Scarborough

It’s been a while again I know but time just seems to disappear from my grasp these days. I’ve been up to all sorts since I last wrote but the big thing is that we had a lovely long weekend away in Scarborough. You may wonder why Scarborough. Well, call me sentimental but it was the first place that John & I went for a holiday some 28 years ago! We’d been up to stay with his parents in Northumberland and stopped off in Scarborough on the way home. Needless to say things have changed over the years and parts of the town were very run down and neglected, almost to the point of shabbiness which was rather sad. We stayed in a small, privately run hotel – The Wharncliffe which was very homely and welcoming. We had a beautiful view across the North Bay and it was lovely to watch the sun rise and set across the sea. I’m not a big breakfast eater but John loves a ‘full English’ if we’re away – you can see why they won awards for their cooked breakfast, each one fresh cooked to order and to perfection.

Using Scarborough as our base we travelled around for the three days we spent there – Whitby, Filey & Pickering (for the railway). Of course before we set off I researched casually looked for fabric supplies (you knew I would didn’t you!) and saw a tiny reference to a shop in Whitby – Judith’s. I can’t give you a link because she doesn’t have a web site. I have never seen so much fabric in such a small space in my life. It was stacked floor to ceiling. All colours. All patterns. All plains. I needed to buy some fabric to bind & back the quilt that I haven’t shown you yet and when I went to pay she didn’t take cards, only cash or cheque, so I trundled to the nearest cash point and drew out far too much to pay for what I’d already ordered so then proceeded to look for more when I got back to the shop! There was another couple in there at the same time, who believe it or not were from Felixstowe at some time and knew Quilters Haven at Wickham Market!! Small world, anyway I’m rambling, the husband commented that his wife buys fabric and never uses it!! She admitted that she is out too often to make things! I have to say that, although I buy far more than I use, that made me feel better!

So we wandered around Whitby taking photographs of the same things so that we could compare the results between the two cameras (which I have yet to do!).

On Sunday morning we woke to a beautiful sunny day, blue skies, no clouds. We decided to explore Scarborough and set of to walk round to the South Bay where John had identified a couple of caches (I like to play fair and let him have his chance to play as well ) but sadly the blue didn’t last. By midday the clouds blew in in and the temperature dropped, we bought rolls for lunch and sat out on a bench outside the hotel to eat them and nearly got blown away! As the weather had changed we set off to Filey in the car but by the time we got there it was absolutely pouring down and we parked up and sat in the car watching  the waves crash in. I crocheted and John snoozed – a real Darby and Joan moment! It stopped raining long enough for John to take some photos of brave souls paragliding (I think that’s what it’s called – they had parachute things on boards in the sea – or is it parasurfing?) We rounded the day off with delicious Fish & Chips in the sort of restaurant that your parents took you to when you were a child and that you vowed never to go to yourself.

Monday promised better weather and we headed off to Pickering to go for a ride on the North Yorks Moors Railway. We‘re not train people generally but took the opportunity for more photography along the way – John ended up with loads of tiny flecks of coal in in his hair from hanging out of the windows to take the photos! There wasn’t much to see and nowhere to buy fabric on this trip but as part of my research I had found this shop before I went. Well, Judith’s was amazing but this place was something else. On line the fabric is £6 per metre – in the shop it was £4.80!! £4.80. I know. Cheap. The only problem I had was that there was too much choice. I only spent £30 in there, they only sold full metres which is OK – after all it will get used, won’t it? I bought some lovely mauve-y fabrics for a bag – I reckon there’s enough for at least two plus some smaller bags, I won’t bore you with the other stuff just yet – there’s plenty of time for that!

So home on Tuesday via York – and the Cath Kidston shop and Betty’s tearoom (you should have seen the queue outside ‘big’ Betty’s but fortunately we’d spotted a smaller version around the corner and went there) where we had coffee and sandwiches. We were expecting something special but you should have seen John’s face when the sandwiches arrived – they were tiny little triangles with the crust cut off.

So we headed home, exhausted after our relaxing break and ready to re-join the fray of everyday life. John went back to work on Wednesday but I’ve had the rest of the week off, spent all day Wednesday baking and all day yesterday feeling bleurgh and tired  - it’s early today but I hope it’s better than yesterday!

Washington Post

(Warning – photo overload, please be patient as the page may take a while to load!)

Not the newspaper but my version! Well, we’re back after a fantastic week in the capital city of Washington DC. Boy was it cold! For the most part we had lovely sunny days and blue skies but they were accompanied by a biting cold north wind, the weather stats said an average of 16 degrees c (61 f) but it didn’t get above 6 c the whole time we were there – we even had snow on Sunday morning!

After a flight punctuated by a screaming 2 year old (nothing to do with the flight she just kept shrieking from the minute she got on the plane!) we arrived at Dulles International airport to grey skies and sleet, a shuttle bus took us to the hotel which took about an hour. Let me say right now that we booked this holiday as part of a package, there is no way on earth we could have afforded to stay at The Fairmont Hotel otherwise – the card in the room gave the room rate at $900 dollars per night!! It was a gorgeous hotel though, well placed for everything and luxury I would normally only dream of – right down to the white fluffy bath robes they provided.

So what did we do? Well, John obviously had some geo caching planned – I think we he managed 23 in the end, all of which were ‘virtual’ apart from one. The virtual meaning that you had to answer questions or upload a photo to prove you’d been there. I don’t think I have ever walked so much in my life! Despite taking the Metro to get us nearer to the attractions we trekked from cache to cache whilst taking the sites in at the same time.

It was good to see places for real rather than just on the TV and here are some of the places we saw – I won’t give you a day by day account but the photos tell the story themselves! It’s Cherry Blossom time in DC at the moment which is something of a festival for them so a lot of the photos include the blossoms, there were also some beautiful magnolia trees in bloom.

The first cache! (don’t worry – I’m not going to show you all of them!)

Taken through the railings at the back of the White House!

Through railings at the front of The White House

The Capitol

Looking along The Mall from The Capitol

Not very clear but John F Kennedy grave – Jackie Kennedy-Onassis is next to him (Arlington Cemetery)

Grave stones as far as the eye can see at Arlington Cemetery – a very tranquil place

Abraham Lincoln statue at The Lincoln Memorial

I took loads of Cherry Blossom photos but this is my favourite!

The Washington Memorial – you can see just how windy it was!

Einstein – no idea who the children are!! Another of John’s cache answers!

I’ll leave there I think – I took over a hundred photos, a lot of them very similar but I think I’ve picked out the best ones to share.

If any of you get the chance to go to Washington DC I strongly recommend it. It’s a very clean place, everybody is very friendly and, as John so eloquently put it, there’s a lot of history for such a ‘young’ country!

A holiday update!

At last I hear you all say – well I hope that’s what I hear!!

This must be one of the longest times I’ve gone without blogging which has felt a little strange. We’ve been home from the holiday for about a week now and with one thing and another I just haven’t got around to writing anything.

So, let’s get going shall we, no more dilly dallying. We had a lovely early morning flight from Stansted on the Friday morning which seemed like a good idea at the time, you know, more time in resort and all that. However that meant checking in by 5.15 AM. John & I cheated and spent the night before at an airport hotel although we still had to be up just after 3.30 to make sure we were all ready to catch the shuttle bus at 4.30!

One thing that amazes is me is how easy it is to actually meet up with people in a busy place! We were due to meet our friends at 4.45 and had agreed to phone them to arrange a rendezvous – the conversation went something like this ‘Hi, we’re by the letter H’ ‘I know I can see you’!  Even at that time of the morning we’d managed to be so close without any real coordination, I looked round to see Linda waving through the glass door (no, not literally I mean I could see her through the door!)

A four hour flight took us to sunny Tenerife in the Canary Islands and a short coach trip from the airport took us to the beautiful Bahia Princess hotel in Costa Adeje. John and I went to the resort about three years ago and stayed at the sister hotel to the Bahia which is just behind it. We preferred the Bahia as it was much smaller and less busy.

The week passed in a blur of sitting beside the pool, mainly in the shade, reading and people watching and not a lot else. We wanted a chill out break so deliberately avoided the usual coach trips around the island. We did however book on a free ‘promotional’ trip. We knew it would be a sales opportunity but  figured we just needed to say ‘no’ to any sales pitch and enjoy the free coach trip! The promotion was for a ‘sleep system’ which was actually very tempting, so tempting that John decided that we should by one of the mattresses as it would solve all of our aches and pains! There were people on the trip who, yep you’ve guessed it, already owned the product and absolutely swore by it, saying it had relieved their aches and pains and improved their quality of life no end. Now – am I a cynic? Do I think that these dear old souls had been ‘planted’ on the trip? They were very convincing is all I can say. The good thing is there was a two week ‘cooling off’ period which meant we could cancel the order when we got home. After a spot of ‘Googling’ we decided to cancel the order, we were a little concerned to find a very small print clause of having to pay 30% in the event of cancellation. My heckles rose on that one because it wasn’t even hinted at in the presentation – thankfully when we phoned to cancel there was no request to pay, which was just as well because we have no intention of doing so anyway!

And here is what I’m sure you’ve all being dying to see – the photographs , there’s not many just a few to give you a taste!

Guess what Son2 had planned while we were away?

 

Of course John had to do a couple of Geo Caches – this one involved a leisurely stroll along the beach and then a climb down a shingly slope, needless to say I stayed on terra ferme  and zoomed in for the photo!

Isn’t this a beautiful sight? There are 52 steps from the pool area to the top, yep 52. No matter how you say it whatever language you use they were tortuous! I confess I only managed them once and found alternative ways of getting up and down – they were relentless! Made of marble, no ‘half way’ respite they were evil!

 

I let John go off to play by himself and trusted him with the camera – I think this picture was taken from Los Christianos on his Geo Caching jolly.

And just to confirm those steps – there were definitely 52 of them, even in daylight!

I think that’s enough for now, I’ll update with other stuff soon – it’s been a very strange week this week for a variety of reasons and I’m really glad to have a day off today!

Getting better!

After posting last week about my quilting attempts, I persuaded John to come with me to Quilters Haven with a promise that I would do a couple of geo caches with him (he’s easily bribed!). The shop is in a small village, Wickham Market, just a little way from home – in fact so much closer than I thought it was that I’m wondering why I’ve never been there before! Anyhow, it turns out that there was to be a ‘Quilt Walk’ yesterday which pleased me as it would give me a chance to see other people’s efforts. We pulled into the village and soon saw a derelict piece of land surrounded by ugly wire fencing which had some of the most gorgeous quilts pegged to it – I thought that was a really novel idea!There was an elderly lady looking after the quilts and I confessed to being a true novice and in turn she confessed to not being a quilter at all – had tried it a few years ago but couldn’t take to it!
We wandered around the different locations that housed the various quilts and stood looking in awe at the handiwork involved. However, I am pleased to say that nearly every quilt had something that wasn’t quite right about it – a wonky seam, a triangle that had lost a tip, fabric not quite cut on the square – that made me feel sooo much better about my early efforts!
As a fundraiser for village facilities there was a competition which led you to almost every shop in the village to look for the quilts that were inside and answer very simple questions about each one, this was a very good idea and everybody in the village seemed pleased to be taking part.
By the time we actually got into the shop, John was so fired up with the belief that he could quilt we ended up spending a flipping fortune! I needed a longer ruler as I found out to my cost last week, however I also ‘needed’ all the fabric pictured below! I am please to say that I now have a fabric stash to add to my yarn stash! As the friend that I call Julie said, a girl’s got to have a stash!

The fabric in the blue banding was ‘free’ because we spent so much! It matched some in a bag of scraps that I bought as well which is a bonus!

The owner of the shop has written several books and took the time to show John and I how to make her famous ‘pineapple’ and here is our first attempt! John and I have just spent the afternoon making this square – he cut and measured and I sewed, he can’t quite bring himself to use the machine yet! It got better as we went on – the middle looks very wonky but that’s what makes it unique – by the time we’ve made, I don’t know, another 20 they should all look pretty good!

This was actually a very easy square to make – as I have discovered all quilts have a name this one will of course be called ‘Come on you blues’!!

I’ll leave you with a few of the quilts on display (they were even in the church which was a great place to show them off) I didn’t take many photos in the end because I was too overwhelmed by the quilts!

 

Oh nearly forgot – John found two geo caches as well!!!