On the tracks.

 Every year we have the van serviced, mot and what's called a habitation check where they check the safety etc of the gas and electric, check for damp and any issues that may arise with the living area. The hab check is not compulsory after the first three years but as ours is now 15 years old, things are needing replacing. This time they replaced quite a few seals, fixed the door catch for us, fixed the fridge lock although they do this every year as it invariably breaks at some point !

This gives us peace of mind but we always go away for a couple of nights to check it out  before embarking on a longer trip. Also, emptying out most of the contents so that they can scrabble around in the cupboards and under seats means that I can go through and take out anything that we don't use.

Our campsite of choice for the weekend this time was at Burrs country park, Bury, near Manchester,

The reason?

Good enough?

This is the east Lancashire Railway and we treated ourselves to the run around tickets so that we could hop on and off all day.

My love of steam is inherited from my father as we used to spend a lot of time together exploring abandoned and partially restored lines when I was a child.

I also like to find pattern and and texture when I'm out and about, a legacy of City and Guilds studies 😀

We travelled by steam and deseal, depending on which train we caught next , so sometimes the steaaam engine was passing us rather than pulling our train.

At some of the stations, we wandered around the small towns before moving on.

and at Bury, the admission to the transport museum was included with our tickets.

a good chance for us both to wander round with our cameras, first up was the colour red.

then grey

All too soon , it was time to head back to the van. We had caught the first train out and the last train back.

                                          

My next post will probably be about vehicles as well but I have been knitting a bit and will update you all soon xx.

Spinning update and a day out in my home town.

 Hi,

I mentioned a few posts ago that Nottingham Castle has reopened and you can now purchase a ticket that is valid for the year. Another part of the castle complex is Brewhouse yard, a museum that is slowly being renovated and is now open to the public on weekends, school holidays and bank holidays.

You can see the roofs of the building from the castle as you look across Nottingham.

Inside has now been stripped back to represent a textile workers cottage with information about spinning, knitting and lace. The back of the cottage has been opened up so that you can enter the caves which would have been used as storage. There are caves under a lot of the city centre, people once lived and worked in them and many of the older buildings have caves systems under them. The building I used to work in had tunnels and rooms used for storage .

Not surprisingly, I had a conversation with the volunteers about the idea of live fibre events or hands on workshops so watch this space.

On the spinning front, some of the TDF yarn finally made it to the dye pot and I washed the bits and pieces of knitting from July and realised just how busy I had been. I've kept back some of the undyed yarn for future dyeing and knitting and started on the prep for the next big spinning session.

Thats about it for now, life is back to some sort of normal but I'm still hobbling more than usual haha.

Speak soon xx

Festival and a spinning injury !

 Hi

The last weekend in July saw us attending Shrewkfest, a Ukulele festival in Shropshire, since covid we have only been doing one uke fest a year but I suspect things are going to get back to normal as we already have two booked for next year.

As we needed to charge up batteries etc in the van, we booked a couple of nights on a campsite first just outside Shrewsbury which gave us chance to shop for food and have a mooch round the charity shops ( we do try hard to resist and all we bought was a book and a few cds) We have visited Shrewsbury before but that time it was a week before Christmas and we gave up as the cold and sleet forced us to hunker down in a coffee shop for most of the day.

This time though, good weather !! I love the old houses and shops.😀

The festival is actually held on a farm using the cow shed as the main stage and marquees for the smaller stages. There were food vendors and a small craft market where I spent most of Saturday spinning.

Once all the lights were on, the bar open it changed into a wonderful setting for the weekend and the sound man was pretty much the best that I've ever come across as evidenced by the quality of everyone's videos of the event. This is Phil Doleman in the photo, look him up if you play ukulele as he is very good and great company.

I mentioned Spinning injury, this was partly due to spinning on my treadle wheel for so long (knowing that I have ligament problems around my knee) and walking into a door frame when I got home.

I spun nearly 300gm as well as knitting mitts and headband so a productive but painful weekend.

However, using my crutches a bit more means I am colour coordinated more of the time haha

speak soon xx