Today

Today we decided to go to Pot House Hamlet which is an area round Silkstone Garden Centre. On arrival, Lennie suggested we have a drink before we explore. We sat at a table overlooking a river with all sorts of ducks and geese on it. I waited outside while Lennie paid. 'That was the most expensive cup of tea ever' he said. For one tea and one cappucino it was £5.10!

We then went outside and found a track which we followed. We wondered what all the stones were, until we came across a little wagon filled with flowers. This had been a small track that coal wagons used to run on!

We followed it for quite a way, then decided to return and have a look at the garden centre. When we got back, we discovered that the garden centre was really just rows and rows of overgrown, very untidy tangled flowerbeds, set amongst lots of paths. What a waste of time!

A wasted journey as far as we were concerned, and we wouldn't recommend it to anyone:0(

Oh well, you can't win 'em all! We then took Pickles for her usual play around, and fed the horses. That reminds me. I must take a photo of 'John' our favourite horse. We always take him a nice bag of carrots and he always comes to us when we call.

Wentworth Castle Gardens

Today, instead of a cache, we decided to go to Wentworth Castle Gardens. It was a perfect day, and it took us about 1.5 hours to walk round them. The paths were all newly laid as they are in the process of renovating a lot of the buildings and gardens. There wasn't much to see in the way of flowers or flowering shrubs, but the distant scenery was lovely.

We came across Stainborough Castle, which is a Gothic Romantic Folly. Lennie climbed the tower to a veiwing platform which is 600 feet above sea level. It was a spiral staircase which frightened me! Far too strenuous for me. I waited in the grounds below:0)

The picture above is me waiting below for Lennie!

We also saw the conservatory, famous after featuring on the BBC TV series 'Restoration'. This elegant cast iron glass house remains derelict, but restoration will begin as soon as enough money has been raised. I couldn't get a photo of this as it was behind a high wire fence, and supported totally by scaffolding. Trees were growing through the roof, and glass was missing. You could see the complete errosion of the ornate cast iron framework.

There was a very nice tea room there, but we were not at all hungry, so we had a drink on arriving, and another one just before we left. Lennie is pictured sitting on the wall of the tea room patio where we had our drink and looked through all the leaflets we picked up. We will be visiting a lot of these, although some of them are in North Yorkshire. All in all another lovely day, and I must say, that although this walk around the gardens was all uphill, I am beginning to feel better for all this excercise!!

We have not yet decided where we are going tomorrow, but go somewhere we will. This weather is set to continue, with the only hiccough on Friday when we may have a little light rain, but Saturday the sunshine will be back!

PHOTOS

Just thought I would show a few of the pictures that we took when we went for a walk with Chris and Sarah. Again it was along the river Don, but this time we walked in the opposite direction. It was lovely:0) The one of the lake is just to show you the size of the fish in the water!! All my photos are clickable to enlarge.

HOLIDAY WIPE OUT!

Chris and Sarah set off for their week in The Lake District, and they were all very excited and looking forward to it. They couldn't go anywhere for the first three days because it was Sat, Sun and Mon of the Bank Holiday, and of course the roads in the Lake District were jammed. By Tuesday, when they should have all been able to enjoy the rest of their time their, they were hit very hard with what they thought was food poisoning. First the youngest, Jo who is just over 18 months old vomited and had diarrhea, a couple of hours later it was Sarah's turn. Sarah is expecting her baby at the end of November, and unfortunately only just made it out of their people carrier before she was sick all over the path. She went inside, where it continued. Then I am not sure if it was Aaron, who is almost six, or Chris, (the daddy) who was next. They continued like this until the day they had to come home, when they seemed better. Chris was taken ill again on the journey to us, with a bad headache, and when they arrived, he looked awful! Still they thought it was food poisoning, so were not worried about passing anything on to us.

Sindie came round that evening, and cooked us all the best vegetarian meal we have ever tasted! It was vegetable paella, with a lovely side salad that had the most yummy dressing and hot croutons! I had to take these photos for you.

We had a lovely evening, and Sindie had even bought two different kinds of cheesecake for dessert:0)

The next day, I was sitting with Aaron in the lounge, and Sarah and Chris were having a rest upstairs. All of a sudden, Aaron threw up all over the settee, (which is fabric). Chris came rushing down, and it took me and him to clean Aaron down, while Lennie was frantically trying to remove the seat covers and cushion covers! Thank goodness the settee was an expensive one and had removable covers.

We thought that was the end of it, but by the time Chris and Sarah were ready to go home on Sunday, I was feeling exhausted, hot, cold and ached all over. I don't know how I kept my eyes open for the last hour of their visit. I didn't want to tell them how bad I was feeling, because I had promised to baby sit that morning while they went to Meadowhall to get some maternity clothes. And I had to prevent Jo from having his afternoon nap so that he would sleep on the way home.

Anyway, once they had left, I literally collapsed on to the settee, and I was shivering with cold, and had a thick fleece and a fluffy blanket over me. I was feeling very sick, and all my bones ached. It couldn't have been food poisoning, and must have been a bug. I didn't eat anything for two days, but as soon as I was well enough to get up and shower, Sindie was throwing up and felt awful, and Livvie her 12 year old, has passed out in the shower!

Poor Sindie has been feeling very 'tender' today. Apparently they also had the shivers. Livvie went back to school, as it was her first day after the summer holidays, but she felt a little shaky apparently.

So that was the last week of Chris and Sarah's holiday.

The first week they were here was grand, and we went out and about. Sindie will probably blog about the walk they all did, while I baby sat again.

We may not see them again until Christmas, when they will have just had another addition to the family. Chris asked if we could go and see the baby when it is born, but whilst I was explaining that it was too near to Christmas, and they would be coming anyway, Sarah said 'And where do you think your mum and dad are going to stay if they come. We will have an extra cot!

Dear me, space is at a premium at the moment. We have decided that when they come for Christmas, we will have Jo in our room in the travel cot, Sarah will have the baby in her room, Chris will sleep in the spare room, and Aaron will have a bed made up in the computer room again. There isn't enough room in Chris's room for the travel cot, but our bedroom is quite large and we have plenty of room. I know he wakes up most mornings before 6.00a.m. but we will have to cope with that:0) I am sure we will have lots of fun!!

DENTISTS!

I didn't blog about it, but just before Chris and Sarah came to visit, I found a lump on my gum. I went to the dentist and she said it was an abcess and gave me three days antibiotics. No one could understand why I wasn't in any pain, other than being aware it was there. I was told some horrific tales about abcesses, and huge swollen faces with agonising pain, so was a bit apprehensive waiting for the pain to hit! The dentist has referred me to the dental hospital, to either have the crown and tooth removed, or drill into the root to drain the infection, which ever they decide. She said I will not hear from them for about three months!!

By yesterday, the abcess was still there so I went back to the dentist for some more antibiotics. She was about to prescribe some until I told her that I wasn't really in any pain with it. 'If you have no pain then I won't give you any more antibiotics' she said. She then proceeded to squeeze it and mess around with it in general, telling me I had to do the same to get the infection out. I also have to hold warm water in my mouth to encourage it to burst:0(

I have been quite successful with the squeezing, but I need a bit of help. Do you think it would be okay to steralize a needle and give it a helping hand? After all, dentist do lance them sometimes I am told.

Fancy having to carry on like this for three more months. And supposing I had been in agony like most people are? It is right above to my front tooth, and really feels annoying. I just hope it doesn't suddenly come to life and cause my face to swell up like a football like my mother-in-laws did:0( She was in absolute agony.

PROBLEMS

Can you please use this space for comments? I have corrected the problem I had:0)

Geocaching

Yesterday we decided to take Livvie on a 'treasure hunt'. It is called Geocaching. There is a site dedicated to this and people all over the world join in!

http://www.geocaching.com/

You have to have a GPS, and you download coordinates into your GPS. (The coordinates will guide you very close to the where the 'treasure' is hidden), then you scrabble about looking for it! It involves a walk which could be of any length, so you get to see some lovely countryside as well.

Anyway, Livvie was looking forward to it because we had done one the day before and failed to find it:0( We think some children must have come across it by accident, and trashed it.

We set off and soon found ourselves in Green Moor, Wortley. It took us a little time to find the footpath we were to use, and we had a lovely walk following it. The clues called for another footpath to be picked up at a certain point, and we took what we thought was the correct one. Fortunately for us it was the wrong one, and meant that we had an extra walk all along the embankment of the River Don. It was beautiful, but I couldn't go all the way with Livvie and Len because it became very slopey and slippery due to the recent flooding of the river Don. Here are a couple of photos taken on that walk.

They left me alone for probably 15 minutes at the most, but surprisingly I felt very vunerable standing in the middle of the woods alone, unable to move in any direction in case I slipped and fell into the river! It was deathly quiet and I kept imagining all sorts of scenarios!

However, back they came and we retraced our footsteps to eventually find the correct path. The scenery all the while was lovely. We live in a very beautiful county. The final part of the walk was up a steep stoney hill. We sent Livvie ahead to have a good look for the treasure. The final clue was 'under some flat stones by a stone gatepost'. She was rummaging around behind a dry stone wall when she lifted a stone and spied the treasure box. This is a photo of it before we removed it. Then one of the box when she opened it.

This is a picture of the hill we had to walk up, plus a photo of the walking boots that I gave to Livvie. She was so thrilled with them that she insisted I took a picture of them:0)

Anyway....Livvie exitedly opened up the cache and began to rummage through it. The idea is that you take something out of the box and then put something in to replace it. Livvie took a funky ruler, which I will show you, and a compass. She replaced them with a very nice keyring torch and a small ball. We filled in the log book and carefully hid the cache again. If there is anybody around at all, (non geocachers are calle muggles) then we don't go near the cache. We must make sure that we are completely alone before uncovering or replacing a cache, because unfortunately there are some rotten people about who just love to ruin everything. The first picture is of Livvie spoils, and the others are the workings of her 'funky' ruler! Anyway, we had a lovely afternoon, and we are already lining up some more caches to do.

Just one more thing that I thought I would tell you, which has nothing to do with the caches or walking!

On the first Saturday Chris and Sarah were here, they had a wedding to go to and so I was baby sitting. Everything was going fine, and the boys were very happy. I put Jo up in his cot for his afternoon nap, and as everything went quiet immediately, I was feeling very pleased with myself. About 30 minutes later Jo started screaming, so I went upstairs to see what was wrong. You should have seen the sight that greeted me! Jo was standing in his cot with lots of red and black all over his face, clothes and duvet. I thought, in the semi darkness, (the curtains were of course drawn) that he was covered in fresh and dried blood! I could see nothing at all wrong anywhere else. I opened the curtains in panic to see where he was bleeding from, and thinking that Chris and Sarah would never trust me again, when I realised he was covered all over in lipstick, mascara and foundation, not to mention other creams. The crafty little boy had opened a drawer where I keep spare make up and had undone and used everything, before carefully closing the drawer again! This is a photo of the drawer. I was in such a panic initially, that I didn't think to take a photo of him. I wish I had!! I had a mammoth cleaning up job, and the lipstick and mascara would only come off by using baby oil, gently and persistently rubbing it into his face! All the photos will enlarge with a click.