Christmas Day 2010

We awoke in Formby and opened our presents at around 7 am.


Despite Mum's builder having the spare back door key (and there's no way round from the front) Ian still managed to feed the hungry birds by climbing out of the kitchen window and by 8 am we were on the road again.

It was still dark, but I got a couple of photographs before I got into the car to show how snowy Formby was.

These are icicles hanging on the rose next to the front door.

Cumbria wasn't as snowy as we thought it would be, but it made the drive to Millom easy. The Duddon river was mostly iced over and we were lucky enough to see a heron when we stopped to take some photos.


Upon arrival in Cumbria we cooked Christmas dinner. Acorn the guinea pig had some carrot while we were preparing the vegetables:

The excitement was too much for Leona:

After Christmas lunch we exchanged presents and Leona opened her first ever Christmas presents with a little help from Dewi



In the evening Ian and I headed back to Formby:

The Journey North - Christmas Eve 2010

I'm a bit behind with blogging, but shall post some photos from our Christmas adventures over the next couple of days.

Our first trip was to Formby on Christmas Eve. We were pleasantly surprised to find the roads passable (though Formby hadn't been gritted) and very few accidents to have occurred on our route that day.

As usual we stopped at Stafford North services. The lake was frozen with the exception of a small pool in the centre which had been kept free of ice by the fountain.


These icicles in either Thornton or Netherton (can't remember where I took them) are the longest I've ever seen:

The fields next to the Formby bypass looked like something out of a Narnia film:

Winter wonderland

For the second time since we put up our Christmas tree we have snow. On the first day it was about an inch thick, but much of it melted when the sun came out mid-morning.

The next night we had a dusting, which again melted quite quick. Assuming that that was it for the year we made a snowman yesterday. Ian had to take a bucket through to the front to find enough snow. We named him Snowbert:

Last night we had several inches more snow - the most I've seen in the UK since I was a child.

I've never seen a snowman covered in snow before!

The birds are really hungry today - enough so that they are stripping the bushes of berries that they ignored even the last time it snowed.

After feeding the birds I spent quite some time clearing the snow off the ponds - the snow blocks the light which stops the plants producing oxygen and can kill amphibians.

We attempted to drive into town (I wanted some photos of the cathedral in the snow), but didn't make it more than a couple of feet before we had to get out the shovel and thought better of making a second attempt. Next door's van got several metres further a few minutes later, but ended up having to reverse down the road and park where it had started.

The thatched cottage at the end of our road:

The Chestnut Centre part 2: otters

The main reason we chose to visit the Chestnut Centre last Sunday was that we had found out that our friends Manoki and Panambi (the giant otters) had had two cubs in the summer and that they were now old enough to have visits from the public.

The giant otters were nowhere to be seen when we arrived, but we had lots of fun with a pair of North American river otters while we waited for them to come out. Their favourite game was swimming under the ice for as long as they could hold their breath and then popping out into the water and rolling around, but they also enjoyed sliding down the snowy slopes on their bellies.


At one point they seemed to think we might have some food and came right up to us to check


Eventually the giant otters came first to their indoor enclosure behind glass (as opposed to another indoor one where they're not bothered by the public)

and then wandered outside. They spent all their time in the river so we weren't able to get any photos up close, but it was wonderful watching the entire family playing together

Ian took lots of videos of them playing so I shall post one here when he's had a chance to edit them.

The Chestnut Centre part 1: deer

Last weekend we took a trip North to see Gary and Dewi. We first stopped at Ikea at Bristol, but they were having some kind of emergency and were evacuating the store. We decided not to wait and proceeded to the Ikea at Wednesbury instead. After we got our shopping we continued up to Preston. You can see photos from our visit at http://babyleoblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/guess-who.html and http://scriptorfamily.blogspot.com/2010/12/uncle-ian-and-leona-4th-december-2010.html

On Saturday we all went shopping and chose Dewi a bridesmaid's dress :-)

On Sunday we returned home via the Chestnut Centre. Derbyshire was covered in thick snow and although many of the animals were hiding from the cold the ones that were out were very friendly. Most of the deer were on or next to the main path running along the hillside:


We were approached by a beautiful stag who was presumably checking that we were behaving ourselves around the rest of the herd.



This pretty little fallow deer wanted to know if we had any food and even when it discovered we did not it stayed close for some photographs.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

We have finally caught up with the rest of the country and early on Thursday morning it snowed in Exeter. Very exciting since we'd already decided to take the day off to buy a Christmas tree, decorate it and get ready for travelling up to Preston on Friday.

We were lucky to get a tree because B&Q had shut their outdoor area where they kept the trees because it was so slippery with snow and ice. Thankfully a very kind man let us go and choose a tree, otherwise we would have had to travel much further and pay more for the tree.

After we'd got the tree in place we decided to go for a walk in the snow. We went to Stoke Woods, just North of Exeter.

The view from nearby Duryard Valley Park:

One for GB - cows wishing they were in New Zealand?!:

William slept in until nearly 3pm, but we finally managed to get him out in the snow for a whole 3 minutes before he went back to bed.


The tree this evening:

November

It appears that nearly a month has passed since I last blogged here and yet it doesn't feel that long. I've been doing a fair bit of cooking and blogging on my Frog End Food blog, but there never seems to be any really interesting news to post here.

There have been floods in our part of the country this last week, but luckily we weren't affected. Otterton Mill (where we're having our wedding reception next summer) was nearly flooded, but although the carpark went underwater we're pleased that recent work by the bridge over the Otter paid off and the main buildings didn't flood.

Our main contract with the company for the winter came to an end prematurely, but luckily we've had interest from several other potential clients so hopefully we'll have a new project to work on soon. In the meantime I'm having fun making a demonstration website containing an interactive map of my favourite nature reserve: Askham Bog near York. I'll post a link from here when the site's online.

Now that the family visits are over for the year we've brought some boxes down from the loft for sorting. I'm getting rid of all my old video tapes - the ones recorded from the television, but we're having fun watching some of them before I throw them away. Ian has brought down many of his parents papers and artwork (his Dad designed hovercraft) and I shall begin scanning them as soon as I've finished scanning my old photographs.

Ian and I have begun an online memory course. It's quite a long and difficult course and could take several months to complete, but the testimonials from other people who've taken it are incredible. It even includes a section on learning foreign languages - the focus in the course being on Russian so I'm very excited that I will learn some more Russian during the course. Like most other memory courses the techniques require you to visualise things. I've never been a particularly visual person so I'm finding it more difficult than Ian who naturally thinks that way, but it's gradually becoming easier.

We've been quite worried about our cat William over the last week or so as he's been hiding under unusual items of furniture and not eating at all. Obviously his nose is bothering him a lot more, but at least today we've managed to get him to eat something. He was finding it increasingly difficult to get food from his bowl without touching and hurting his nose in the process so today we put his food on a piece of newspaper and he's eaten a good meal. I suspect we'll take him to the vets in the New Year to see if they can put him on some kind of painkillers, but for now we're just happy that he's eating again.