As we finish our Christmas celebrations and start to focus on New Year celebrations I am reminded of my holiday plans for the coming year.

We hope to visit Lincoln at Easter so that we can partake in the Easter morning communion service and we are planning to continue our travels in Italy from where we left off last year.

With Italian travels and the upcoming New Years Eve celebrations in mind, I share Prosecco on the balcony

For the last few years I have made a personalised calendar as a Christmas present for Mr C as one of his Christmas presents. I choose from the photographs that I have taken from the previous year, one from each month. The process of choosing causes me to reflect on the things that we have done throughout the year.

The first memorable event of 2016 was a lovely family get together in the Haughmond restaurant. One of my nephews organised the get together to make up for not being able to meet up with my mum over the Christmas period; she was ill over Christmas which meant she was unable to join the family gathering.

Mr C and I had many enjoyable days out including; Glansevern Gardens, the Brockhampton Estate, Keddleston and Chester Zoo where we were privileged to see a day-old, new born Zebra

We enjoyed several holidays and breaks, all in the UK this year. The first was a Valentine’s break in Colwall near Malvern. We travelled through the land where mistletoe grows to a delightful hotel, spending time at Gloucester Docks, Gloucester Cathedral and Tewkesbury Abbey.

This was followed by a return to Lincoln to view the Poppies: Wave displayed at the castle. This allowed Mr C to visit the National Civil War museum on the way home. The museum, annoyingly for Mr C, was not quite open the last time we tried to visit after a stay in Lincoln.

A stay in Wells at Stobbery House was the highlight of the year. A beautiful setting and a place we will return to at Easter in 2017 which will allow us to take part in the Easter service at Wells Cathedral. Whilst we were in Wells we visited the Cathedral and the bishop’s palace. Stobbery was only able to accommodate us for three of our four nights’ break so we moved on to Salisbury taking in Stonehenge and staying at the White Hart for our final night’s stay. We enjoyed our visit to Stonehenge because the site access has been transformed and the stones are able to be enjoyed in the context of the original landscape. We took a leisurely stroll to the stones and back again. Unfortunately our choice of venue for our evening meal during our stay in Salisbury did not meet expectations. The meal was quite unpleasant and not up to the standard of our previous visit to the same venue.

For our main holiday we visited Northumberland choosing Newcastle and Alnwick as places to stay. Our stay in the Jesmond Dene Hotel just outside Newcastle was a perfect choice. It was a relaxing place to stay with music playing as we entered the room and a rooftop patio where we could sit out and relax in the exceptionally warm autumn sunshine. One evening during our stay we dined in the Peace & Loaf restaurant which turned out to be a special dining experience. After our stay in the Jesmond Dene we moved from the city to a small B&B in Alnwick; although it was lovely we missed staying in our usual venue, the Coach House. We did however meet our friends, the former owners of the Coach House and enjoyed a wonderful evening in the Alnwick Tree House with them. Somehow we managed to get the dates of our holiday muddled up and we ended up returning home a day earlier than we had booked for…

The places we visited during our stay included Vindolanda & The Roman Army Museum, Alnwick Garden, Brinkburn Priory,  Wallington, the coastal drive leading to the Grace Darling museum and Manderston where we met a delightful lady guide who we came to realise had a long standing connection with the family and was highly regarded by them. Also during our stay we tried to find some stones displaying megalithic rock art that are prevalent in the area. Unfortunately we failed in the quest, although I did get to meet a cow half way up a hillside. Mr C romped up the hill and disappeared out of sight and the sweet cow came down to say hello, licking me profusely in the process. On our way home we stopped briefly in Ripon so that Mr C could visit the Green Howards military museum.

Our final vacation of the year was our annual trip with my mum and the venue was Winchester.  The Cathedral wasn’t quite as tranquil as the last time we visited due to ongoing repair work and scaffolding leading to parts of the Cathedral being closed or obscured. We were however able to see the Winchester Bible in its temporary display area. During our stay we visited the Mary Rose museum, Hinton Ampner,the Royal Green Jackets museum & diorama (which had closed the day before our last visit), The Great Hall and its garden, The hospital of St Cross and The Vyne.  We also saw HMS Victory which is in the process of being restored including a more historically accurate paint scheme.

On a less happy note I had to deal with a small bump to the back of my car and some awful insect bites which thankfully subsided over time. These were obtained whilst celebrating my brothers wedding which was a much a happier occasion.

We completed several household projects; tiling the hall, a new pavia drive and patio and the still ongoing garden project. The latter, and favourable weather, led to much dining on the patio in the summer months. The birds also saw fit to give us the gift of a sunflower which looked spectacular.

We also went on our annual London trip which might be the last one in this format. We had a lovely afternoon visiting the museum of The Order of St Cross.

The year concluded with many family gatherings, several of which we hosted, leaving us a little tired and in need of a few days rest.

I wonder what 2017 will bring…

• Click on the photo for links to the original size photographs.

It is that time of year again… I know our time zones are all different so midnight will bring in the New Year at different times for each of us.  But tonight, ‘New Years Eve’, as midnight  turns in the UK is the perfect occasion for me to  think of friends, old and new, and also remember absent friends.

Happy New Year, I raise my glass to you. I wish you, your family and friends a happy, healthy and peaceful 2017.

As 2015 comes to a close and we herald 2016, I am once again wondering where all the time has gone. It seems like only 5 minutes since I was reflecting on 2014.

We were lucky to be able to go on more than one holiday this year, the highlight being our stay in Piran, Slovenia; also taking in Ljublijana, Postojna Caves, Predjama Castle and the near by Koper. We also traveled to Belgium by Eurostar and stayed in Leuven. This allowed Mr C to visit Waterloo and stand on the battlefield on the 200th anniversary of the ‘Battle of Waterloo’. Sadly I think this will be our last Eurostar holiday for the foreseeable future due to economic migrants camping out in Calais disrupting travel as they seek to gain illegal entry into the UK.

For our traditional autumnal short break we visited one of my favourite cities, Newcastle, with my mum. It was lovely that my brother and his fiancee were able to join us for a couple of nights. We were also able to meet up with JD spending  lunch with him. He kindly brought me one of his paintings which is now on the wall near my computer. He also brought a painting for my mum. On our way back from Newcastle we visited Hexham Abbey as recommended by JD. It is a place we will return to.

In addition to our main excursions we had a few short breaks; staying in Lincoln, Nottingham and Hay-on-Wye.

Places we popped into throughout the year include; Dorothy Clive Garden, Arley Arboretum, The Long Mynd, Blenheim Palace, Packwood House, Ellesmere (and the saga of left behind glasses), Warwick, Attingham Park, Ludlow, Wollerton Old Hall, Moreton Corbet Castle and London. Serendipity led us to Sugnall Walled Garden which is a hidden gem we had not heard of before and it does excellent lunches.

We also had the pleasure of attending a 39th birthday party which was a joint 18th and 21st birthday celebration of two siblings. It was intended that the party should be held outside but the weather had other ideas, a storm blew up meaning everyone had to retreat indoors.

2015 also saw the demise of the the lovely oak tree at the bottom of my garden which, after the fall of one of its branches, was severely hacked back (illegally) by the neighbour whose land it is on.

We were lucky  to see the Vulcan XH558 flying past Cosford not once but twice in its final year of flight. On the first occasion she gave us a fabulous display, showing her wings from above and below, dropping her wheels and the bomb doors before climbing vertically and soaring off with the the typical Vulcan Roar.  Another of the year’s highlights was being awarded the Imperial Service Medal for more than 25 years meritorious service to Crown and country.

The run up to Christmas and Christmas itself was hectic as usual but we found a slot in our diaries to go out for lunch and visit Wightwick Manor all decked out for Christmas. It was an enjoyable and relaxing afternoon.

As the New Year turns I am reminded of ‘My Happiness Box‘, a project I started on January 1st. Did I put a happiness thought in the box for each day? Not quite, it was all going so well until my visit to Piran, I was so busy enjoying the holiday I forgot to write down a thought each day and didn’t get started again when I returned home. The project was fun and I look forward to starting afresh in the New Year

I wonder what 2016 will bring?  Now where did I put those holiday brochures..?

It is that time of year again… I know our time zones are all different so midnight will bring in the New Year at different times for each of us.  But tonight, ‘New Years Eve’, as midnight  turns in the UK is the perfect occasion for me to  think of friends, old and new, and also remember absent friends.

Happy New Year, I raise my glass to you. I wish you, your family and friends a happy, healthy and peaceful 2016.

I know our time zones are all different so midnight will bring in the New Year at different times for each of us.  But tonight, ‘New Years Eve’, as midnight  turns in the UK is the perfect occasion for me to raise my glass to friends, old and new, and also remembering absent friends.

CHEERS!! I raise my glass to you.  Thank you for sharing life’s journey with me, I hope that any troubles from 2014 will fade into distant memory and I wish you, your family and friends a happy, healthy and peaceful 2015.

xxx

I know our time zones are all different so midnight will bring in the New Year at different times for each of us.  But tonight, ‘New Years Eve’, as midnight  turns in the UK is the perfect occasion for me to raise my glass to friends, old and new, and also remembering absent friends.

CHEERS!! I raise my glass to you.  Thank you for sharing life’s journey with me, I hope that any troubles from 2013 will fade into distant memory and I wish you, your family and friends a happy, healthy and peaceful 2014.

xxx

This week’s prompt was “Leaving one year behind and going into the next“.

The last few years have always presented difficulties for me even though I have always cast out the old year with it’s problems and tried to bring in more positive outcomes for the incoming New Year.

This year for some reason I felt quite different over the Christmas/New Year period and I still feel quite different despite some complications and irritations that re-surfaced over the Christmas period and into the New Year.

This photo was taken on a failed mission to deliver Christmas presents three years ago on Christmas Eve. It was the last Christmas I spent with my father before he passed away.

The memory of visiting that lake shrouded in mist always brings a smile to my face

More photos on the theme can be found here.