he loved having his own helmet with its light, and was very proud of the fact that unlike the rest of us, he didn't have to duck to walk through the mine shafts!