Can't you tell it's September

After a very wet unpredictable August, September has arrived and just to teach all us pesky teachers a lesson it's now hot and sunny!
To celebrate my last day off before re-starting work (I've been off sick since Easter), boyfriend took me out climbing. No actual climbing photos as I was too busy holding the ropes, but I did manage to spot this little fellow, who is a considerably better climber than me!



After that we went and explored one of my other favourite places. It was reccently featured on Secret Britain, but it's a place I've visited all of my life, and part of my Dad's old job was to take school kids to it. Maybe not so secret then...

To get there you walk through an old over grown woodland, I love walking through woods like this, so much to see, and so much you can imagine, particularly if you know the history of the place I was going to....





Pictures never do Luds Church justice. Boyfriend had never been there before, and he agreed that the TV show gave no sense of the scale of the place, and the somehow very sacred atmosphere, it has the same feel I get from beautiful churches.

Now of course I am back to work..... however that is going really well, and has it's own pleasures... I'd still rather be exploring though!

The Beach

Just before I left my parents house we took the dogs down to the beach. The dogs love it here, particularly when they find an abandoned oar to carry around.... a stick, but a giant stick.... life can't get any better!



Particularly when it's so big that you can carry it together!



And then there are the pools to swim in, we're not sure of the sea yet, but Gwen loves swimming, we practically have to drag her out. Meg however is a little less certain, mostly because she can't actually swim. Her swimming involves leaping out out the water repeatedly, it looks hilarious.



When I'm re-incarntaed I want to come back as my parents dogs!

The Island

I am no longer sick, but am still obviously a little bit not with it as I just wrote a post telling you all about The Cloisters and then realised I had already told you about it....

Instead I'm going to tell you about what happened after I left New York. I met up with some friends from the Harry Potter Knitting and Crochet House Cup. One of them very kindly offered us use of her summer house on an island in the middle of a lake, and it was beautiful.
There are no cars on the island, just 15 houses, and the main event of the day was the visit of the mail boat. It was the perfect antidote to an over dose of the city!


There was a lot of this....

A little of this...

Some swimming

A visit by one of these

A little bit of walking

and surrounded by beautiful views

Keeping it brief

I'm ill today and after a morning of throwing up I don't feel capable of stringing a sentence together so we'll just make do with some pretty photos from a walk 2 days ago. Enjoy.

America part 3

Recently I've been listening to the news about plans to build a mosque near to the site of ground zero in New York with interest. I'm not going to go in to details of right or wrong now but it seems that so many in America have forgotten that the people who flew the planes in to the World Trade Centre were a minority who have been condemned for what they did by the vast majority of people who are Muslims.





Nearly 10 years ago this photo would have featured the Twin Towers, I walked past the site where they are rebuilding, it's a busy bustling area now, I did find this fence though decorated with tiles commemorating the people who died when I was wandering through another area of the city. The tiles themselves are beautiful, though are starting to fall off the fence as the wire rusts, maybe it's a sign that it's time to move on?

Mans best friend

To complete the transition to country recluses my parents have just acquired some dogs.



Meet Meg and Gwen, Gwen is the bigger darker dog on the right, we think at some point she has some German Shepherd in her as she doesn't quite fit the usual border collie size and shape. Meg on the left is her daughter, and looks and acts like a collie, though obviously can't be a pure bred. They came from a home in Wakefield and have been with Mum and Dad for 2 weeks. They're slowly getting used to long walks every day, having three quarters of an acre to roam in, and most of all sheep!

America Part 2

Just a quick post today. I'm at my parents house and Mum is champing at the bit to go shopping.

One of my favourite things to do in strange cities is to just wander about, you find all sorts of thing by just taking a walk than charging from one sight to another. I have a bit of a "thing" about grave yards, they're a real connection to the real history of a place so I was delighted to stumble upon this one in downtown Manhattan.





In the same graveyard was also a monument to the people who died while being held captive by the dastardly British during the war of Independence, however no photos of that as the only way you could fit all of it in was to stand in the middle of a New York street which seemed like a bad idea!