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It has been a couple of months since our last overseas trip and since then we've stayed at home, or at least in England with a couple of days up in The Lakes with Mum and friend of the family, plus the usual shopping excursions to London, where we also had New Year.
We've had many a breakfast all over the World, but the Sharrow fry up at Bank House is still the best! (Maybe that dawn hike up that mountain in the right photo and all that fresh air makes it all the more enjoyable!)
The following day saw the surrounding mountains bathed in a low Winter sun so we took a leisurely drive along the length of Ullswater and over the pass to Lake Windermere, stopping off at The Drunken Duck near Hawkshead for a bowl of soup.
The picture on the left was taken from the top of the Kirkstone Pass looking down towards Brotherswater, with the right photo taken as we crossed Lake Windermere on the chain driven car ferry that connects Hawkshead to Bowness. With the rain coming down as we travelled back home along the M6, once again we had been lucky with the weather in The Lakes. Yes they do have loads of rain up there but we always manage to avoid it! Just a week later and Winter arrived in The Cotswolds with a heavy frost and covering of snow.
This blanket of snow fell on 29thNovember. You can see the oak tree still hanging on to it's leaves. In fact today, 7th January as I type, the sleet is coming down thick and fast. With all this seasonally wintry weather it has been a good excuse to finally light our fires in the house. We never got around to using them (like the Aga and dishwasher!) but in recently fitting extractor fans to encourage a good draw of air, we were particularly keen to give them a trial run and the good news is that they all work splendidly! Here are four photos showing the roaring log fires in the sitting rooms and dining room.
Dennis is the pyrotechnic expert and never fails to get a good fire going. We've even had special ash collecting trays made, that fit beneath the grate, making the tidying up afterwards a lot easier! So, with the snow falling outside, a glowing fire burning bright, it's time to make those New Year's resolutions again. Yes we actually made it down to the gym this week to kick start the ususal promise to get fitter. I have been up in the home gym regularly but tend to use it more as the music room. After an intensive workout two days ago I'm still aching all over and now realise there's plenty of room for improvement before the holiday to The Maldives. We will hopefully continue last year's resolution to carry on with the travelling. We've recently got the urge to visit Africa for the first time, spurred on by a T.V. programme called 'The Zoo' from Auckland, New Zealand, that features all the big cats that they've successfully bred. Also, I came across the traveller's guide 'Conde Nast' list of Top 100 Hotels in the World, as voted by guests, and many game reserves around Botswana and the Kruger National Park featured prominently, so hopefully one day we'll make it out there. As for other places to visit on this year's wish list, no doubt we'll be making regular trips back to Spain, and Dennis would like to see Stockholm again, when the weather improves. As for Christmas itself, we travelled up to Cheshire to drop off presents and took Mum out to a nice restaurant located at the top of 'The Edge', the famous sandstone escarpment National Trust parkland which dominates the village of Alderley Edge, where we lived before moving overseas to Spain. Dennis's old Thatched Cottage nestles at the foot of the hill, overlooking the Cheshire Plain and it was over The Edge that he'd walk his dogs, (well I'd run them up the hill…it was during my marathon running period!) and Dennis would meet us at the top in the Range Rover, by The Wizard restaurant. Well that was 20 years ago, but the restaurant remains and it was here that Mum and us enjoyed a good Christmas lunch. They served quite an inventive rendition of the traditional turkey, wrapping a stuffed breast in ham and bacon rather than the usual dry thin slices of meat. We called around to Janet's, my younger sister's house, afterwards to drop presents off and arranged to see them down here in The Cotswolds later in the week. Mum spent Christmas Day with Janet, Boxing Day with my brother Trevor, and we drove down to London to have the day with Ken & Lesley and alsation Boolee and friends, where, apart from having a fabulous dinner, we learnt a particularly interesting fact, courtesy of the Hostess. Heavily pregnant at the time, and in fact just hours from giving birth to her first son, Lesley remembered that 40 years ago Boxing Day was deferred until Monday 27th Dec. Knowing that such an unusual fact rang a bell in our minds, we were of course inclined to agree wholeheartedly with Lesley, but it became a bit of a heated debate amongst other guests who chose to rubbish her theory. Well, Dennis in particular knew Lesley could not be wrong, and it was only the next day when we went on the internet that we could indeed officially let her know how right we had all been all along! Having surfed dozens of websites, learning which horse won the Boxing Day races, or about a BP oil rig sinking in The North Sea on Boxing Day, we finally came across a site that actually told us which day it was, and it turned out it was declared on Monday 27th simply because officially Boxing Day can only fall on a Monday to Saturday, and not a Sunday. At least that's how it stood in 1965! That's the sort of question that should have come from a Christmas cracker. Meanwhile, Dennis's question all week had been 'Who's Daniel Powter?' He'd never heard of the singer songwriter, but I broke the news to him when I thought he was in a good mood, that we were going to see him in concert in Birmingham. I bought the CD and thought it was very good so went on line to see if he was performing live anywhere. As it turned out, he was staging a concert at the Birmingham academy just before Christmas, so I booked a couple of tickets, and every night driving down to the pub played the CD in the car, until Dennis actually recognised his hit single 'Have a bad day'. Next thing to do was to break it to him gently that we would be seeing him at this venue which was a bit of a dive. Put it this way, only 600 people are allowed in the building at any one time due to Health & Safety. There's standing room only, no seats, and the floors are sticky with spilt beer. Next problem was to go there 'incognito' so we wouldn't stand out in the crowd, so I decided it'd have to be 'chav' attire, mixed with a bit of' bling' and maybe a smattering of' goth' thrown in. Having explained all three terms to Dennis, he decided to dig out all his jewellery of old, bedeck himself with gold and dug out an old pair of ripped paint splattered jeans. For a start he wouldn't have made it to the concert without have being mugged, and he looked more like a 'Village People' reject than modern day 'chav'. (By the way, what do chavs use as protection during sex? A bus shelter!) So, the 'dressdown' outfit was abandoned for something more 'middle of the road', and on the Friday night, already two hours late for the start, (as I thought it would be pushing it to turn up early for the support act,) we were totally lost somewhere by The Bullring, aimlessly following the totally confused satnav in the car which relentlessly told us to make 'U' turns. Finally parking on waste ground, walking through a group of junkies, we made the venue minutes before Daniel himself took to the stage. Positioning ourselves just yards from the front, it was only when the music started that we realised we were inches away from the wall of speakers! Anyway, our bodies physically vibrated to the rhythm of the bass as DP ran through his portfolio of music from his hit CD. Dennis remained very blasé about the whole thing and couldn't understand how the audience actually knew all the words in singing along! Barely an hour later and it was all over, and it was quite a relief and surprise to find that the car was still there on our return! Following Boxing Day, my sister Janet, John and the children came down from Cheshire to see us, held up both ways in heavy traffic on the M6, plus the occasional flurry of snow. Dennis cooked a great meal for us all with a selection of beef and ham, leek and potato bake, and roast potatoes. No the dishwasher wasn't used; we still haven't read the instruction book! Last Friday we travelled down to London where we had booked a couple of nights at The Goring Hotel with our neighbours, Karen Nigel and their boys Oliver and Louis. It's a super hotel just at the back of the gardens of Buckingham Palace, by Belgravia and just around the corner from Victoria station. It's almost like a country house hotel, complete with garden, right in the centre of town, and particularly welcomes children and families. With New Year's Eve dinner reserved at the hotel, we pre-arranged a couple of shows, and Nigel got us in to 'Scallini's' Italian restaurant for lunch in Knightsbridge. Getting down by mid morning, we shopped at Harrods before lunch there. Already packed, we were shown to a good table (which was ideal for celeb spotting!). The place reminded us of the typical bustling bars and restaurants that we used to go to in Spain, with the room loud with conversation, busy local waiters attending several tables at once, and the air blue with smoke, all creating the atmosphere in this case of a traditional Italian trattoria in the heart of Knightsbridge! The food was superb and Dennis proclaimed that his steak was the best he'd ever had, which is really saying something. Later that evening we had tickets booked for the musical .'Mamma Mia', with seats right at the front. We have all seen the show before, but it's always as enjoyable, particularly if you're a fan of the Abba music. On New Year's Eve we returned in the morning for more shopping at Harrods, followed by the matinee performance of the musical 'Billy Elliot', whose storyline closely follows that of the film, including all the swearing and political overtones. (Maggie Thatcher wouldn't have enjoyed it!) Time then to return to the hotel for the evening dinner where we all dressed up for the occasion. (definitely no chav, bling or goth tonight!)
The restaurant at The Goring has recently been redesigned and refurbished, and was a great venue not only for the dinner but the subsequent brunch on New Year's Day. Back home, and as mentioned, time to make and break those New Year's resolutions and generally get back to normal. All that remains is to wish everyone a really super, happy and healthy 2006. Best wishes, Colin & Dennis. |
