kpnut

That’s ok in Scotland then. I heard the forecast said 1•C last Saturday night in the highlands.

I was a bit worried it was too set, so hopefully not.

Back up in Cumbernauld for paving project phase 2. Made the decision to come up here based on the good forecast for the week, but that of course means I’m missing it on the Broads. I was going to be on the boat from Wednesday 🙁, now not till 17th. So all you who are out and about, enjoy it for me too!

Trois???? I meant Troyes! Now at their first destination somewhere near Montelimar. Enjoy your journey and may the sun shine down on you.

Sorry about the above. Couldn’t get rid of it! Yes, we’ve been in them too. Our favourites were called B+B or something similar, I can’t quite remember now. A big improvement on a formula 1. Scrambled egg and bacon that were in a plastic bag to warm up in the microwave 🫤

Sounds very like my daughter’s last trip to France. A passionate Francophile. Camping near Bergerac last summer and coming home ‘plus one’. Littl’un is now 3 months old and has even been given a French name, Elodie, As I write, she is winging her way, with mum and dad, down to the Ardèche, via a stop over in Trois last night. Lucky them. Our first trip as a family was in 1988, to a friend’s sheep farm/ferme auberge near Castelnaudary in the Pyrenees. Our daughter was 13 months. And she’s been to France every year since. We too started with camping, then static caravans, then moving on to ferme auberge, with cheap formula 1 type stopovers where necessary. Your trip sounds so enticing, it might lure me away from the boat for a holiday next season!!!! Maybe I can tag along with granddaughter as a babysitter?

They always know, don’t they. You get no peace till they’re stowed and you’re off.

Very much looking forward to reading about your trip.

I, like Biker, was totally unaware he was ill. A brave man to carry on to the very end as normally as possible. I loved his quizzes. Thank you Mike. Condolences to his family.

Just been told chainsaw trousers wouldn’t be effective anyway as the blade would just cut through rather than getting snarled up. I admit to keeping a pair of garden shears on board in case a bit of trimming is required. I do like to see where the bank stops and the river starts when I wildmoor.

Drove from Cumbernauld to Burton on Trent this afternoon, after digging some footings trenches for our next bit of paving work on our return to Scotland (reliant on a spell of good weather for that). The drive down the M80, M73, M74, M6, A50 dual and a short bit of A road should have been 3.5 hours of easy, if boring motoring. The M6 was snarled up from Penrith to Warrington - not fun at all, and it took me 5.5 hours. Poor Finlay had been in the car for 3 hours while I was working in Richards garden, then the 5.5 hours driving. He had rather a surplus of energy when I arrived at my daughter’s!

Not sure whether to laugh or cry, Smoggy. Gives me the jitters when I see someone using one without protective leggings.

And another bright side to look on Sam - your long trip coming up! Lovely seeing your photos, thanks.

Hope you’ve got some chainsaw trousers for that beast!

Get well soon Helen. And congrats to Pozzick ❤️

I have a feeling that the mill renovation was carried out/funded by a trust or charity of some sort, rather than the shop owners. I agree about the choice of sticker to update the mooring fee from £5 to £6. Looked like flowery wheelie bin stickers from dunelm that just didn’t show up at all. Fingers crossed there’ll be someone out there ready to take the site over. It has an enormous potential.

Looks like a good turnout Ian.

Ours are the other way round. Loads of plums, although some split when the rains started after that dry weather, and the wasps moved in on them. Apples, loads set, but most fell off after the dry spell. I did take a load more off to just keep one per bunch to see if that would help, but even they are generally very small. Pears, of three trees, one has none, one has a good crop and one has a few. I suspect that’s more to do with weather during different pollination times. Gooseberries we’re loaded, but again quite small. Blackcurrants, far too many but all ready when I was at the boat and I didn’t bother to net them as I still have lots in the freezer from last year. So the birds stripped the lot.

The first half of our paving project is more or less done, a day ahead of schedule. My role as quantity surveyor and project manager has gone ok, a few backtracks and changes of mind along the way. But all materials in place when needed. Haven’t decided yet whether to put edging blocks down next to the grass or not. I know it makes sense, but just feels a bit ‘OTT’ for this little garden. We were just finishing the fiddly bits of edging when Tony’s stone cutting blade machine broke. He’s spent the evening online trying to find out how to mend the linkage that’s come adrift. Can see what needs to happen, just can’t work out how to get the pin back in place.

Frustrating day yesterday, rain stopped play while paving. So I took the dog for a big walk in an area of Cumbernauld that is so unlike what first comes to mind about the place. Cumbernauld itself is a bit of a soulless concrete jungle, built as one of the ‘new towns’ to house folk being relocated from the slum clearances of Glasgow. I’m not sure the planners got it right in 1955, choosing to apply a modernist architecture with the ideals of ‘urban living’, using a higher population density than in previous new towns. The town is built on one side of a very steeply wooded valley. But go the other side of the M80 to the ‘overspill’ area, still classed as Cumbernauld and developed more akin to the ‘neighbourhood’ philosophy of other new towns, and you find an enormous open access area called Cumbernauld community park. This side of the motorway you can walk for miles without needing to cross a road as there is an excellent network of paths, cycle ways with underpasses etc. The park itself is vast, well over 200 acres, full of woods, heathland, nature trails, ponds, play areas and football pitches, allotments, and paths galore, partly built by folk required to do community payback service. There’s also a huge galvanised steel statue called Arria, that I think I might have posted a photo of once before. The view from the top of the park across to Cumbernauld itself shows just how wooded this area is, with fantastic views to the west towards Glasgow. The town centre is well hidden by trees, and the whole built up area reminded me a bit of a French ski resort, with roofs rising up from above the trees on the steep slopes. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a chair lift somewhere! It’s difficult to believe that less than a 10 min drive or a 20 minute walk from the town centre gets you here. The neatest allotment site I’ve seen outside of the continent. Hardly a weed in sight and rows of sheds resembling beach huts!

But one good thing about doing these sorts of things once retired, Helen, is if rain stops play etc, it’s not such a big deal. Just requires a good weather eye to spot when not to start something that will be spoilt by the rain. And indoors it’s the same, not having the same time pressure to get a room sorted before paid work gets in the way, (Monday morning creeps round) is a joy and helps you become a real oldie who hasn’t a clue what day it is😁 You must be really counting the days now.

I can see and feel just how much you’ve put into your garden Mouldy. There’s three of us, one of you! I’m the slave driver in our team, otherwise it’d grind to a halt soon enough through too much pontificating 😂 You only have you to motivate yourself which is always harder. And it looks great. Can’t wait to see it all planted up and getting established.

But not how knackered and wrinkled I look for my age😂😂😂 - too many years working outside I’m afraid.

Halfway through the paving/landscaping job at my son’s house in Scotland. The garden is so slopey that we’ve filled in the low bits with soil from the high bits, meaning no skip will be needed. We’re doing the project in two halves, the ‘lower patio and path’ and then the ‘higher’ one outside the back door round the side of the house to the gate. In fact, I’ll have to buy some extra type 1 for completing the filling in before the sand goes down. That block shows the start of a hidden retaining wall we then built to hold the soil on the higher area from disappearing under the fence. Digging out the footings with tree roots galore was taxing! We also remembered just in time (I’d forgotten to include it in my plan, oops), about putting in a drain for under the outside tap as up till now the water’s just run all over and finds its way out under the fence The first order of materials arrived today. Richard lives in such an awkward little spot that the delivery driver did a fantastic job of getting the pallets/bulk bag offloaded as near the gate as he could reach, with a lamppost and enormous stone ‘feature’ to avoid while doing so. He even went round the back when he’d finished to see if he could access the back garden direct from the main road, but no chance, as I thought. At least by keeping it all off the public parking spaces, I didn’t feel bad that we were blocking a space. We shifted some pavers to work out just where we were going to start, having realised that the pattern doesn’t match up accurately with the dimensions on my drawn plan. The rest of the afternoon comprised me barrowing sand and Tony doing the final levelling before the first half of laying tomorrow, then shifting over 2 tonnes of pavers, thankfully with Richard’s help when he got back from work and making a neat stack, right in the way of where we’ll need to get to for the second half of the job when we’re up here next. So they’ll all need shifting again then🫤 5pm, and an early finish as we’re ‘weary’ to put it mildly and politely. Now, I’m sure the builders among you will find our way of doing it all very perplexing, but we’re getting there. And saving the expense of a mini digger and taking a fence panel down, and having to apply for a licence for a skip on a public road etc etc. We were quoted a high enough figure that I was prompted to persuade son and husband that we can do it ourselves and Tony has laid patios before, it’s just he’s getting less agile now ie old, he is nearer 80 than 75. Onwards and upwards tomorrow. My back is holding out remarkably well so far.