ingleton waterfalls

I know, I know, its been nearly a month since the last blog update, I'm sorry but we have had the odd thing going wrong down south. Judith's Dad is recovering well from major heart surgery, is at home and well on the mend. He has a fall and breaks his hip/femur and pelvis. Poor chap. So he gets rushed in to hospital and moved to the specialist trauma unit in Oxford to have it fixed. Meanwhile his wife, Judith's mum has to go in to have her hip re-done in a London hospital, so poor Judith is frantically trying to visit them both in different towns. I decide to go down and give her a hand/moral support for five days, visiting them both several times. So this has sort of put us back quite a bit on the decorating front. We have thus decided to employ another local decorator James Cockell to finish the last 2 bedrooms , if our money will stretch that far. You have to be quite stoic about all of this, and remember that we all get older and frailer sooner or later, and what goes around......

Still, we have had some carpets fitted, at least the coconut matting by the back door. The Mounsey family, carpet division came to do this and will be laying the carpet throughout the rest of the house once all the decorating is done.

Coconut matting. Behind you can see the old Victorian tiles in the hallway, Judith spent ages with some special cleaner/sealant and they now look absolutely fabulous.

The weather has started to turn really autumnal and the tomatoes are all there but are refusing to turn red, just as Joan our neighbour predicted. This is about the only red one we got, which would have cost about £8! so we decided to go all harvest festival on them and make some green tomato chutney

instead. We have taken some round to Joan so she can have a proper gloat. 

we took a day off and went over to Ingleton and did the waterfall trail. Its about 4 miles and there's loads of spectacular falls (forces locally). There are some nice touched here and there , this one is by a fallen tree where there are lots of bits of slate that you can scratch your name in and hide amongst the piles of other peopled messages. Can you make out this one?

This is us by the big force. We got another chap to take it. He had previously been to Ayers rock and the bloke who took some of him and his family managed to miss out the rock completely, could have been Oldham he said.

Here are some shots of the falls and views looking back down the valley.

 

I particularly like this shot, I have been practicing with shutter speeds and f stops and it may be paying off.

 

 

Some of the felled trees have coins inserted into the annular rings, some sort of arboreal wishing well.

 

We have finished the old 'yellow room' and moved on to the remaining two bedrooms, its all looking rather nice, Judith's eye for colour is so much better than mine, thank goodness.

 

This is master James Cockell, nice chap, quite fastidious.

 

Couldn't resist putting this in. Its the champagne bar in the station on our way back to Settle after looking after the parents. We thought we deserved a small treat. Its one of my favourite places in London and featured quite heavily in mine and Judith's courtship.

Here is the chutney in production and

In jars with label.

 

Last Sunday we went over to see Sally my sister at a 30's themed event in Morecambe. It was a lovely day and lots of people has dressed up to join in the spirit of things. We walked along the stone Jetty and as the tide was out took some pictures of the mud flats. There were two people on horseback galloping to the sea, but so far away the look like flies in my shots, so here's one of the sea looking south towards Heysham.

 

Sally (right) and her mate Debs, getting their grunge on.

 

Other news, I am growing a beard as I'm now a 'grizzled old prospector' in Calamity Jane, and have a couple of lines. Show is on 28th Oct to 2nd November, so get your tickets soon, there going like hot cakes and sasperilly. Judith quite rightly hates the face fungus and I will have a ritual shaving off after the last night.

 

 

The rain this weekend will have swollen the Ribble and I'm hopeful of seeing some salmon leaping this week. They need the extra water to enable them to get over the obstacles.

 

Well, that's it for a bit, lots more has happened besides , but im afraid its all a bit of a blur tonight.

See you in a week or so.

M&J