What are you all up to

Just finished packing the car and van, ready for the off in the morning.  Not going far - just to a lovely CS called Deerholme Farm near Thornton Le Dale - and the weather forecast is looking good We were there last February in the mini-heatwave so looking forward to a repeat.

Struggling a bit at the moment, though - according to the Doc last week, I have torn a ligament or tendon in my knee and he reckons 8 weeks to heal. Putting the awning up is going to be a bit 'testing' and I don't anticipate doing too much walking on this trip. Still, it's good to be going away.

Cold and sunny here today, fair bit of a breeze so feels even colder. Not bothering me though as I 'm tucked nice and warm sewing up yet another jumper I knitted this morning on the machine.

 Cricket jumper already to be posted, OH will take it down to the PO

Bird feeders busy here, we've even had a gold finch on the seeds, haven't seen one in our garden for years, blue and great tits a plenty, finches, 2 robins, starlings, sparrows and of course black birds chasing each other around 

We had a great sunset last night so will be checking the skies again tonight. 

Have fun everyone, stay warm werever you are.

Clear pale blue sky and sunny but cold again in South Cheshire today. The bird baths took some de-icing this morning but only a minimal amount of food required to top up the tubular feeders. There seems to be very little activity amongst the birds at the moment but I can detect signs of sparrowhawks doing what sparrowhawks do !! So that could be the reason for the little ones being very wary and not moving from cover if they can avoid it.

I seem to have a lot of birds visiting my feeder but only at certain times of day. Only get Goldfinches when I put out sunflower hearts and they go pretty quickly. Interesting to watch the habits of different birds. The Goldfinches will feast on the sunflower hearts but the Blue Tits will take one and fly off to a bush or tree to consume and then return for another. The Sparrows congregate in the Fuchsia bushes and seem to take it in turns to have a nibble at the fat balls. The Starlings are quite brash as they attack both the fat balls and peanuts. Occasionally see a Great Tit but not many. The Pigeons and Black Birds have an easy life as they stay on the ground picking up all the bits released by the other birds. 

David

Hi folks, I'm back online after an enforced absence due to a lack of computer. Hope you have been chatting nicely. Looks like I have quite a bit to catch up with.

We have almost completed the decorating downstairs just a few finishing touches to complete.  Getting itching feet now as not been away in the van since November. Have a family get together at the weekend in Manchester to celebrate a couple of birthdays, and then will hopefully get away in the caravan for a few days, in February. 

Tammygirl, your post about knitting cricket  jumpers made me smile, my Mum knitted both my boys their cricket jumpers and I still have them, they were going to throw them out but I couldn't let them do it.

Wall to wall....cloud today. Except for those lucky enough to be up the Fairfield Horseshoe above Ambleside. We could see the sunny areas as we were walking north along the ridge of Whitbarrow Scar, having climbed up to it from Mill End, about 2 miles from Meathop Fell site. 

Had a lovely walk. Not quite in the same shape as a year ago but trying to get there. A good 7 miles covered today with a bit of a climb thrown in. Need a few more days like this.

Not happy with Campbells in Preston. We picked the caravan up on Thursday from them after they had it in for some warranty work. Nothing big but they didn't do a couple of jobs as they didn't have the parts. No problem we said, we'll pop in on our return on Tuesday. Rang them today. They haven't even ordered them!. More messing about. Must admit the service centre admin has been pretty useless. Losing emails, not knowing what work is to be done, who agreed what etc. Not impressed. Will calm down and ring them tomorrow when we get home and "discuss" matters.

Good to hear you're out on the hills again.

Did mention to MrsWN that we should try Fairfield this weekend. She laughed at me!! But, once again, dammit, she was right. End of year target.

Have you managed any this year?

Great to hear NTH and the WN's have had a good meet up and that NTH is ready to head off on the road again, where to this time Nellie?

Thanks TG. We are going to Hall Croft CL at Ilkley first, just for a few nights before heading down to Old Brampton to a favourite CL of ours. Then we'll decided where after depending on the weather, probably towards East Anglia, as It should be dryer down there during February & March. As R&R says it will be good to get away again after my injury.

Sorry to hear of the ongoing problems with Campbells, WN. Hope it won't upset your plans too much.

Glad to see that you're back on-line again, H&T. Enjoy your weekend away at Manchester.

Well we were in Keswick this weekend just gone but we had a big family celebration of my 'significant' birthday. We had an apartment on Lake road above the art gallery/Cumbria water offices but no real walking apart from tea room to pub. I should get some in middle February.

If you (or anyone) is going to keswick it was surprising to find not only the Skiddaw hotel totally closed for refurbishment (not a big loss for me) but so was Bryson's and, even worse, the Old Keswickian chip shop  was closed.  

I know what you mean about itchy feet Helen we are the same not been away in the van since we returned from the Lakes at the end of November hoping to get away end of Feb/beginning of March. 

WN we bought our van new from Campbell’s and have found them good so far however I do agree their service centre isn’t very organised. When we took the van for its first service last year there was a problem with the fridge so they ordered the part and we arranged to take the van back down a couple of months later. As it is a 3 hour drive we decided to make a holiday of it and have a week in Southport two days before we were due to go we had a call from them to change the date of our appointment with them eventually got a date for a couple of days later but it was very short notice especially as we travel a fair distance to use them. Luckily we were able to re arrange our dates at the Southport club site but it would have been a different story if we were staying on a commercial site and paid the site fees up front.