Saturday 31 July 2010

A Taste of Somerset

The weather seems to have taken a turn for the worse since I returned from my break in Somerset. After being starved of rain for two months, the garden is now looking a bit on the soggy side! My flowers are suffering. The good thing is we had lots of sunshine in Somerset. There were so many places I wanted to see that we had to limit ourselves in the time we had. Here’s just a taster of some of things we did.

First stop was Glastonbury, no not the festival, the town! I think every single shop in Glastonbury is a spiritual, hippy trippy type place. That’s fine if you are out of fairy dust or joss sticks but where the heck do people in this town buy their groceries!! It is a very pretty town with its Abbey and we had a nice lunch in a cafe called Hundred Monkeys We also stopped off at the tor just outside the town and climbed to the top.

The views from the top were worth the climb!


Wells was next on the list. It has an amazing cathedral. All I could think about when looking around this cathedral was the baby eating bishop of Bath and Wells from the Black Adder series!


The cloisters in Wells Cathedral.


This is where all the priests used to live and not surprisingly it is called Vicars' Close!!




Next stop, Bath. It is a town I have always wanted to visit and it certainly didn’t disappoint.


The Roman Baths are really interesting to look around and we had a look around No 1 The Crescent which is now a museum.



Roman Baths






With all that sightseeing it was nice to chill out on the beach in the evening.



Finally, here’s some mischief makers, Tiger and Lily, my new kittens. We’ve had them two weeks now and they settled in almost immediately. They are into and onto everything! There’s not an ornament left in sight!



As you can see, I have a problem with blogging now as they think it is great fun to sit on my laptop!





Enjoy your weekend.
Susie

Saturday 3 July 2010

Catch Up!

How are you all? It's been a while since I visited blog land I know and I have loads and loads of catching up to do! I've missed everyone and I'm going to have look at what you've all be up to. I've been kinda busy, enjoying the good summer we've finally had here in England, the tennis, the World Cup football and working on the house and garden.

Where do I start?

Well, the good weather has enabled us to start major work on the house, replacing all the windows. The middle window here has been knocked out to make way for a front door and porch.

Before fixing the porch Andy thought it would be a good idea to put the new window in above.

Here's the new window from the inside. It was relatively easy to fit and just slotted in to position. We didnt even have to take the curtains down!!
Next, a little old original window was re-fitted and this will be inside the porch to give a bit more light in the living room.


Here's the little window from the inside. The original, original windows with their leaded lights were tiny. It is hard to imagine how dark it must have been inside the house with windows this size.


The timber frame for the porch was then fitted and this will gradually be clad in the brick that took ages and ages for us to find to match the house but eventually we managed to get some from a reclamation yard. Only four more windows to replace now and then the front of the house will be finished. Hooray!!



Rufus has enjoyed the sunshine, playing in the paddling pool but as you can see, the hose goes everywhere except in the actual pool!




The kittens are really growing and one has even been re-homed already. We have found homes for them all and I'm having two and will pick them up on return from my holiday next week.


Aren't they cuties!

Finally, I couldn't go without showing you some of the garden. The roses, peonies and in fact, everything else has done really well this year despite the lack of rain.





I'm off my hols next week to Somerset. Hope you all have a fantastic weekend. See you later!
Susie X