Gloucester Part Three :: Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway :: Highfield Garden Centre :: Holiday Knitting and Reading

On our last full day before returning home we split into two groups and went to two different places.  Dave, Pip and Uncle Mike travelled on the steam railway:

 Studying the tea room menu

 Dave's lunch chicken mayo wrap, tortilla chips and side salad.

 Dave messing with the art filter on my camera :-)

 One for the family album and yearly calendar.

 Another art fiter shot using the old style grain effect "film."

 Bye, Bye Train!

Whilst they were at the steam railway, Benedict and I pottered around at the cottage and then visited "Highfield Garden Centre" five minutes down the road:

 It was the first time I had actually eaten a proper meal since the day we travelled!

Once home I sat outside with my holiday knitting:

 I bought this Opal sock yarn from an independent knitting shop in the heart of Gloucester.  I had been knitting on some hand dyed yarn but had forgotten to bring an extra skein and so shock horror, no knitting!!  I was grateful for that trip into town on the Tuesday and by the following day I had made good progress :-)

 By the time the evening had drawn in I had already turned the heel and was working on shaping the foot gusset.

  I had also bought three books from the garden centre, two novels and one very helpful diabetes cook book based on insulin adjustment and low carb paleo cooking for type one diabetes.  The recipes are really tasty but a bit of a challenge since they rely heavily on dairy and eggs, two of the things that Pip and I cannot tolerate on a daily basis.  So we are switching up with some non dairy paleo foods from various sources across the web ;-)

I finished "Pedigree Mum" it was an OK read and I guess you would place it in the chick lit category.  I have read another book by Laurie King and it was a really good adaptation of Sherlock Holmes as a married man to a much younger woman, an Oxford graduate and his sleuthing protege.  Needless to say I am looking forward to reading this one and when I have finished it I will be passing it on to my friend Kezzie, who loves a good murder mystery!

Since returning home I have been unwell with the ususal hassles but I think I am slowly turning a corner.  There never seem to be enough hours in the day and although I am relieved that I have this online work it is also very stressful and time consuming.  Trying to write a blog post for the website is a marathon event of keywords, meta descriptions and the website net nanny checking every word and phrase for readability and search engine optimisation!!  Still it forces me to hone my writing skills and I have even become a little more confident with alterating the exisiting email newsletter format via Mail Chimp!  If you would like to read my recent post on The Mindfulness for Christians Blog it can be found HERE

Hope you have had a good weekend and managed to enjoy some sunshine wherever you may be x  

Here, There, Everywhere

Last week we were out of the house every single day and most of my time was spent up and down the motorway.  We had one disastrous journey on the Friday whereby a one hour journey did in fact take over four hours!  In amongst the travelling we also had a freezer breakdown, so yes last week was certainly eventful :-)

Pip completed the second part of her Mad Science camp this week, which gave me the chance to catch up on laundry and packing.  We are currently in Newark on our way to this festival in Norfolk tomorrow. The festival lasts until the Monday but we are staying until the Thursday.  The journey down was a bit tortuous in parts with poor visability, rain and water spray from the articulated lorries, boy was I glad to finally stop the car for our overnight stay!

Here are some photos of the past week:

 Benedict over the moon, a room full of Lego and a Lego computer game!

 Lego Wii after a long while jumping up and down on the trampoline!  One very tired and zonked out toddler!

 The long awaited BFG cinema trip :-)

A felted phone case for me and made by Pip

 One Little Flower birthday celebration and a long hoped for ...

... our generation doll.  Each of The Little Flower girls now have a special doll of their own.  I think we will be busy crafting sashes and dresses for these Little Flower Friends!

I think I might actually manage an early night for a change which is good since we have another busy day tomorrow, a museum trip and the last leg of our journey.  We also have WiFi at the cottage so I should hopefully be able to daily blog; the only time I manage to blog regularly is when we are away :-) 

Holiday Round Up

We forgot to take the lead to connect the DSLR camera to the laptop on holiday with us, so here is a holiday round up using some of the images we missed.

Saturday

An Uncle visits, Tewksbury town and abbey.

Sunday
Feeding the neigh-bours, Gloucester town and cathedral.

Monday
Alfresco chef, eating outside and later by lamplight.

 

Tuesday

Beautiful carrot and coriander soup with Uncle Mike and driving the tea trolley afterwards.

Wednesday 
More steam railway pictures 

Thursday
Outside our little cottage on a quiet day. Our last full day here.

Journeying Home

Despite my still feeling unwell we were packed and ready to go by half past nine this morning.  The first leg of the journey was fairly uneventful but by the time we hit Birmingham we had become embroiled in several tail backs due to road traffic collisions.  We had also narrowly missed an altercation with a stray traffic cone in our lane!  Needless to say I managed to stop in time but then had to endure horn pipping from lorry drivers who were oblivious to the obstruction in the road!!  It is amazing to see how people behave behind the steering wheel and traffic chaos does not bring out the best in folk :-)

We had two stops coming home, one was a planned break and the other was I am feeling to unwell and exhausted to drive break.  Costa coffee kept me going but boy was I glad to be home.  Time on the road was 8hrs for a journey that could have taken 3hrs on a straight run!  There were several times we were crawling along at 8 miles an hour!

 Second motorway stop and the kids watching "Dad's Army" on the portable DVD player.

Good to be home.

A Quiet Day

 " See the little bunnies sleeping way past noon, shall we go and wake them with a merry tune?

They're so still, are they ill?"

Yes!  One with dodgy blood sugars and the other fighting a viral infection :-(

They did however rally as the day wore on and so I am cautiously hopeful that our journey home in the morning should be OK.  They weren't the only ones poorly, I also succumbed to a nauseating migraine attack but thankfully with a combination of analgesics, anti-inflammatories and sleep, I too was much improved later in the day.  A good job too, since the house needed packing up!

 

 The winds howled, the sky grew dark and it rained after tea.  That was fine since I had carried all that needed to be packed to the car.  The forecast is sunshine tomorrow, so here's hoping the weather person has interpreted the chart correctly :-)

The reward for all my efforts was a quiet cup of coffee and a read, much appreciated.

Dean Forest Railway and A Poorly Pip

The day started off reasonably well and our trip for the day was The Dean Forest Railway as featured above.  We also had an extra visitor accompanying us since Uncle Andrew decided to stay on an extra day:-)  The kids were over the moon at that piece of news!  Our journey began at Norchard to Lydney Junction and back again with the view to finishing the circuit of Norchard to Parkend after lunch.

 Lovely Uncle Mike, who hosted us for lunch at his house yesterday and undertook all the driving today, a two hour round trip accompanied by an interesting commentary on the local area.

Sadly we did not manage to complete the round trip as Pip suddenly spiked a temperature and complained of pain in her back and widespread bone aches and a headache.  She had been restless in the night and had complained of a sore throat upon awakening.  Our priority was Pip so we cut the visit short and made the return journey home, it was definitely the best decision as she has been in bed since 4pm this afternoon and asleep for most of that time.

 

 Peter Rabbit looking after a Poorly Rabbit.

 I cannot remember the last time we actually had to use any analgesics, it has been a long while, however we have a journey home to make on Friday and so these are on standby to help should she still be unwell at that point.  I am hoping that a good night's sleep will be just the medicine she needs :-)

 Evening Sunset.

 Evening Sky.

 

 Flowers outside the back kitchen door.

As I type Benedict is actually asleep, despite insisting that he was not tired!!  It has been a long while since he has been asleep by 9pm, just hope he isn't sickening for something!

 Despite Pip being unwell we still had a lovely day.