The thing about being more productive but not used to blogging frequently is that I am going to have to cram a lot into each entry…
Get a cup of tea…
May day happened. We went up to Great Rock, which turned out to be a really nice place to watch the sun not rise, as happens most may day mornings. I mean, presumably it rose, we just couldn’t actually see it at the time for all the clouds. Thanks, England. Still, it was a nice experience.
I spent another few sessions working on the mosaic. By gawd this shit takes a long time.
But it’s no all that miserable a job to be doing, and it does get marginally easier as I get better at the planning and not backing myself into awkward corners as I work.
I finally reached the milestone of ONE panel done. Well, not grouted, but complete.
I’m very pleased with it. Hopefully I will not die before I complete another panel.
Meanwhile, Ben is absolutely cracking on with the kitchen, which is *very* exciting.
The carcasses are being built out of some stuff we had lying around and then faced with the interior wall cladding I rescued from the sauna/site office/bunk house before I burned it.
Ben is an absolute master of taking whatever we’ve got lying around and making it look amazing.
Julian has been on a bit of a fitness kick and has taken to climbing the rope swing.
The garden slope is mostly being extremely successful. It’s a pain we have to wait years for it to fill out properly, but then, it is giving us the very best display it can at its current size.
I’m hoping these Azalea/Rhododendrons are going to get big and impressive. To be honest, their huge, showy blossoms look a bit ridiculous on a plant less than a foot across.
Tomorrow we are going up to Bingley to a guy who is going to help us mill this baby into planks which we will then put in the solar kiln for a couple of weeks to dry out and then it will become a fabulously beautiful worktop!
The rest of this post is about our walk up to Stoodley Pike. It’s kind of embarrassing that we haven’t ever done it before. I mean, we’ve done it by driving over to the pub across the valley and walking from there, but never from our house.
You can see the pike in the distance in the above photo, just a tiny point on the horizon, which is kind of my phone’s camera being a drama queen. It’s not as far as it looks.
We chose to go along the valley floor for the first bit, following the canal.
And then cutting up through a bluebell-strewn valley with a little stream running down it.
There really is some beauty in these parts. I’m pleased to be finally taking the time to explore it more fully.
Emerging from the shady valley we climbed the last bit of road, our goal very much in sight.
The last little bit is a challenge for the likes of me, very steep and unrelenting.
But we made it, and really, it wasn’t that bad in the end.
The view is certainly a prize worth the trouble.
And so was the picnic we brought, including a G&T each. We know how to do this rambling thing.
Subscribe using RSS