Staying at home is a new experience for us in more ways than one. Although we’ve lived at The Cottage for over ten years now, we’ve never actually spent any time here during the holidays. We’ve always considered it a sort of Basecamp from where we can launch expeditions from. Every Easter holiday we’ve ever Read more

With the time and inclination to explore locally, we are still being surprised by the different paths and views we can find from the front door. Even during our period of exercise today, we saw completely new views, followed new paths and didn’t come across a single other person. Given the temperatures and exertion of Read more

More colours are appearing each day at The Cottage and the first ‘Bell’ of this year’s Bluebells has dropped into place. The sycamore is unfurling it’s leaves And there’s colour in among the greens of the grass. We set ourselves a time trail challenge for our daily exercise. Up the old road to Ogwen and Read more

The daily routine of a slow walk around the garden continues to bring new discoveries and fresh colours. More map examination revealed a link-up of some small back roads, that could lead us down to the coast, without passing any residential areas. We went exploring by bike. This time the tide was high and the Read more

There’s been a flurry of activity overnight in the garden. I’d usually say that I’m pretty good at paying attention to this sort of this, but these days, we’ve got enough time to really get our eye in. Nothing is going unnoticed. My adopted Primrose, ‘Geffory’ has finally burst into flower after ten days of Read more

Today I spent the morning having a go at using an App on my phone to digitally scan some photos that I have on slide film. In the back of a wardrobe, there is a whole shoebox full of boxes of slides from my arctic expedition to Svalbard back in 1996 with the British Schools Read more