JACKIE AND THE JACKDAWS

The glorious weather has had us out and about in the camper. Last weekend it was sunnier on the western side of the Pennines so we tootled over the A66 to Ullswater in the Lake District and had a picnic on the grass near the steamer pier...

We also visited Aira Falls on the way down the lakeside...

And took the Saturday papers with us for a good read and some crossword puzzling.

We have also spent days at Whitby and had picnics at Seaton Carew and Hardwick park near Sedgefield.

While at Hardwick Park we had a walk around the lake and spotted this enormous nest in the top of the trees which is actually a squirrel nest or drey.





The weather has been warm enough to bring out the good folk of Bishop Auckland, dressed in their "Resort Wear" and fake tans. The shortest shorts, the briefest tops and for the blokes no top at all.
Jackie, our neighbour walks her little dog a few times a day and at quiet times she has seen foxes, rabbits and even chickens around the shrubbery nearby....but coming home late last week she spotted an owl for the first time. She was so excited and went home to tell everyone. Then the next day when she was out for her early morning walk and came round the corner to go past our house she saw it again. Still in the same place! And it still is!
I bought it at a bric-a-brac shop and decided that it might frighten away the Jackdaws which are trying to nest in the loft. They get in under the gable of the top window and dig at a small gap between the roof and the flashing. We have tried many materials to fill the gap and deter them....expanding foam, lumps of timber, rolls of insulation etc, but the gap is impossible to reach from the inside. We use the loft for storage and are not keen to share it with half a dozen jackdaws.
So far nothing has worked. They arrive early in the morning and mine away at the stuff. By the time we get up the yard is strewn with specks of green expanding foam and wisps of insulation not to mention nest-building twigs and splats of bird droppings.
So...bring in the big guns. This is Nev in his cherry picker.

He lined the underneath of the overhang with chicken wire and jammed a ball of it up the inside where they had made most effort to get in.

Since then they have had a go at getting in each morning, pecking away at the wood and hanging on the chicken wire but it seems to be a success.
They will have to go elsewhere. The owl was no good for frightening off jackdaws but he can stay because the neighbours like him. Another neighbour mentioned him today while she was complaining about the damage the jackdaws have done to her roof. Like with ours they have had a go at lifting the flashing to get in so they must have considerable strength.

They will now have to nest elsewhere.

Hope you all had a good time during the lovely weather. It may have been the summer we wont get later.

Cheers Gillian

North Yorkshire Coast Is the Best!

The weather has been wonderful and so we have been taking our "transportable conservatory" away to the seaside. We have chosen to approach Whitby via the coast road through Sandsend. This allows us to check out how the parking-cliffside is going at Sandsend before heading off to West Cliff at Whitby to find a spot near the lift, toilet block and the benches. These are all desirable amenities. It's possible to walk down, through the town to the Eateries. We were disappointed , though, with Hadleys, across the Bridge.

I ordered the blackboard special of "our homemade fabulous fish pie".

It was £8.25 so I thought it would be a delicious combination of seafood and fish in a creamy white sauce topped with mashed potato. It didn't say it was going to be that. I just assumed it was by the blackboard description and previous deliveries in previous restaurants.

It was quite dreadful. I dug down into the brown pottery dish (best part) and un-rolled the bottom of a burnt fish. It continued, rather like unrollimg an old piece of carpet. There was no sauce, there were some green strands and some brown bits of fish fossil.

I went to the counter where things happen and told them that I was surprised by the state of the fish pie. They offered no explanation or apology but gave me the menu to choose again!!!

I ended up with some scampi. DJ had haddock as usual and declared it just fine.

The sea made wonderful patterns on the beach and I found some great pebbles, one of which is a beautiful ammonite...or will be if I can open it.

I shall have a go at paintimg all this seascape stuff.

Paul Dillon has said he will take me into his oil painting class next term so that I can learn some techniques and improve my practices.

This enormous piece of green rock is not native to these parts. I think it has probably broken away from the great dumps of rock from Scotland that are used along these soft cliffs as protection from the waves. It has touches of schist and gneiss about it indicating metamorphic influences. Must come from the north or west.

The weather has been great. Tomorrow promises to be better on the western side of the Pennines so it may be worth a trip over to the Lakes.

Cheers Gillian

All Is Not Lost...There Is Amazing Aldeburgh!!!

Yes Thankyou!!!
I had a lovely holiday this time.
As a Geography teacher, I have spent a lot of time teaching physical, coastal geography. The chapter in which-ever text book I chose to use, has had the same famous examples. I taught them to Australians even though I had never been to some of the places in the books.
I have now.

The scallop shell is on Aldeborough shingle beach. The house is "The House in the Clouds" at Thorpeness a couple of miles north of Aldeburgh.
Thorpeness is really lovely and the Emporium is well worth a browse.
Snape Maltings are also worth a visit but take your purse because the major entertainment is buying stuff.



The lighthouse is at Southwold. It was really cold when we got there. But it would be a grand resort if the sun shone and no-one else knew it was there.

And this lovely lady is driving around on a Sakura moped. It needs no license, insurance, crash helmet!!! (we passed her while she was wearing a headscarf...QE2 style), or road tax. It costs £650 on road and goes 15mph max and carries 16stone max. I shall have to lose some weight so that I can get the shopping on as well. You can plug it in at home to charge it up for what seems to be very little money.

Aldeborough is famous for the fishing vessels that pull up on the beach and sell fish from the shed next door. We bought £8.50 worth of cod fillet and have had...pan-fried cod last night, fish cakes (cod, salmon, leek & potato) tonight, and probably Cataplana (fish, tomato, potato, spices) tomorrow.
We are so glad to be back,though, and basking in the comfort we have created here.

Cheers Gillian

ps... the wonderful hotel where we stayed was The White Lion.

DID YOU HAVE A NICE HOLIDAY?

Well it started off quite warm and sunny and we walked for miles along the promenade from Sliema to St Julian's Bay. We had expected Malta to offer us a warm and sunny break at this time of year.

We caught the bus (with everyone else) to Valletta and walked up and down the streets and visited the War Museum.

We looked at and into some Churches.

And sat in the sun outside the Caffe Cordina.

I had the best Insalata Caprese I've ever had. Freshly made, buffalo milk mozzarella, thinly sliced local tomato and rocket, beautifully dressed with olive oil and all mopped up with tasty bread.





We wandered the streets, cruised the bays and even took the sight-seeing bus round the island in the pouring rain. It was a tour that you could leave and then rejoin. At the start the weather was fine and we tolerated the sharp wind on the topless upstairs. At Mdina it started to rain so we sat downstairs until we got to the craft village. At that stage the next bus to come along was a topless coach! There was no downstairs and we huddled under a small piece of canopy behind the driver. The only other passenger alighted at Bugibba. We hung on grimly until we got back to the starting point and climbed the hill back to our hotel to nurse ourselves warm again.
The first couple of days were fine in the afternoon, though, and we were optimistic that the weather would improve believing that a night-time thunderstorm would have cleared the air.
We were fascinated by the saints in alcoves on the corners of streets. We assume this is Our Lady of the Wires.

And this must surely be Our Lady of the Convex Mirror.

But understandably, our favourite was St Francis of the Finger, because by the end of the week the weather had become a phenomenon. The view from our balcony changed from this....












...to this.

All the boats were moved to a safer harbour. A storm was approaching. It was an enormous hot sandy air mass from North Africa meeting the cool wet air of the sea around us. It created a Cyclone.

We were on the eighth floor with the pool deck above us and the sun-loungers were careering around and "things" were crashing and tinkling all over the place.

It went on all night and we woke to drifts of red sand on the balcony and flights being redirected to Sicily. Winds had been recorded at 150kph and someone had been killed by the waves on the promenade. Seaweed was dumped well inland and waves were still breaking over the Marine Drive the next day.

As we waited for our flight the wind picked up again and so we were very relieved to actually get on the flight on time and reach the safety of Newcastle Airport.

Did we have a nice holiday? Not sure yet. The weather was obviously dreadful for more than half the time and one of the reasons for going was to get some good weather. I haven't been to Malta before and I'm glad I have now visited it but I found no wonderful things to remember for ever and spent more than I wanted to on ordinary getting by (wine, coffee trips) and one day sick in bed after something I ate!

OK. I'm sure now. It was probably very close to the bottom of the holiday list.

To add salt to the wound, it's gloriously sunny here and quite warm.

Cheers Gillian

The Fickle Spindle of Fate

There was a "Spinning Day" at the local woolstore;
"A Fine Yarn" in Skinnergate in Darlington. Christine provided space and scones and copious cuppas and we sat surrounded by gorgeous yarns.

It was for beginners. Having had a spinning wheel for forty years, I probably cannot claim to be a beginner but I often still feel like one because I'm mainly self taught and not well taught. So I signed up.

I took my Ashford and basket of gear and greeted a shopful of jolly women.

We started by learning how to use a drop spindle. I've had one for years and it has never been successfully used. The diagrams in the books I have make it look simple but don't tell you how many times you will drop it before you develop some sort of rhythm.

So after decades of trying....success at last.

The next sucess was learning to use a pair of hand carders to make a rolag. This process turns raw fleece into lofty(air-filled) rolls of spinnable fleece very quickly. I have previously used a dog comb or a flick carder and these only do small swatches at a time. The hand carders do much larger amounts.

And here I am spinning some I made earlier.


Veronica, the teacher for the day (veronicaburningham.wordpress.com) did a comprehensive coverage of getting started. It would have been a bit better if there had been more wheels to go round. I had a go on mine while she watched and showed me where I had been going wrong with the tension for absolutely ages and then I lent mine out to the real beginners. An Ashford is a good starting wheel but spinning is not as easy as it looks and you need to make sure you want to go on before you invest in a wheel.

Of course the trouble is that this has awoken the butterfly in me and I fear I shall now need to spin for a while and foresake the painting!

Tigger has been a bit slack about going out in the bad weather, but the mild patch must have brought on a hunting urge and she laid the trophy out neatly by her food bowl this moring. A very large rodent! probably starting with R.

Cheers Gillian

The OK Bus is OK with Me

The OK Buses are OK with me!!!
A couple of weeks ago the OK Expressway buslines started a new express from Crook to Darlington. They promised it would run every half hour. It does, and it does so from the bus stop at the end of our road! It is no longer worth taking the car into Darlo.
Our bus passes are truly magic. They save us £6.00 in fuel, and a couple of quid for parking near Tkmaxx. We love the freedom of them and the great variety the local bus station offers.

Arriva have set up another run. The X1 also goes from the end of the road and all the way to Darlington and the journey is a few minutes shorter.
We took the X1 home the other day and went along the A6072 instead of the A68. We don't really mind which bus we take. The couple of minute's difference is not important, but I think I shall go with the OK bus. So far the drivers have been much jollier and glad to see you.

Other buses from the Bishop Bus Station go to Sunderland and to Newcastle, like this one. They also go every half hour but the journey is long because the bus stops at every stop.
But free rides around the country are wonderful.
We can go to all the places mentioned and all the villages nearby and to Durham and other stuff.

You can get off the Newcastle bus at the top of the hill near THE ANGEL . We shall do that next time.

I've had some tonsilitis and a bout of bronchial infection which has laid me low for a while but I'm better now and riding the buses again.

Cheers Gillian

Bits Of Green Between The Winter Colours

We visited the New Forest a couple of weeks ago, to see the oldest oak in England. Or the oldest oak in the New Forest. Or the oldest oak I've ever seen. One of those will be correct.
It was a grand old growth and still alive and carefully looked after.

But the younger trees in the pic below are closer to home and were only planted at the start of the railway era (1830s). They are on a wide bridge over the old railway path from Bishop Auckland to Durham...now known as the Auckland Way and turned into a footpath and bike path.



The Bishop of the time didn't want to see the smoke or soot of the trains and ordered a bridge to be built, wide and deep enough to grow trees to hide the track below. These trees are still growing.

Further into Auckland Park, which the Bishop's carriage would cross on his way to his palace at Bishop Auckland, were ancient meadows for grazing and trees which sheltered the deer. These strange lumps on the old meadows are the remains of ancient ant hills.

These brown lumps are much more modern and show the previous night's efforts of Mr. Mole and his family!

We are now cloaked in a thin but chill layer of white as the snow settles in around us.

Hope the weather is fine where you are.

Cheers Gillian