This morning I headed down to the beauty salon that is located at the gym at the football ground at the end of the road. I had an 8.45am appointment so left Bernie lying in bed to walk down in the drizzle in my open-toed sandals for my leg wax and pedicure in preparation for Spain. When I arrived there was no-one there, the gym wasn’t even open so I sent a text to Kath to make sure that I was in the right place. A couple of minutes later someone arrived to open the gym so he let me in to wait in the warm and dry for the salon to open. The beautician arrived only a couple of minutes after than so all was OK - I was in the right place and they ... read more

Today we had planned to go down to Cragside at Rothbury, described in the NT Handbook as an extraordinary Victorian house, gardens and estate - the wonder of its age! Well, that was the plan until Albert announced that what he really wanted to do while they were up in this area was visit Hadrian’s Wall and that it would work out best if they were to do that today and then drive home to Stalybridge so that Kath could get a good night’s sleep as the rather hard beds here have been troubling her back. Bernie and I said that would be fine as we have visited Hadrian’s Wall and Housesteads Fort before. So, half an hour later, Kath and Albert were packed up and gone! We decided to revise our plans too and head ... read more

It started off sunny again today, but clouded over mid morning as we set off sightseeing. We headed to Berwick-upon-Tweed via Doddington and the estate villages of Ford and Etal. We visited the Heatherslaw Corn Mill on the River Till between Ford and Etal. The mill is a working museum and we were able to see wheat being ground. The river is low at the moment so the mill was working rather slowly. This is in contrast to 2008 when the river was in flood and the level of the water in the lowest level of the mill was over my head and the mill couldn’t operate at all. From Heatherslaw we continued on to Berwick-upon-Tweed. As we live so close to Berwick in Australia, we couldn’t come this close to the original Berwick without visiting ... read more

We woke up this morning to another glorious day! That makes three days in a row of blue skies and sunshine which is a rare thing indeed here in England. Since the weather was so beautiful we decided to drive back down to Congleton to visit some more NT properties in that area. Our first stop was at Mow Cop Folly - the ‘ruin’ that we could see last Sunday from Little Moreton Hall. Edna is still earning her keep as she managed to guide us to Mow Cop without any trouble. Unfortunately, Mow Cop is not a NT property that is in her database so she could not get us right to the folly - just to the village of Mow Cop. That was a bit frustrating as we could then see the folly up ... read more

Yay, the internet is working this morning so we have been able to load the first three days of our travel blog. We are really impressed with how easy it is to load and how straightforward it is to include photos! The weather is a bit better today. Still overcast first thing, but at least it is not raining anymore! First stop this morning was Stagshaw Garden, a National Trust property in Ambleside. The rhododendrons in the gardens are still quite spectacular although a little bit past their best. The views down over Lake Windermere were fabulous especially since the sun has actually started to shine. From the gardens we drove to another NT property, Townend House at Troutbeck only a few minutes away from Ambleside. Townend is a remote stone farmhouse with a slate roof, ... read more