January makes me shiver...

Yesterday we woke to more snow, and it snowed again during the night.  Brian went out after breakfast and promptly fell over.  Fortunately he didn't hurt himself, but we found there was half and inch of ice under the snow.  There has been a bit of a thaw today, but the snow and ice is still on the ground.  Above are a few photos I took round the farm this morning.

Happy New Year

Wishing you a very Happy New Year 

with love from Janice & Brian

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a fabulous festive season with lots of love from Janice and Brian.

A little break at the Appleby Manor Country House Hotel

Brian and I had thought about going to Gran Canaria or Tenerife for a week in the sun, but when it came down to it we couldn't manage to find a whole week when we could both be away from work. We also didn't fancy the hassle of the airports and would have lost a couple of days with travelling anyway. So we decided to have a short break at a lovely country house hotel and found the Appleby Manor had everything we could want including being only about an hour's drive away.  You can see what the hotel is like HERE

We drove to Appleby on Sunday, it was a nice sunny day so we thought we would have a walk around one of the footpaths, unfortunately, it had been very wet and everything was waterlogged so we had to give that up pretty quickly!

River Eden

 

 

 

View over Appleby

So we walked back into to town and had lunch in a little wine bar, we did have a glass of wine, it would have been rude not to!

Monument at the top of Appleby

Looking down towards the town

Appleby Castle

We'd seen this scaffolded structure when we were on our walk and wondered what it was.  It turns out that it is Appleby Castle, which should be being restored, but there seems to have been a bit of a halt in the proceedings.

So here we are in 2010 and the Castle is still not open.

View from bedroom window

Then it was time to check into our hotel.  Unfortunately, I didn't take a photograph of the hotel on Sunday because there certainly wasn't much opportunity after that as the weather deteriorated rapidly.  This was the view from our bedroom window.

Splish Splash

 The hotel had a small pool, sauna, jacuzzi and steam room.  But we also had a 'spa' bath in our en suite and even better, it had it's own televison!  Here i am wallowing in the foam watching Downton Abbey.

On Monday we decided to head out to Barnard Castle, we had to travel along the A66 through the Pennines and there was quite a bit of snow on the hills.

In fact in some places the snow as right down to the road!

Bowes Museum

At Barnard Castle we visited the Bowes Museum  there were lots of interesting exhibits.

 

Dinner is served.

 This was an amazing piece of modern art, the bit at the top is a book of fish which has been cut into and if you look closely you can see that some of the fish shapes are there in between the cut paper which looks like seaweed.

This is the most famous exhibit in the Bowes Museum, the Silver Swan automaton.  This is the partner of the  Peacock in the Hermitage in St Petersburg and as we had seen the Russian version, I really wanted to see the one which was just down the road, see Peacock below!  It did not disappoint, although the animation is only for 35 seconds the motion of the swans neck is incredible as it appears to catch a fish from the 'water' below.  Photographs are not great but if you would like to see more you can click HERE

Silver Wing

These are the little fish swimming between the glass rods that make the water.

Peacock Automaton at Hermitage, St Petersburg

We headed back to the hotel and enjoyed another first class meal, the food and the service at Appleby Manor was excellent and we were sorry to leave on Tuesday.

Loch Rannoch and the last day of our holiday

Our last day of walking was supposed to be close to the Queen's View, however the forest was closed because of forestry operations, the timber is a crop and they do have to harvest it!  So we travelled a bit further on to Loch Rannoch and Rannoch Forest.

You can see how much peat there is in the area by the brown colour of the water.

We were fortunate to see this deer...we went up the wrong track and spied this little red deer in the wood, he/she stayed still long enough for me to get my telephoto lense onto the camera and take a photo.

On our walk there was a very still pool of water and the dragonflies were flying back and forth. Not easy to get a shot of them but I just about managed to catch this one!

 Loch Rannoch

Loch Rannoch with daisies!

Pitlochry Part Two

There is nowhere more beautiful than Scotland when the sun shines!

Fortunately for us, by the middle of our holiday week, we had blazing sunshine. These photographs were taken at the Drummond Forest, Kenmore.

 

Looking down on Kenmore

Part of the walk was through the forest and the sunlight was filtering down through the trees.

We walked back down to Kenmore and walked down to Loch Tay.  On one side of the water was mill pond calm with great reflections.

On the other side there were fantastic views of Loch Tay and the hills beyond.

I think this is my favourite.

Holiday in Pitlochry Part One and some good news

 

 This year we went to Pitlochry for our holiday.  We stayed in this stable conversion (upstairs) for a week and had some very good weather later in the week.

 

Our plan was to do some walking around the area and we started with a 3 mile walk to 'The Black Spout' waterfall near the Edradour Distillery.  We didn't visit the distillery this time as we have been previously.

On the way back from the waterfall, we passed this tree with it's 'giant pine cone',  very realistic looking, but probably created with a chain saw!

Our next walk was in Aberfeldy where we walked to another waterfall, the Falls of Moness which was made famous by Rabbie Burns in his song 'The Birks of Aberfeldy'.   'Birks' are Birch Trees for those who are wondering what I'm on about.

 

There was even a bronze statue of Rabbie for posing purposes.

This is Blair Castle at Blair Atholl,  we walked in Blair Forest before visiting here.

This Peacock was wandering around the front of the castle.

In the Hercules garden there were lots of ducks and this swan family.

Mama Duck and her ducklings

Isn't this one cute?

 This Scruffy Duck was going for a dip.

 

As we walked past part of the pond the water was boiling and seething.  On closer inspection we could see that the pond was full of tadpoles!  I don't think I've ever seen so many tadpoles.

This duck was certainly enjoying them!

I'll be back with some more photos soon, but just wanted to let you know the good news that Steven and Shona are expecting their first baby in February, it's all very exciting and we are very much looking forward to becoming grandparents.