Up North

I missed the rest of autumn while I was away. Although the
weather is unseasonably warm the leaves have gone from
the trees

Well all is quiet now, almost painfully quiet. No noise of grandchildren running around, in other words I'm back home in Latvia. It does feel kind of weird as we are now in the apartment and not the caravan. We have never lived in this apartment since we bought it about 9 years ago. Other people have made good use of it in the meantime though. The good news is that it is warmer than the other apartment. We have our own heating but also the apartment also seems to retain the heat better. It is a brick built apartment rather than the concrete shell like the other one. Anyway that will be a story for another time.

We finally have water in our pond

Yes it rained! Josefs has certainly grown while I've been
away and is even more active than before.

It is nearly two weeks ago now that I attended a two day seminar on leadership in urban and regional development  in Manchester. Manchester has never been a favourite place of mine but the seminar was good and the accommodation booked through HomeAway, a bit like AirBnb, was fine too. The networking meal was excellent at a Greek restaurant close to the Manchester Metropolitan University and hopefully I will have a few contacts from that. I also met a professor from Estonia. I had worked with him briefly before and was rather surprised to see him there. I had to book a taxi to get from the restaurant to the accommodation and had a ride with a lovely taxi driver from Kashmir. He was quite chatty and I found out that he has got a bit of land out there and his family have three buffaloes and grow vegetables - lol the things you find out about strangers.

Ian finally got the car back too. Spot the difference. It is now
two tone red and brown again though.

Some glorious days while I was away

It was a bit embarrassing at the seminar as my walk up to the university in the morning in the polluted atmosphere aggravated a cough I had got from my grandson the previous week. Oh yes! Yet another virus from life's little petri dishes. At one stage I had to leave the room to cough. Unfortunately it wasn't easy to actually get out from the corridor to get to the kitchen to get a glass of water because it needed an electronic key. Fortunately someone heard me and went to get me some so I could return to the presentations.

And some fairly cold ones

There were visitors while I was away too. Not all of them
welcome. The pigs are back!

After the meeting I took a train. It was chaos at the station, the screens didn't seem to work properly and trains were late. I don't seem to have much luck on the trains in the UK as the train to the seminar ended up being a bit of a saga. It was a cheap ticket that went the long way around and included a trek across Warrington to get from one station to another to get my connection. I ended up with a later connection too as it took me a little while to find the station and the previous train was running late. Fortunately for me on this second journey the connecting train was also running a bit late and so I got to the little remote railway station of Grindleford without a problem to be met by my son-in-law and the older two grandchildren; there was no trek across a town either.

Some visitors were more welcome though and left tasty
carrots for the alpacas on the trees

Even Freddie and George seem to have grown up while
I was away

My daughter, our eldest child of three, now has three bundles of energy herself. I was launched into looking after two of them and one of her friend's little ones the next morning at playgroup, while she and a friend attended a funeral. I did pretty well at just about keeping an eye on all three and even sat on the floor for song time. Mind you, after being bounced on by three energetic little ones, getting up was more of a challenge. I think it would have been no matter how old I was though.

Foggy mornings of late autumn

Me and my grandchildren at Sudbury Hall (photo by Edith
Chenault)

My Texan friend, Edith, living in Estonia flew over to the UK to join me on the Friday. She had never been to the UK before and this area my daughter lives in is very pretty with a lot of history. I thought she would enjoy visiting a more rural area than visit somewhere like London and I was right. We had to laugh when we found out that the stately home of Sudbury that we visited was perhaps only a few miles away from where some of her family may have emigrated from a few generations back.

The little tour guide

My friend and I babysat while my daughter and son-in-law got away for a night. My granddaughter had a few tears for Mummy and Daddy in the evening but her younger brother came up and gave her a big hug whilst she was sat on my knee. It's nice to know they are growing up to be kind, of course they have their moments but they are not bad hearted kids at all.

Jakobs may have grown but he is still cute and fluffy

Monsal Head after the frost

It was always going to be a challenge to get around as my daughter had just sold her 7 seater and so my friend and I decided on a bus trip. The two older children were very excited about this and I think travelling on the bus was the highlight of the day. We got a family Hopper ticket that meant we had all day travel for £15, so it didn't work out too bad - at least for the UK anyway. We saw Monsal Head, which has some quite striking views. It was a bit cold though as there was a frost and the side with the views and the walk was in the shade in the morning. With an hour to wait for the next bus we had a bit of a challenge to keep the kids entertained. We went for a short walk and turned back at the squiggly tree - well that's what I told my grandson to keep him going for a few more minutes. We had some snacks, another little walk and then waited for Father Christmas to turn up again. Well the driver did look a lot like Santa with his white bushy beard and cheerful demeanour.

They were enjoying themselves, honest!

So let's try and get a good picture

And again! At least they are smiling

The ducks at Castleton

We then went to Castleton. Here we had lunch at Tilly's. Highly recommended. I had a Welsh rarebit that was reasonably priced and very filling. However we couldn't stay all day in a cafe and so we set out to explore the village. We found the entrance to the castle but decided that would be too expensive and not enough to entertain two little ones, the cave we decided would probably be too scary, especially as it was Halloween. Instead we found lots of little back alleys and saw some ducks in the river. We also saw some ponies in a field and my granddaughter enjoyed seeing those but my grandson was close to a meltdown because he wanted to see a T-rex. I did explain that a T-rex wouldn't be good thing to have around as he might want some ponies for his tea, so the owner wouldn't be very happy. He wasn't entirely convinced but we managed to distract him with a view of a classic car in his favourite colour of dark blue.

Well they wanted a picture in the middle
of this circular seat

We also spent time at the Castleton visitor centre. The kids really enjoyed the short videos and the interactive display, where you move your arms to open and close pictures of the Peak District. The only problem was that the display was not designed for three year olds and so I had to play at being an extension for my grandson to change the pictures. We had one more stop at Tideswell where we had hot chocolate and cakes before heading back for a roast dinner with Yorkshire puds - how very English!

Almost a smile!

Tellus looking almost angelic here, apart from the spit marks
on his neck. Today he was in a bad mood and was fighting
with the others. Ian split him up from Brencis and so he went
for Peedo, then the others. Normally he is very placid and
easy going, but he has his moments.

The rest of the time we went for walks, took the kids to the park and read stories. My friend also had her first taste of proper English fish and chips. All too soon it was time for our daughter to take us to the airport. We went with the youngest one, who spent many a time in my arms for a cuddle over the previous week. Apparently he was asking for Mommar after I had left. The flight across was fine and I have to say that the Ryanair lasagne was not bad for airport food. It was filling enough anyway. My friend managed to find her car at the airport without too much hassle and I guided her to our apartment. She stayed overnight and then left with a jar of home-made chutney, jar of tomato sauce made from our own tomatoes, a large marrow and hopefully many happy memories from her first trip to the UK.

This is Veronica but with the arrival of her daughter and
granddaughter it is hard to tell them apart in the photos

Let us out! Kept in on rainy day

So I'm back to a normalish winter routine now. I went out to the land over the weekend and Ian and I spent most of the Saturday talking and catching up. I then spent most of Sunday digging up a bed of Jerusalem artichokes. It was a bit weird though as the sun still felt warm and not quite right for a November. Monday I stayed in the apartment and prepared petals to make some scarves tomorrow. We also had a man come round to give us some advice on the chimney. At the moment it goes into a ventilation shaft, which is not technically legal. It is also starting to disintegrate at the top and so will not be okay in the future. We agreed to get a chimney to go out of the house at the back of the house and sorted that out with the house manager through a friend who came to translate. More money! A bit of an expensive time, but all necessary.

The new girls are slowly settling in and enjoying being out
on the grass