Something a little more scenic

The other weekend we took a trip to Cardiff for a visit to our DS and DIL, and as usual we were treated to a wonderful relaxing time. For once we had some lovely weather and took a walk from the Mumbles to the next town along the coastal path. It was superb, especially as we were treated to a lovely lunch when we got there.



Looking back towards the Mumbles.





Half way there, getting hungry all this lovely fresh air.



And a final walk along the beach for lunch.

I did take a lovely shot of our hosts, but managed to delete all my pics off the camera instead of just one, so these are courtesy of my DH.



Just found this one from the DH collection, our hosts are striding across the beach eagerly anticipating lunch, they must be even hungrier than me!

We were all excited over the weekend as we're expecting another grandchild in March, so it was good to catch up with our DIL in person and know that mum and baby are doing fine. We know he's a boy and he's very active now :-). He will be number 13 for us. So we now have enough for a football team plus reserves LOL.

Thank you both for a great weekend.

And now a creative link for all textile enthusiasts Chelsea degree show
I was so excited when I found their web site, I haven't been this enthusiastic about an exhibition for years, I just wish I'd seen it early enough to go in person.

And finally, how about this for a winter warmer, my DH's corned beef hash...... yummy !

Home again

Well Dungie worked her magic and we're back home feeling refreshed, it's such a shame we have to come home via the M25, all those lorries and so much traffic, after spending a few days in 'the land that time forgot' it's a bit of a shock!



This is what they do best there, we had a wonderful fish supper on Monday, I had pan fried whole plaice at the Pilot pub, amazing!



And this is the relaxing way to do it.



And this is where you could live if you have a spare £250,000, I wish!



And this is what gives light to an otherwise black piece of land once it gets dark.

I don't know why we love it, but it always brings us peace and quiet in a sometimes mad world.

But as with everything else these days, nothing is sacred. There are proposals to remove huge amounts of shingle from the beach to protect the power station, there will be up to 50 lorries a day from October to March for 12 years on this wonderful peaceful place, if the powers that be have their way.

Chilling out

Dungeness, an unlikely place for R&R I suppose but we love it and come here often when in need of a wind down.

Just a few pics while on quick internet connection.





Bit cold and scary up there.



Alas poor fish.

Good to be back

Flamingos and dinner dates

We've not long returned from a nice little 2 centre break in Gloucestershire and South Wales.

We went for a few days to Slimbridge Wetlands Centre. The weather wasn't exactly kind but we made the best of it and had a couple of nice walks round the site. One of my favourite sights were these beautiful colourful flamingos, sich a strange site at a British Wetlands centre.

On one of of walks I persuaded my DH to pose on these stepping stones, well i wasn't going to risk wet feet!



A really lovely surprise was this outside enclosure almost teaming with these tiny Harvest mice, barely 2" long. I've never seen them in the wild so this was a very unexpected treat.



After a few more excisions we made our way to Cardiff to visit our DS and his wife. We had such a lovely relaxing weekend, despite the weather. As we live in the country it's always a very different experience for us to spend time in the city, and Cardiff is a great place, very vibrant with a population that really know how to enjoy life.
I had a very pleasant time in John Lewis, wishing as always that I had a spare couple of grand to spend.

As usual we were spoilt with several great meals both at home and in the city, trying out alternative restaurants like Milgis, with it's DIY art on the walls, a Yurt in the back yard, and great veggie food.

Cardiff Arts Institute was pretty cool too, with its retro sofas and a great rubber glove installation!

I just wish I hadn't forgotten my camera, I could have shown you the window display at All Saints Fashion shop, it was full of old hand sewing machine all lined up on shelves taking up the whole window display.



Of course a visit to Cardiff is never complete without a visit to Craft in the Bay for morning coffee and cake, plus a look in the gallery of course, to give the men suggestions for Christmas presents.

It was so cold that the water round the fountain was frozen.



And having forgotten my camera on Saturday I thought I'd make up for it with this rare unpopulated shot of the Millennium Centre.



We had a great weekend and a big thank you to our thoughtful hosts.

We were pretty glad to get past this stuff though, once we left Wlaes, but if followed us home, and now we're snowed in!

Long silence

I can't believe it's been about a month and a half since I last put up a post on this blog. My excuse is that since I started my C&G blog it's been really difficult to run 2.

But help is at hand, I finally saved up enough money to buy a 13" Macbook Pro today and it's divine!!!



It has everything I could want on a laptop for our travels in Connie, the most exciting being a ten hour battery and a back lit keyboard, which has been specially designed to help you make fewer typos. All I need now is to learn how to spell and touch type and I'll be blogging for England!

So I just thought I'd put a few pics of what I've been doing and where we've been.


Halloween's past, Bonfire night next, and then it'll be Christmas.


A new table cloth and napkins made for Connie, to match the tea cosy, I bought.


Dead trees always have that dramatic impact.

Seem to have mislaid the rest of my pics at the moment, but will find them soon!

Hope to be back soon.

Proud parents

Just wanted to share a proud parent moment, when we watched a lovely programme on BBC 1 Wales last night that our son Dan has edited.

Not being golfers ourselves we were surprised to find what a wonderful story there was to be told about 5 Welshman "who have played in the world's biggest team golf competition," the Ryder Cup.

If you have even a slight interest in golf I know you will love this beautifully crafted programme. I'm not biased of course, but the cuts and music choice were perfect and often funny, just the right combination of brevity and humour. It made us proud to be British as it exemplified our 'Bull Dog ' spirit and a refusal to give up in the face adversity.

You can view it here on BBC iplayer

Well done Dan and the team.

Nice surprise and Dungeness

Today my friend Shirley and I went to the Guildford Institute in Surrey to make the final arrangements for a 3 week exhibition we're having there. When we walked into reception I caught sight of some paperwork behind the desk that had my painting on it. After enquiring why, from the receptionist, she smiled and said "Oh haven't you seen it?" And it turned out to be their Autumn event and course catalogue. I was really pleased as this was a first, but then I looked at the credit inside, only to find my fellow exhibitor's name and misspelled too........ Oh well it still looks nice.

So if any one's in the area do drop in, they do a great lunch there and Guildford's a pretty good town for shopping.



The weekend before last we went to the amazing Dugeness Spit in Kent. To those of you who don't know it, its a shingle area of land that's unique in Europe and is the nearest thing we have to a desert in Britain. It's growing at the amazing rate of 8' per year.

It's definitely one of those places you either love or hate. For us it was love at first sight.

Now this may sound strange when the area is bleak with nothing but huts and ships and fishing paraphernalia as far as the eye can see.



With a power station at the end of the road.



But it's this very bleakness that has drawn people to live here, some of whom have embraced the stark beauty of the place and used it to fuel their artistic imaginations.



The little white hut with the bunting is an amazing studio for displaying this artist's work as is his front garden.



What a great way for beach rubbish to end up.



And this is the artist Derek Jarman's cottage.



And some of his amazing sculptures.



Us on the beach being blown around by 40mph gusty winds.



With all the decaying fishing equipment on the beach there were plenty of wonderful textures to be had.







I have no idea what this is, but it made me want to sketh it.



On the third day of our stay it rained quite hard on and off and the clouds were changing all the time so I stayed put in my cosy mobile studio and tried to capture the bleakness of the place.



We were so impressed with the quiet of the place and the lovely people that live there, so tolerant of visitors poring over their landscape, that we're going back up on our next trip, so hopefully the weather will be kind and we can find some more inspirational ideas for our artwork.