The View From The Loo

Finally, we feel like we have turned a bit of a corner tonight. The plumbing in the bathroom is finished. Other than flooring it's just the sparky to do his second fix on Monday. Till then it's bathing by candlelight - as well as toothbrush by torchlight, etc etc etc .........



The bath has already had a test drive - and it was great!


So it's lights and other bits of electrical works on Monday, and then we start all over again in the wetroom on Tuesday.

Too Hot?

What do you do when you are too hot?
Move away from the heat source?
Not if you are a Red Cocker. You just stay put and pant.

Wet and Windy?

Well, that's what the forecast said, and they were pretty accurate. They also said snow on the tops. Obviously they meant the tops of anything above 1000ft, because this was the view from the window at 7am this morning.


The jaunty angle of the bird table tells you that it was pretty windy - especially as it is anchored in two places!

And Still it Rains

Did I mention it was a bit wet here?
so far this month.......
7mm 1st Nov,
27mm 2nd nov,
18mm this morning and it has rained pretty much ever since. Best guess would be that there has already been 20mm today and it shows no sign of letting up. Locally becks and rivers are bursting their banks and fields are underwater. Roads through the County are flooding and I bet many who were flooded twelve months ago in Cockermouth and Keswick are getting very uneasy.

Water Water Everywhere ..............

Back home after a relaxing long weekend catching up with friends and family. Nigel, Mike and Evan have been busy changing our hot water system and putting in a new control system. They decided to do this while we were away rather than concentrate on the bathroom hardware, so that we wouldn't be without heat/water while we were here. Bless their little cotton socks!
Many things have happened in the bathroom as well, although most are behind the scenes. We do however, have a new ceiling as well as a new bath!

Don't worry, we are not about to get into the bath, it is filled purely to make sealing more effective!

Today it has been the turn of Gordon the tiler (who is also one of our neighbours). After filling an awful lot of very big holes in the plaster, he has managed to get most of the fiddly wall tiled.
While we are on the subject of water, it seems as though we are heading towards a wet month. We have had an inch of rain since yesterday morning and fields are getting seriously waterlogged. Welcome to Cumbria in November. (it continued to rain after posting this - we had 34mm by the next morning 03/11)

Wildlife in October

A Few Days Away

A few days on the Northamptonshire/Warwickshire borders, visiting my parents. Not a bad way to start the visit when you are greeted with a beautiful sunset on arrival.

Day two........

It may not look much, but three guys have been working solidly all day. Nigel and Evro have had a radical reorganisation of a complete mish mash of pipes under the bathroom floor, and been laying a new soil pipe for the loo under the floor - that's the floor which is having to be replaced because it was in so many pieces when the carpet was lifted, it looked like a jigsaw without a picture. And replacing the soil pipe below the bathroom floor.


A mass of pipes have been fitted to the new cylinder too. I'm sure they must all make sense to Mike, who has been bending and soldering all day.



Tomorrow morning is the turn of Simon the Sparky.

Day One

This morning our bathroom looked like this.......

Not particularly pleasant, and in need of a face lift.

By lunchtime it looked like this






By tonight it looks like this..........
But we do have a new hot water system, in place, ready to be conected......

One chance only

One chance. That's all you get to take a picture of a visiting Dog Fox as he collects his lunch from the field behind. A chance that was pretty much wasted by the camera auto flashing! A bit of fiddling with the settings on the pc, and a picture that will definitely never win a prize, but does at least prove his existence!

Soil Structure

Having both spent far too much of our lives trying to educate farmers on how to achieve the best possible soil structure for root crops, it is pleasing to see that we did have a bit of an idea what we were talking about!



Unfortunately, just to prove that you can never tell a crop by it's appearance - they are not the best eating parsnips we have tasted. The variety is Gladiator F1, and we think we will try something else next year - if only Husband could remember what variety he used to grow!

Wall to Wall Sunshine

A phrase that was surely invented by someone with a view like ours, on a day like today.




First air frost of the autumn last night -0.4c, we have had three or four ground frost previously.

A Weekend of Wassailing

Back to Lincolnshire to visit Simon and Sally for the weekend, and Bungle and Ferdy of course. Simon had a significant birthday earlier this year, and to mark the occasion, we gave him a pear tree to replace one of the poorer trees in their orchard. Saturday was a beautiful day so a tree planting ceremony was suggested. We thought that was a great idea.

That's funny, I don't remember being told that a Tree Planting ceremony involved removing the old tree

Oh Bugger. This one was a bit more rotten than Simon thought!

Many hands (and a few horsepower) make light work

The tree takes it's rightful place in the orchard. Just out of reach of the horses paddock.

Now that we've started, we might as well take out this other tree that need replacing. And this one. Oh and what about this one? By the time we were all finished, four fruit trees - three Apples and a Bullace had been pulled out of the ground. All were in need of removing - it's a very old orchard.

Simon very quickly dealt with the smaller rubbish.

Bungle was waiting patiently for apples. Ferdy meanwhile, was showing his usual lack of manners............

Around Hay Knott

What a beautiful October morning. Too good to waste, but we have plans for this afternoon, so a mornings walk looks like a good idea. We decided on a circuit of Hay Knott, so drove over to Fellside to start the walk from there. It still seems surreal that we can do things like this - and we're not on holiday!

Her Ladyship is showing her age at the moment, and we have had a ground frost overnight, so it's time to get her exercise blanket out.

Never mind the cold, Hattie has a paddle and a nice peaty drink.

Clear blue skies and views all around. This is looking down Hay Gill

Across the gill, we can see signs of the old mineral mines, Hushes on the side of Brae Fell.

More evidence of mining, with an old Kiln Chimney (top left of picture), running up the side of the fell by Hay Gill.

De Ja Vu

Our neighbours field is being fenced tomorrow and they still have quite a bit of work to do to get ready for it. On impulse this morning, we decided to turn up and see if they would like a hand. The day turned into another 'working party' day, with the girls coming back for some impromptu provisions. We broke for lunch of jacket tates (cooked in the embers of the fire), cheese, baked beans and beer, in glorious sunshine.



Her ladyship helped for a while this morning, but like all old girls, came home for her afternoon snooze when we came back for the food. Buddy stayed to help all day though. At least, he helped with lunch anyway!

A Quick Bit of Planting

We have had a number of plants sitting in position on the new bed, waiting for two things.
A) Us to make our minds up on their correct place
B) A dry day or two to be able to get on the ground and plant them.

A pretty good day yesterday and a glorious day today, helped along by a bit of tilling to dry it out through today and voila............





A good number of the plants have come from a friend in the village, one or two are recycled from before, the rest are from local nurseries (yes Bilbo, I have to admit to buying a couple at Larch cottage!!)

Still a few gaps to fill, but with an imminent visit to a friends particularly good garden in Lincolnshire (Hi Sally!), followed by another visit to a superbly stocked one in Northamptonshire (Mum and Dad), and I'm sure we'll get that sorted!

The Boys (and Girls) are Back

Who needs a strimmer when you have lambs to eat the grass at the bottom of the fence? Ollie and friends have returned to 'our' field(Ollie is the right hand lamb looking at the camera) to be finished. It's only a week or two since the ewes were moved up into the Paddock beyond, but it is nice to have stock right outside the window again. Looks really pastoral doesn't it!

Wildlife in September

New entries onto the list this month are a Newt found under the cold frame when we moved it, the Hedgehog seen under the bird feeders one morning and a Grey Wagtail.
Other highlights are that the pair of french Partridge who used to visit constantly, but have been away for a while - presumably happy to raise their young on naturally occurring food - have appeared a few times with three teenagers, and Mr and Mrs P (pheasant) have paraded their family of about 10 to show them off as well.




New entries onto the list this month

Indian Summer?

We hadn't seen them since last Saturday, the wind had been from the North. We were convinced we'd seen the last of them for this year. How wrong we were!




It looks as though we still have a few days of summer left.

Prickly Visitor

We used to get hedgehogs a lot at our old house. Attracted by the bird seed. We were only talking about them on Sunday, and that we hadn't seen any, or evidence of any, since moving up here. Our neighbours hadn't seen any for ages either. Somebody must have been listening.........