Girls weekend

Just got back from our traditional girls weekend away - think we've been doing it for 15 years now. A weekend in a cosy cottage, somewhere nice, usually close to a pub. Plenty of eating, drinking and walking. Slightly less of the latter now.

This year we went to Giggleswick, in a cottage we've stayed in 3 times before. Lovely jasmine and something red round the door (Cotoneaster?).

Went on the train, got there lunchtime, lunch in the Black Horse which is all of 20 yards from the cottage, and the landlord always recognises us.  Then a short walk into Settle, a look round the shops, and some supermarket shopping for our provisions for the weekend.

Back to the cottage, light the real fire (my job!), and sausage and mash for tea. Later we walked to the other pub, which is a bit further, about 50 yards. Quite exciing - we saw a fight. Tables turned over and everything. Soon calmed down by the landlady though.

Next morning a short walk, and got a bit lost at one point - could see the path below us, but no way down, so we climbed.

Usual coffee stop, my flask has been photographed in many locations.

A dash of artificial sweetner from the hip flask sets the coffee off nicely. Lovely view of Giggleswick School as we came over the top.

Then lunch in Settle, a quick drink, a walk round half of the town trail, and off to the station to meet one of our friends who was arriving. back to the cottage, more fire, more drink, and Christmas lunch. Chicken pheasant and all the trimmings. Even the pudding had a sparkler on it.

Then to the pub again where we played dominos. Not sure why. Seemed like a good idea at the time. And we got thrown out at the end of the night by the landlord who asked us politely if we had a home to go to.

Next day another walk, where we saw this amusing weather station.

Walked by the canal for a while which was lovely.

Ended at the craft centre where we managed to get some retail therapy and Christmas shopping in. Lunch in Settle again, and the rest of the town trail. In the evening we ate out at the Black Horse again, but didn't get thrown out this time.

Up and away fairly early on Sunday as there were no trains running due to engineering works and we had to get a bus to Keigthly which wasn't too pleasant with a slight hangover. Then a train to Leeds where we had lunch, and then home. Great weekend as always.

More things to do in Denver when you're not dead

I always try and get out of the city when we're at Educause in the little spare time we get, and this time a group of us hired a couple of cars for a short drove out into the Rocky mountains. Denver sits at the edge of a very flat, very barren desert area, but nestles at the bottom of the Rockies, and you can see their snow covered tops from most of the city.

We aimed for Georgetown, a small, old ( by US standards) settlement which has been preserved. Lovely old houses, most decorated for Halloween.






And a lovely old main street where we had enormous burritos for lunch in a Mexican cafe.



Seem stunning views of the mountains as we drove over a very high pass, went rises to nearly 12,000 feet above sea level and the effects of the altitude were felt by many of us.



We were lucky ( I think) that we were in the US on the day of the presidential election. TV adverts were more boring than usual in the run up to it as the two parties continually criticised each other, but being there for the vote was great fun. We headed down to a bar about 6pm, and got a Brit table, and watched it on the giant flat TV screens. We had a map to colour in as states were called - not declared, that's done much later. The calling is done by the media as results come in based on estimates. We were watching different states being called by different media organisations, and it was also odd to us that results were coming in from the Esat Coast before the West Coast had finished voting. Not long after Ohio was called for the democrats, the media declared Obama the winner and we saw the famous "four more years" tweet. Much cheering in the bar, from us and the democrats who seemed to make up the majority of the customers, and it was over. We stayed in the bar to celebrate, the Americans went home. And we all made the 8am session the next day!


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Things to do in Denver....

Am in Denver at the moment for a conference. The journey over was fairly uneventful - a little long, but at least the 10 hour flight was direct. It was late when we landed, but a group of us met up in the evening and had a couple of drinks and went out for a meal to try and beat the jet lag. It's a very long day - you get an extra six hours, and I'm sure an extra couple of meals!

The following day we went for a walk around LoDo (Lower Downtown), an old warehouse district which has been done up. There's a beautiful station, which is shut at the moment, but we managed to get in and take some photos of the interior, which we are sure has been used for some films, but we couldn't remember which.

We called in at Coors Field, the basketball stadium, and at Wynkoops, our favourite microbrewery pub for lunch.

I was thrilled to find we could get another Segway ride in whilst here. Those who know me or read this will know how much I love them, and we went on a 2 hour tour of Denver. There were 3 on the trip who'd never done it before and I was pleased to find they enjoyed it just as much as I did. The UK is one of the strictest places in the world for being able to ride them in public - you can in most of the States and Europe. Bonkers really.

We travelled about 8 miles on the tour and saw most of Denver, including the performing arts district, and the civic centre. It's a beautiful city, on one side a desert, and the other the rocky mountains which are topped with snow at the time of year.  As we were in the mile high city, had to sit on the step of the State Capitol which is exactly a mile above sea level. Give or take a couple. Apparently it keeps changing.

End of the holiday

The last few days of the holiday were very, very lazy. Apart from Stuart who got several swims in a day. We spent most of our time lounging by the pool

and drinking cocktails in one of the cabanas if we could get one.

On the Saturday it was our tenth wedding anniversary, which was the reason we'd gone, and we had a lovely day.

As the resort had in effect closed and wasn't accepting any mor guests, the numbers went down everyday, until there were only about 30 of us on the resort. They moved us all into one area, and opened one pool, one bar and one restaurant for us. it was a real party atmosphere!

Finally it was time to go home, and we had one last walk round the resort, looking at how much of the damage they had cleared up - it was very impressive - they even had bulldozers on the beach!