Rain, rain, go away!

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It was raining when we woke up this morning at about 6.00am. It was still raining by 8.00am so we decided that slogging around a field in the mud with the warden looking for a herd of white cows seemed pretty undesirable so we abandoned that idea. With the house at Cragside not opening until 1.00pm we could have wandered around the gardens for a couple of hours, but that seemed like a pretty horrible idea too with the temperature only about 7°C and wet. We interrogated Edna about points of interest and tourist destinations in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, York and Leeds, but in the end decided that we would just drive back to Stalybridge. We have had four good days out of five so we really can’t complain.


We sent a text to Kath to let her know that we would be back at about 2.00pm. She replied to say that it is lovely and sunny in Stalybridge. That was hard to believe up in Northumberland!! However, as we drove south the weather gradually improved with us finally driving into sunshine at about Bradbury! My fear is that the wet weather is going to move south and we will be blamed for bringing it with us!!!

Back in Stalybridge by early afternoon it was much warmer and drier than the weather that we had left behind in Northumberland. The nice weather held until we hung our washing on the line at which point it promptly started to rain!! We had been about to head down to the shops, but literally walked out the front door and then around the house to the back door to take our washing back in - much to Kath’s amusement!

With the washing rescued from the rain we headed down to the post office to post a couple of things. After that we walked around to one of the hairdressers to see if Bernie could have a walk-in No.2 all over to neaten up his head. The first one we tried said no problem, if you would like to take a seat for five minutes. Bernie had barely sat down when he was called to take a seat at one of the cutting stations. Five minutes later we were on our way and it was absolutely chucking it down! As we walked/ran back to Tesco’s car park the storm was right upon us as we had an alarmingly close flash of lightening followed almost immediately by an almighty crash of thunder!! A bit too exciting for my liking.

We made it back to the car and headed back up the hill to cook dinner. Tonight we cooked British lamb even though the price of lamb is a bit staggering here when compared with home! When we were preparing it we thought that it was going to be quite tough compared with what we are used to, but it cooked up really nicely and we all enjoyed it very much.

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