Easter Staycation.

It’s not often that Wil and I have a week off work together and don’t book at least a few days away. . So recently it’s actually been quite nice for us to spend some time at home pottering, doing a few jobs and erm ….eating cheese!

We started our week with a ginormous order of cheese from Tipsy Cows in Great Harwood. Their amazing cheese bags are £35 and include a pie, pate, smoked sausage,  crackers, bread, a bottle of wine, chutney, grapes and of course a shed load of cheese. Still getting through it now..

From Monday we were allowed to meet up with friends & family for outdoor walks again. We met up with my sister and the kids and walked further into the Dunsop Valley. A truelly beautiful place.

On Wednesday we decided to go up to our caravan in Cumbria, mostly to check that it was still in one piece. Luckily it was! And everywhere we went there were daffodillions of daffodils. On the way we stopped in Kirkby Lonsdale for a walk.

Daffs at St Mary’s in Kirkby Lonsdale.

The caravan ~ still standing.

Daffodillions of daffodils on Melmerby village green.

Gallivanting Geese.

Hugo amongst the daffs.

Easter display.

A pew with a view.

We turned the water back on at the caravan and gave it a quick spring clean. The weather was really warm.


Back in Clitheroe, the new Nature Reserve has opened at last. As we live nearby it has definitely become our go to place for a stroll with Hugo. One morning we bought breakfast from Marks Artisan Bakery on Whalley road after our walk. Sooo good! I am making a note of the wildlife I have spotted at the reserve, which includes Little Egret, Mallards, Teal, Grey Heron and Canada Geese. I will get working on a post soon.

Worsaw Hill.

Looking towards Pendle.

Hugo and Jo having a moment. Or maybe Hugo is watching a ham sandwich, out of shot. 

On Good Friday we met some friends for a walk from Worston to Downham and back. We are so lucky to live in the lovely Ribble Valley and have definitely discovered lots of new local walks and rediscovered old favourites during the numerous lock downs.

There have also been less energetic pursuits. On Saturday I met some friends for a Hip flask walk. We didn’t get very far. From one bench to another in the local park..😀

Park Bench Crawl.

We had planned to stay home on Easter Sunday and enjoy our new fire pit. 🔥

Wil bought a fire pit. 🔥

But after checking the weather forecast we realised we would have to head back up to the caravan again and drain it down. Forcasted minus 7 temperatures meant we had obviously been too previous in opening the van up for Spring. So here are some more lovely Easter views from Melmerby where the van is based.





We also called in at my Mum’s in Askham and had a brew in the garden. Got introduced to these cuties. ❤️

Cute calves.

Farm kitty’s.

Today ( Easter Monday) the sky outside is deceptively blue. It is freezing out there! There was even a smattering of snow this morning.

Happy Easter. 🐇🐣❤️

Hawthorns Photo Scavenger Hunt ~ April.

April has been the perfect month to join in with the Scavenger Hunt! Here’s a few Spring like pics for the prompts. 🙂

Edge ~ This was taken on Good Friday after a lovely walk with friends. We had all been told to decorate some hard boiled eggs for an egg rolling event! Here are the eggs all lined up at the top of a hill and soon to be rolled off the edge. You can probably see Hugo was keeping his beady eye on them. He had to roll a tennis ball…..because he is not at all trustworthy as far as anything remotely edible is concerned.

Loaf ~ I have substituted loaf for hot-cross-buns because they are after all like mini loaves. Well maybe. These were part of a rather yummy Easter themed Afternoon Tea at the Coniston Hotel near Skipton. My friend Gill had her spa day hen do here on Easter Monday. And I have to say this was a very nice treat. Happy Easter Days. 🙂

Bridge ~ I also have to say 2019 might be the year of the bridge as I keep finding cute pack horse ones whilst out on local walks in the gorgeous Ribble Valley. This one is not far from the village of Bashall Eaves , which also has an old cheese press in the centre and a pub called The Red Pump.

Mine ~ This Nature journal is all mine and I love writing what wildlife I see on walks or just in my back yard etc. I sometimes copy illustrations from books and cut pictures from magazines. It’s a relaxing hobby. 🙂

Black ~ is the colour of our pets. Excuse this photo of Hugo and Slinky on the bed with various items of clothing strewn over the end, but I just love seeing them together on the same photo. 🙂 Black can be an awkward colour when it comes to pet hair as you can imagine. The best thing to do is wear black too and turn a blind eye to the black tumbleweeds that follow you round the house.

My own choice ~ I chose this gorgeous creature for my own choice, because well isn’t he/she divine. A Green Hairstreak Butterfly, I was lucky enough to see lots of these on a guided RSPB walk in the fells above Slaidburn on Saturday. I have never seen one before so I was very happy. Green Hairstreaks are tiny and like to feed on gorse, broom and bilberry. Look out for them on moorland near you. Bowland Moorland Safari Info Here.

Head on over to Kate’s Blog for more Scavenger Hunt posts from tomorrow ( Friday) . X

Sunday Sevens ~ 14th April.

Hello and welcome to a Sunday Sevens. This is a collection of seven or more photos from my week. Exciting stuff eh!

Coffee Table ~ We have acquired a coffee table at last! I can’t tell you how fantastic it is to have somewhere proper to pop my brew/wine instead of the floor. Hurrah! Also it’s great for displaying my cacti coaster tree. 🙂

Rhubarb Cleaner ~ Thanks to my friend Jo for gifting me a bottle of ……. Method Anti-Bac wild rhubarb cleaner. The kitchen smells so delicious ly rhubarby after cleaning. And as a big fan of all things rhubarb, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. 😁 Method Anti-Bac is probably available at most supermarkets. Jo bought it from Booths.

Cheese Easter Egg! ~ Speaking of Booths, Wil found his perfect Easter Egg there. It’s not chocolate, it’s cheese. 🙂

Waffles and a Walk ~ The kids are off school for the Easter break ,so enjoyed scrumptious chocolate waffles at The Chocolate Works in town on Friday, followed by a canal side walk at East Marten near Skipton with my sister and niece & nephew.

Smartie Pants Waffle.

Roman and huge horse!

Canal side.

Jelly ear fungi. Thanks for the I D Louise. 🙂

This gravestone at St Peters in East Marten belongs to a lady with the name of Easter.❤️

Smelly Dog.
Yesterday Wil, Hugo and I did a pub walk to The Red Pump Inn in the village of Bashall eaves. Hugo decided to snaffle down quite a few sheep poops. We suffered his stinky trumps all evening.

Walkies.

Thanks to Natalie at Threads & Bobbins for devising Sunday Sevens.

How was your week?

Spring walks, a Nature Diary and an Easter treat.

The Easter Weekend so far ~ a Good Friday walk with friends, spring shoots and wild flowers and a visit with my lovely friend Lisa to Stydd Gardens in Ribchester. 😁

Blackthorn blossom

Good Friday Walkers assemble in the Calf’s Head Beer Garden.

Stydd Gardens.

Nutella Hot Chocolate and an Easter treat. Rosie Duck at Stydd Gardens.Soo good. 🙂

Lovey Dove.

Treats for the dog at Rosie Duck.

My Ladybird book What To Look For In Spring helped me identify some of the spring flowers below.

Butterbur by a stream.

Golden Saxifrage.

Wild garlic leaves. I do have a recipe handy for wild garlic leaves & cheese scones!

I am going to start a nature diary for my sightings. 🙂

The Easter Weekend has been lovely so far. 🙂

Roll on the next two days. X

Sunday Sevens April 16th.

Hugo finds a beach !

Sunday Sevens this week seems to include lots of pub walks!  Last weekend we picked up Hugo from the kennels after our London adventures. It was good to be reunited!  Happily he seems very chilled in kennels and when we picked him up he was lounging around in his bed as usual ! We took him to Burnsall in The Yorkshire Dales and walked along the river to nearby Appletreewick, where we had a pub lunch.  We certainly enjoyed the sunshine and Hugo had a good dip. 

Hugo looking handsome. 🙂

Good Friday Walk.

Fast forward to Good Friday and our friend’s traditional Good Friday Walk dawned wet and grey. Despite this it was apparently the Best turn out ever. Yay !   We had a good amble over to the village of Mitton , where we tried to get all the dogs together for  a picture and had an easter egg hunt in ‘The Aspinall Arms’ beer garden. That was for the kids, not the dogs! 😉 

Red Berry & Hibiscus Tea.

Yesterday morning did a few jobs in town and enjoyed a delicious Red Berry and Hibiscus Tea and a chocolate dipped granola bar in Escape Coffee Bar. Was soo yummy. 

We also went for a pub walk ( surprise! ) to Pendleton and found that the village pub ‘ The Swan with two Necks’ was all decorated up for Easter.

Easter decorations.

Easter Bunny. 🙂

Spring scene in Pendleton.

Sunday Sevens is a collection of 7 or more photos from the past week and was devised by the lovely Natalie at Threads And Bobbins .

Hope you are having a Happy Easter. 🙂

Easter Holiday Fun at Bolton Abbey.

Bolton Abbey by the River Wharfe.

On Friday I took the day off work and had a bit of a girls day out. 🙂  My lovely friends Fi and Jo invited me to accompany them and another friend to Bolton Abbey  in the Yorkshire Dales. The Abbey’s grounds are perfect for exploring, so the kids came too. 🙂

Make a wish. 🙂

From May onwards there is even a Welly Walk designed especially for little people. But  in Spring there is plenty to see too. If you go look out for several Money Trees. The girls had fun knocking penny’s into the bark and making a wish. 🙂

April means that along with the showers there are plentiful Spring flowers. I spotted Wood Anemones and Cowslips amongst others.

Who can this be?

The Easter Egg Hunt at Bolton Abbey was what we really came for though of course!  But first it was time for a spot of lunch. The grounds are perfect for picnics but we thought we would treat ourselves and eat inside the The Cavendish Pavillion Cafe located by the riverside, near where the hunt started.

They are testing out a new menu in the Cavendish which includes lots of delicious Pizza and Flatbread varieties. I really enjoyed my Pea,Feta and courgette Flatbread. And do look out for the cakes! There is an amazing selection…which I completely forgot to photograph! The cafe is a little pricey but very child friendly with baby changing facilities,high chairs and a microwave. If you have a dog ( Bolton Abbey is popular with walkers, cyclists and dog owners) there is lots of outside seating with plans for a weather proof canopy.

The Easter Egg Hunt followed the riverside and the kids really got into it. It involved counting the eggs painted on the front of the different bunny’s and adding them up at the end. The prizes were stickers. We also had our own impromptu chocolate bunny hunt. Its got to be done!

Wood Carver’s Hut in the Woods.

There is plenty to discover along the riverside including this Woodman’s Hut which sells carvings.

Mandarin Duck Couple.

Lots of different wildlife. …

Into The Woods.

And meandering path adventures. 🙂

Beach Fun!

Our day finished with some riverside fun and an ice cream. X

The Easter Egg Hunt at Bolton Abbey continues until the 24th April.

Car parking for the day costs £8 but you can move your car from one car park to another.

 

Sunday Sevens ~ 20th March.

 

 

It’s been a Happy and a Sad week for me this week….but my blog is totally my Happy place,so I have some nice memories to share on here mostly. 🙂

1. It was my nephew’s 8th Birthday so it was great to go out with the family for a Birthday Tea. Here’s Roman blowing out his candles with a little help from his little sis. 🙂 I also got to see them in their school production of The jungle Book which in my somewhat biased opinion was absolutely brilliant. Well done guys!!!
2. 

 

I got my little twiggy Christmas Tree down from the loft and resurrected it as an Easter Tree. There are so many cute decorations in the shops at the moment. I got some glitter eggs for £1.85 for a pack of twelve from my local card shop Party people and found the bunnies in a Clitheroe gift shop, Urban Sheep. Hattie the Hare was made by a friend a couple of years ago. 🙂

3. I spent my last week of four without Facebook and Instagram. I’m now back on!!  I really missed Facebook. I have definitely felt out of touch without it. It’s such a communication tool between friends and family these days, that if you rely on it , you really miss it when you don’t have it.And i did miss out on a friend’s wedding do. 😦 His written wedding invite didn’t arrive and when he facebooked me to ask if i was coming,i didn’t get to read the message until it was to late. Sad times. 😦 But there have been advantages too. I have read more books and spent more time getting on with things instead of checking Facebook constantly. So there have been negatives and positives. Slinky the cat is most pleased that she is again being snapped in various sleepy poses and uploaded onto Instagram though. Purrrfect!

4. I completed my LadyBird What to look for collection with What to look for in Spring. You can’t beat a Ladybird Nature book for beautiful illustrations and detailed descriptions of wildlife going about their days.

5. Hugo is back wearing The Cone of Shame after his wound reopened. 😦 Poor boy now has fresh stitches and has to wait for yet another two weeks before he has them out. Don’t worry I am not tempting him with a real donut here. This is a doggy donut from a doggy bakery stall on the Makers Market in Manchester. It didn’t last very long!

6 & 7. A couple of piccies of my friends Birthday Celebrations in Manchester. No doubt I will blog about it soon. Lots of cocktails were consumed! 🙂

#sundaysevens was devised by Natalie at Threads and Bobbins.

Easter Tree Pinspiration. <3

 

 

 

Pretty pastels, decorative eggs, baby animals & Spring flowers. I am becoming seduced by Easter decorations!  My poor abandoned little twig tree ( I totally forgot about it at Christmas) will hopefully get a new lease of life…….. as an Easter Tree. 🙂 I will adorn it’s bare branches with colourful eggs and fluffy bunnies. Where to look for inspiration, but good old Pinterest.

 

 

 

If you have one of these twiggy Christmas trees, then it will definitely double as a display for pretty fabric birds like these.

A handful of twigs gathered from the garden , hung with hand painted eggs.

Spring twigs arranged in a pitcher/bowl, make for an effective Easter display.

Glue gun Jellybean’s onto Apple Tree branches. Hmmm I suspect more of these might end up in my mouth, than on the tree.;)

And add a dapper white rabbit with a Top Hat 🙂

Or keep it simple and au naturale  like the minimalist Scandinavians.

Pussy Willow branches look adorable adorned with pretty pastel eggs.

Spring flowers, Lindt chocolate bunnies and a nice cup of tea adds to this lovely floral Easter display. 🙂

For more Easter Tree Pinspiration ,check out my Easter Tree Pinterest Board.

Will you be having an Easter Tree?

 

Thursday Favourites ~ April. :)

I have kind of got out of doing my Thursday Favourites posts recently. I think its me rebelling against having a bit of routine on my blog ;0). Today though I am in the mood for routine ~ so here are a few things I have enjoyed lately…

Girly day out. 🙂

A couple of weekends ago I got to spend the whole day with two of my best friends. I cannot remember the last time before this that we managed to snatch more than a couple of hours together . Life just gets in the way you know. Anyway I blogged about how we enjoyed yummy tea and cake at Propertea in Manchester before spending the rest of our day shopping, gossiping and having the odd cheeky drink. 🙂 Days out with the girls are the best !

Easter Bun pudding. 🙂

Here is a very sticky gooey calorific chocolaty pudding I made from a recipe found on a Tesco recipe card. As soon as Easter arrived and Lent ended it meant that I was allowed to eat chocolate again.Yippee ! So yes i really pigged out and this yummy dessert was quite the Easter treat. A bit like a bread and butter pudding ,its a good way of using up those impulse buy Hot Cross Buns.

The Tern Project, Morecambe.

It was certainly grand to get some lovely sunshine over the Easter weekend too. As I was working on Good Friday, the other half agreed that on Monday we could head for the seaside. 🙂
We drove over to Morecambe and had a wander along the promenade which is home to The Tern Project ,a nature trail of quirky art works featuring the seabird life of Morecambe bay. There are limericks,jokes and poetry too….and a magpie Hopscotch. Fun on the Prom. 🙂

Jessica Brown Findlay in Jamaica Inn.

Did you watch the BBC adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn ? Having never read the novel or seen the 1939 Hitchcock directed film , I was interested in catching this version. Despite the grumbling about the mumbling , I actually really enjoyed this gothic tale. The final part of the three parter was definitely the best though. Did you manage to watch it and did the cornish accents put you off?

Ladybird love. 🙂

A little treasure hunting with a lovely friend from the blog Olive and Harry , resulted in me purchasing two more Ladybird nature books first published in 1959. I remember there was a library of them at my village primary school. So I shall look out for more. Love exploring the countryside with them and taking them along with me , to see how farming and wildlife have evolved over the decades. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by

🙂

Easter Vignettes

Sharon here ~ I am going to reblog this lovely picture from Josie’s blog because i just love it. Happy Easter Josie and all you busy bloggers out there. X

Tales from the Finchs Beak

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