Being Mrs C

Scott's View

There is something quite magical about the Scottish Borders and I think that this panorama from Scott's View gives a fantastic example. With the Cheviot Hills in the background and the River Tweed running through the valley there is no wonder that this was Sir Walter Scott's favourite view. When ever he passed along the road he always stopped his horses so that he could take in the view. 

The story goes that his funeral procession also passed this way and that the horses stopped of their own accord to allow their master one final look.

Autumn oranges

Looking around the garden at the end of October there ere numerous different shades of orange to give it a very autumnal feel.

 

 

 

Just a shame that yesterday's autumn weather seems to have been replaced by the depths of winter today. Torrential rain and gale-force winds. Hope it isn't a sign of what's to come over the next couple of months.

A wet weekend

After an incredibly wet Saturday we were woken in the early hours of Sunday morning by yet more rain. Looking out of the bedroom window the wind was raging, the road turned into a river and several rumbles of thunder passing overhead. We therefore headed down to the WWA this afternoon expecting to see some degree of damage from the weather. Luckily we were proved wrong.

The butterfly garden seemed to have escaped the worst of the wind, and with only a couple of small exceptions, most of the plans were still standing proud. There weren't that many butterflies to be seen today, but the bees did seem to be out in force.

The coots that live on the Mere were out and about with their chicks. We think there were eight in total. Quite an impressive number when you consider that the heron was keeping a keen watch on them from afar.

They are such incredibly cute fluffy bundles, but catching that look in a photo is somewhat difficult!

The rain had certainly made a difference to our new pond on site. We think that the water level must have risen about at least 3 inches in the last 24 hours. As I sit here typing this we're in the middle of another storm, so by now it may have increased further!

The water was a bit too murky to be able to see much life apart from that on the water's surface. It looks promising though as there were quite a few pond skaters visible, and what may have been a leech at the water's edge. (Mr C's currently looking it up to see if we were correct or not) As we walked away a large dragonfly also came to visit. A good sign that the pond is attracting exactly the sort of wildlife that we were hoping it would.

Village cricket

One tradition Mr C and I have every summer is to pop down to Mr C's dad's local cricket club in Harpenden. It's a lovely way to spend a lazy summer Sunday afternoon, especially with a cold drink in hand.

I wouldn't really call myself a cricket fan - I certainly couldn't even try to explain the rules - but any games that stops for afternoon tea has to be good in some way!

Afternoon tea the last time we were there provided a great opportunity for a walk around the area and there can be nothing quite as nice as a field full of buttercups like this.

Buttercups just remind me of childhood summers - there's something so simple, innocent, yet jolly, about them.

Summer also means that it's time to get my summer wardrobe out- if you can call it that - and one favourite at the moment is these shoes.

They're simple, and incredibly comfortable, but the detail of the flower on the side of the fastening is just irresistible!

Bank holiday exercise

I'm sure Bank Holiday Mondays are supposed to be for lazing about. Ours turned out to be quite an active day. We met up with our friends S and A and headed out for a good long walk in the sunshine. Mr C and I often go walking with these particular friends and know that they're up for a bit of a challenge. Hence we decided to repeat a walk from our Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire walks book which took us from central St Albans to Harpenden and back.

Now the book reckons this walk is 10.5 miles and should take about 5 hours. It's not a particularly challenging walk, but a nice one all the same that takes in some lovely stretches by the Ver and along the common in Harpenden itself. We left St Albans at 10am and, despite stopping for a 40 minute leisurely picnic lunch, somehow managed to be enjoying a nice cold beverage in a St Albans pub before 2pm. I'm not too sure how, but my legs certainly now ache, and my camera has a lack of photos suggesting that I was possibly too busy to take any! I'm sure it took us much longer last time.

It was definitely time to relax though once we got home, and I was able to curl up with two books that I'm enjoying right now. After reading quite a few books set in stately homes, and following my numerous National Trust visits, I was delighted to find a book in the local charity shop about the history of the Trust and some of it's holdings. The National Trust: The First Hundred Years apparently accompanied a BBC television series that was shown around 1995, to mark the Trust's one hundredth anniversary. It's fascinating to dip into.

The second book I'm enjoying continues the theme of stately homes and what it must have been like to live and work in them. The Edwardian Country House was again a book to accompany a television series, but this time a reality style show that placed a family inside a country house and gave them the identities of turn of the century aristocrats. Below stairs staff were also "employed" and the series looked at the challenges facing both sets of occupants. Being a reality show there was some coverage of the relationships that were between the people living there, but the majority of the show focussed on what life would have been like in Edwardian times. The series showed back in 2002 and I thoroughly enjoyed it at the time. I bought the accompanying book at a discount at the time, but over the last few years had quite simply forgotten about it. To pick it up again and remind myself is great and I'm really enjoying doing so. The book seems to be available very cheaply via amazon at the moment, so if you have an interest in this sort of thing I'd certainly advise getting hold of a copy.

What I am, and what I'm not

It's strange, but at time I get this impression that I want to be some sort of power hungry business woman type. Going to work in my suit and high heels, chairing meetings, giving presentations and trying to run my project to deliver everything that is supposed to deliver. At the time I seem to think that I'm enjoying myself. Then it all gets a bit on top of me, and I realise that actually I'm not enjoying it at all.

It's all too easy though feel caught up in it all and to forget what I really enjoy. I don't really want to be Mrs Corporate, but it's sometime hard working out who I really am. Making time for quiet thought on evenings like tonight helps me remember though.

The growth of late spring, full of green, is far more beautiful than any PowerPoint presentation.

Quietly watching a little moorhen chick swim around is somewhat more satisfying than getting through a meeting agenda.

Examining the delicate beauty of the flowers on cow parsley beats the examination of figures in an excel spreadsheet.

Experiencing it all with the man I love - priceless.

Trying to remember all this when sat in the office, up to my eyes in work - sadly, still extremely difficult., but hopefully getting easier.

A walk by the Ver

Despite the forecast for heavy showers, Mr C and I set off after lunch for a walk along the River Ver, from where we live in Sopwell, along to How Wood.

We used to do the section of this walk down to Park Street quite often, but yesterday realised that it had actually been quite a while since our boots had taken us in that direction. Normally, we're fortunate enough to see one of the kingfishers darting along the river, but alas not today.

In fact, one of the few bits of "wildlife" along that section was this cow that has obviously decided that the river was the right place to get a long drink of water.

As we got closer she eyed us with more suspicion, and when we stepped onto the bridge the glare was getting even more intense. After a few minutes though she seemed to realise that we weren't competition and carried on getting her water before heading back up the bank and leaving us alone.

As we pressed on towards Park Street the weather started to close in even more and the waterproofs even had to come out of the rucksack. The section to How Wood isn't quite as familiar to us and we'd certainly forgotten how nice some of the lakes are. This particular one with lily pads was a pleasant surprise as we rounded one corner.

The camera had to go away for the last bit of walk as the rain became a bit too wet for electronic equipment. A shame as one area was lovely moorland, that, with the blowing wind, really did remind me of walking along the North Yorkshire (as long as you ignored the background noise of the M25!)

A couple of hours of walking through the elements left us feeling a bit worn out, so we took the easy route home and caught the Abbey Flyer back to St Albans. We certainly built up an appetite whilst out and were very ready for the tea and scones when we got home!

Birds, birds, birds...

We've had quite a quiet Easter weekend, but it seems that we've actually been quite busy looking at birds and making the most of our RSPB membership.

On Saturday we headed into the centre of St Albans to Verulam Park where there are currently a large number of herons nesting on the island in the centre of the lake there. We read in the local paper about how the RSPB had set up a viewing facility there for the public to get a better view of the nests and chicks. Unfortunately the day that we went along this didn't seem to be operating. Still, with the binoculars that I got for Christmas and Mr C's big camera lens we get a pretty good view. 

You obviously can't take pictures with binoculars though so you'll have to rely on Mr C's photographic evidence. 

On bank holiday Monday we went along to the Rye Meads reserve over by the River Lee. The reserve is jointly run by the RSPB and Herts & Middlesex Wildlife Trust and has a total of ten hides across the wetlands reserve to allow visitors to get a good sight of the local wildlife. Once again, photographic evidence is provided by Mr C. 

One thing the visit did make me realise is how few birds I actually recognise. The photographs at least allow us to come back and in our own time compare the photos with what is in the bird books. It'd be much more useful though if I could actually recognise them in real time. A trick I'm still to master!

Pond digging

This morning was one of the monthly working parties down at the WWA and today we started work on the new nature pond that we are creating.

Previous attempts had been made at digging the pond out by hand, but we soon realised that doing so would be a little bit more difficult than we first imagined. Instead we hired a mini digger for this working party so that we could make a real difference in starting the pond, rather than just the shallow attempt we had before.

 

Mr C looked like a small child at Christmas when he got to use the digger and I'm pleased to say that he seemed to be doing a pretty proficient job of it. Maybe he should consider JCB driver as a new career choice if the current one doesn't work out.

The aim is for the pond to provide a habitat for amphibian and insects that like to live in or near water. It looked like some creatures were already impressed with the work we'd done as we managed to see several newts in the water, as well as a pond skater on the surface and this little frog in the grass nearby. They do say that nature will start to inhabit new ponds pretty quickly, but we had no idea it would be quite this quick!

The train triangle

It's been a busy couple of days this week. Work has taken me up to Scotland for a series of meetings and I had some wonderful train adventures in the process.

It didn't start off so well though yesterday morning. As usual, I left plenty of time to get into London to go to Kings Cross where I was due to catch my first long distance train north to Edinburgh. I started to get worried as my little train from St Albans suddenly slammed on the brakes less than half way to London. I got even more worried when the driver came on the tannoy and apologised for the sudden stop and said that he was investigating the reason behind the train automatically putting on the emergency brake!

To cut a long story short, after a change of trains at Mill Hill I made it to Kings Cross with just 2 minutes to spare! Running with a small suitcase, laptop bag and handbag whilst wearing a big winter coat is no fun at all.

The journey up the East Coast Mainline was really quite stunning. The section between Newcastle and Edinburgh in particular was amazing. We were lucky enough to get a wonderfully clear patch of weather and as the train went along the Northumbrian coast presented us with a wonderful blue coloured sea with crisp white wave crests easily visible. I found myself at one stage stood to get the best possible view and transfixed by the scenery in front of me.

We travelled over to Glasgow last night and after another meeting this morning travelled back down to London via the West Coast Mainline (hence the train triangle). The scenery today was very different to yesterday's. As we passed through the Lake District the sky contained both bright blue patches and very dark storm clouds. The threatening rain clouds gave the hills a dark appearance, but yet the next peak could be bathed in bright sunlight at exactly the same time. I've never spent much time in the Lakes, but now feel that I must do so. One of my colleagues has previously researched travelling up to the Lakes by train for a weekend and informs me that a hire car can be collected at Oxenholme station. It's very tempting.

My only regret of the whole trip? Forgetting to take my camera with me!