Girls weekend away

For the last 16 years or so we've had a "girls weekend away". Began life as an "allmenarebastards" weekend, but we've progressed. Normally we go in November, but because of various prior commitments, this year we were much earlier. some pros - lots more light at the end of the day, and cons - didn't feel quite as close to Christmas for our festive meal.  But, a great time was had by all!

Met at the station for a coffee, and then set off to Alnmouth on the train - First Class obviously- and had a great communal picnic.  G and T, wine, sandwiches, indian snacks, prawns, chicken - you name it, we ate it on the train.

Taxi to meet us at the other end, and off to our lovely house - huge, lots of rooms, including a games room and conservatory. We'd thought ahead and Sainsbury's delivered the shopping. After unpacking we went for a walk along the river and to the beach. The tide was in and it was misty - very atmospheric. Found a little ferry hut, and lots of boats.

Walked along the beach and then cut up through the town and back along the river where we saw a heron.

Then it was back to house, knitting, snacks, the odd drink followed by dinner of sausage and mash.  After dinner a couple of us ventured out to the local pub which was supposedly haunted.

Saturday was a good big cooked breakfast and off on the bus to Alnwick.  Spent several hours in the Alnwick garden which was very impressive. Water features, formal gardens

and a poison garden which you had to be accompanied into.

 Can't think why...

also saw an amazing shaggy inkcap in the grass

and some real doves in the Dovecote

Then a couple of us went to the castle  - where the first two episodes of Harry Potter were filmed.

Lovely place, but the funniest part was a dark walk through called Dragon Quest which scared both of us to bits and made us scream.

Lovely lunch in a pub, a walk round the shops and back on the bus.

After watching as much of Strictly Come Dancing as we could get away with we walked up the village to an Italian restauarant were we had a lovely meal.

Sunday was another cooked breakfast, and a walk along the beach. The sun was shining, the tide was out, there was sand, rock pools, crabs, and unfortunately and very big dead seal.

Cut inland and walked along the river

to Lesbury for lunch in the Coach Inn,

and then back to Alnmouth by the river where we saw the heron again.

Spent the afternoon cosied up as a group knitting, drinking whisky mac and watching videos we found in the cottage - Peter Kay live and Love Actually!

Sunday night was Christmas dinner  - told you it was early :-)   Chicken and all the trimmings, including Christmas pudding set alight with brandy. And of course we made our traditional soup with all of the left overs. And I mean all.

Monday morning was a light breakfast and a walk to the river estuary, back along the beach

and a coffee.

Some shopping in the village, and lunch of soup before the taxi back to the station for a 2 o'clock train.  we managed to decant all the drink we had left over into plastic bottles, so the journey back was quite fun.

Fab weekend as always - great place, and great company with great girfriends!!

Nature's Bounty

Last camping weekend of the season - back to Laneham where we went last year and got flooded! Got there nice and early, tent went up very easily, and we were soon sitting with friends with a cucumber g and t.

I love my tent, but this might be the last time we pitch it - I'd quite like a new one for next season...
In the evening we walked by the River Trent

into the village and the pub for fish and chip might. unfortunately they'd run out of fish and chips :-(

Still, a good night was had, and we were up bright and early for our famous communal breakfast, and a walk to the next village to get the bus to Retford (my home town).  After a coffee we joined the canal towpath for our usual walk - the Chesterfield Canal is lovely.

The sun was shining, and we soon made it to my favourite-named lock

where some took the opportunity to strip a nearby bush of sloes

Others played with the lock!

There was a goit by the lock which was full of trout. We carried on, past many fishermen, swans, ducks, moorhens, coots, and past the wild hops in the hedgerow, just past a pub called The Hop Pole.

 We also saw this

which we later discovered to be a rose bedeguar gall, or a Robin's pincushion gall, on a rose hip. Fascinating.

Eventually we reached another pub, The Gate, where we had a lovely lunch.  A walk back to town

Some shopping for the meal later, and the bus back. We stopped for a drink at the local brewery, and managed to pick up bramley apples, eating apples, plums and eggs from honesty stalls outside peoples houses in the village. Back at the campsite we picked a bag of lovely blackberries, and made a blackberry and apple crumble for tea. Yum!
As we thought it might be too cold for a BBQ (we were wrong), we had a chilli, rice, garlic bread, jacket potatoes, and pudding. Lots of music, and some wine and beer to wash it down with.

Then we walked to the pub and met my family for a drink - a lovely evening, and followed by a nightcap or two in our friends van.

Lazy Sunday morning, another communal breakfast, including a lot of fried bacon

and I managed to pick a carrier bag of wild damsons from a tree on the riverbank. Eventually got the tent down, and drove home, where I began the task of turning our wild pickings into sloe gin and damson vodka. A great end to the camping season.

First polymer clay miniatures

In case you thought I'd forgotten the Dolls House....

Of course I haven't, just not blogged about it for a while. Exciting post to come about the "fourth wall", and the orangery I'm building, but what I'm really excited about at the moment is building miniature things for it out of polymer clay.  I've bought loads of beautiful things for it from dolls house shops, from the Miniatura exhibition and from eBay, and all have been beautifully handcrafted. So I thought I'd have a go myself.  Bought a few different colours of polymer clay and set to work. Of course, I soon realised it was harder than that, and I needed tools, chalk pastel paints and liquid clay. But, I'm persevering, and these are my first attempts

A bread loaf, two cheese, tomato and cucumber rolls and a red rose in a black vase:

Some lemons, clementines, apples and pumpkins for Halloween

And some sweet things - a strawberry cheesecake, a kiwi tart, a lemon custard tart, and two cupcakes.

Just realised there's nothing on the pictures to give you an idea of scale, but each tarts above is smaller than a penny.  Not brilliant, but not bad for a first attempt! 

Making a ring

A couple of weeks ago, I went with a friend to a jewelery making day  - courtesy of a Groupon offer! We turned up early - 9am is certainly early for me on a Sunday - and met our fellow jewelers, as well as our instructor for the day, who turned out to have worked with one of my neighbours who is a designer and silversmith.

Most of the morning was spent learning about how jewelery is made from scratch, and the difference between hand made and hand finished. We saw how moulds are made, and how the metal is introduced into them, and how things are finished afterwards. It was fascinating.  Then, we had to make our own silver ring, from a strip of silver, carefully cut to match out finger size. This was mine:

Then we had to bend it into a circle using some small pliers to start it off, and then hammering it over a spike of some kind. Forgotten the technical term! Mine didn't look too bad, but I did get some help. then the most exciting bit - I love playing with fire so a bit of silver soldering to seal them was great fun. At the end we had a lovely circular ring

All it needed now was hitting with a big hammer to flatten it off

Then we had to put the facets on and make the ring bigger to fit. This was a real specialist job and involved another hammer. It also involved Andrew starting it off for us, and then us all having a go. It certainly wasn't as easy as he made it look. Every facet had to be same size and even, and you had to hit each one in exactly the same place with the hammer every time. Here's me doing mine.

And here's Andrew correcting all of my mistakes to make it presentable!

After some serious finishing and polishing, I had a great ring at the end of it, and a great day. Would certainly recommend it. They do a lot of different courses, you can see them here.

Chatsworh Country Fair and Sculptures

I've just realised that we've been to Chatsworth 3 times in the last 6 days. I love Chatsworth - we're "gold friends" aka season ticket holders and I go as often as I can. I particularly like that it's still owned by a family - not been given to the National Trust  - and they've worked very hard to make it pay its way. Hit by enormous death duties, which took 17 years to pay off, it's now a thriving business, (actually a charitable trust), and a huge employer in the region.

Last weekend was the Country Fair - an enormous event, and we get tickets for two days as part of our membership, so I get to go twice. Each day opens with an amazing parachute display

There's then a whole programme of entertainment, including falconry displays which I love. One of the birds landed very close to us:

And one very stupid one got stuck on the wrong side of the fence trying to get some food

But one of our favourite things to do is go round the food village. Loads of stalls, each giving away free samples. This year the favourite seemed to be flavoured vodka and liquers. Of course it would have been rude not to try them, and by about 1130 we were all a little tipsy. Soon sobered up by a small shot of naga chillis in vodka. One day I might get the feeling back in my tongue...  Of course there was cheese, bread, cake, chocolate and loads of other things to taste, but we still managed a hot pork sandwich and a pint for lunch!

There's always something a little out of the ordinary, and this year it was the dancing diggers - JCBs to be precise. Strange but true.



However, the stars of the show are always the Red Arrows. Amazing. Could watch them all day.

Then last night we went to the opening evening of Beyond Limits, the annual sculpture exhibition in the grounds. Think its fair to day that some I loved, some I didn't!  All these pictures are of ones I loved, especially the last one.

Definitely worth a visit.