Donna Nook Seals The Deal

The weekend after we went to the Lake District it was very very wet. So wet that a lot of the Lake District was flooded and washed away. Most of the teachers from our school were down south for a conference, so we had the Hill kids (Morgan and Connor) stay with us for the weekend while their parents (Graham and Sheryl) went to the conference.

Amongst lots of playing on the Wii and the Playstation the kids had a visit (with Scott) to Donna Nook to see the seals, which all come in to have their pups at this time of year. The weird thing is that Donna Nook is the local RAF bombing range, so they have to be very careful to make sure they don’t drop any bombs where they might endanger the seals. If you look carefully at a couple of the pictures you’ll see the bombing targets in the background, surrounded by hundreds of seals. Unfortunately the planes didn’t do any bombing practice while we were there.

It was quite wet, windy and more than a little smelly, as the seals give birth in the sanctuary and don’t clean up the mess. Very slack on their part, especially as they attract lots of terns (which we would call seagulls) who all want to get their bit of afterbirth. Who’d want to be a tern?

The authorities fence off the area lest visitors get attacked by rampant seals which are anywhere from half a mile to a couple of feet away.

We’re told that the seal numbers rise dramatically around Christmas, so there can be thousands of them out there with their new pups. Boxing Day is when heaps of Yorkshire people come over to see them and almost outnumber the seals. Guess where we won’t be going on Boxing Day.

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Birthday Season

November is birthday season in the Lovett family – Carolyn, Jack and Anna all having birthdays within 10 days.

With Carolyn and Anna both having birthdays ending with “0” we decided to make a big deal of it and have a weekend away in the Lake District to celebrate. So, having opened presents and had some flowers delivered from Scott’s sisters, we packed ourselves into the trusty Picasso (it’s important to note we don’t have the racing special) after school on Friday and headed off into the wild black yonder - it gets dark around 4pm at this time of year.

We headed up to Grimsby, hung a left towards Leeds, where we stopped at a motorway diner for birthday dinner - toasted sandwiches and coffee for us, KFC for the kids and it cost more than it would have if we had gone to our local pub for dinner! An hour or so further on and we were at the Sundial Guesthouse in Kendal, a lovely guesthouse right on the main drag about 10 minutes walk from the town centre.

After a leisurely cooked English breakfast, we headed for Windermere, but took a wrong turn and ended up taking the scenic route through Crosthwaite. And it was actually a very scenic route! At Windermere we spent some time looking through the World of Beatrix Potter, which was absolutely amazing with recreations of all the Peter Rabbit stories. We were all quite taken with it. We followed this up with a cream tea in their cafe, served by the first Australian we have encountered over here, apart from people we already knew in Australia.

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We then donned our wet weather gear and started walking up Orrest Head, which gives spectacular views over lake Windermere. The rain stopped just before we reached the top, so we had a decent look at the view. At least we did for about 2 minutes, when the cloud started closing in below us.

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So back on with the wet weather gear and we headed back to Windermere where we had a very yummy afternoon tea at Lazy Daisy’s Lakeland Kitchen and looked through some shops before heading back to Kendal. After a lot of searching around for somewhere reasonable and family-friendly we stopped for dinner at The Miles Thompson, which was very family-friendly, has good food and, most importantly, delicious desserts.

Sunday morning we stopped for a coffee and quick look around the beautiful village of Ambleside, headed up to Kirkstone Pass (it was fog-bound for us, but can look like this) then spent a couple of hours driving through the Yorkshire Dales back home.

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The Dales were beautiful – we stopped off at an art gallery which was having an open day kind of thing, serving everyone with fruit mince pies and mulled wine both warmed). Carolyn got a nice print as a birthday present there. We also stopped at Aysgarth in Wensleydale (that’s where they make Wallace’s favourite cheese) to look at the falls and to have afternoon tea at the Mill Race Teashop. Lovely. The teashop is right next to the old Yore Mill which, while no longer a working mill, still has water pouring through it.

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All in all it was a really good time away in a very scenic part of England – we’ll go back once it recovers from the floods that come the weekend after we were there.

Some Catching Up

It’s been a while since our last post. Scott’s laptop (which has all the blogging stuff on it) had to go away for a quick repair which should have taken a few days, but ended up being 7 weeks. It’s back now, so off we go.

We’ll cover some of these in separate posts, but here are some of the things that have been happening since we last posted:

• The kids started back at school for the new school year, with Jack moving to the Upper Learning Centre (like moving up to high school). They’re both doing really well academically and building good friendships.
• Carolyn started at school too, as the art teacher. She teaches 2 classes each week and teaches a couple of the students individually in art and other subjects.
• Scott started volunteering with The King’s Outreach (a non-profit organisation attached to our church) setting up IT systems for them.
• We surrendered our Australian driving licences and now have pink GB licences. We had to go to Lincoln to do this, so used it as a chance to spend the day there while the kids were at school. We had a very enjoyable time looking around the old part of the city, visiting the cathedral and lunching in a Tudor tea-room.
• We’ve been getting involved in the Rural Impact ministry at church.
• We’ve had a couple of trips to Mabelthorpe.
• We’ve had a visit from the Brands, who introduced us to Marks and Spencer Mulled wine. It goes well with fruit mince pies. Really well.
• We’ve been to see the seal colony at nearby Donna Nook. They come in to have their pups on the RAF bombing range each year.
• Birthday season has come and gone, with all but Scott having birthdays in a 10 day period. We had a weekend in the Lake District to celebrate. Fortunately we were there the weekend before it all flooded and washed away.
• Scott got a job, which means we can stay in England. He’s working in Grimsby doing IT support for Cardsave, a company that provides credit card facilities for businesses and non-profit organisations.
• We bought a second car (a Ford Ka) for Scott’s 23 miles-each-way commute.
• We think that the sun must be unwell. It’s started sleeping in till about 8 and then it goes to bed around 4 every day. We’re hoping it gets better in time for summer.

More soon.