Weekend Photos

A round-up of a lovely weekend

Not strictly the weekend, but we won a bottle of wine in Wetheral village pub quiz

Boot was introduced to some cows

Churros :) From the continental market in Carlisle

The market

Boot and Pluto chillin'

Jabba and Boot all cuddled up

Take-away curry for dinner

Working at Grasmere Sports show

Fun times with money!!

Tommy Sedgewick-A famous fell runner

View from our office of the playing field

The Senior Guides race

Grasmere sports show has now been running for 159 years, it was were the shepherds and farmers and local boys competed in traditional sports such as Cumberland wrestling. The show was centred around the senior guides race, which is a fell race of 2.5km with a steep uphill climb of 270m. It's tough!

Even if you don't want to take part in any fell running, it's a great show and there is lots to look at and join in with (even a tug of war!).

So that was my weekend, i hope you have all had a good one too, and i am off to Italy with my sister tomorrow, so will be back in a week, all lovely and brown having enjoyed lots of pizza, pasta and gelato. :)

Marriage, sex and dancing :)

I Can't Remember

People tend to say that remembering hurts, but forgetting is just as painful

I can't remember exactly what shade of blue your eyes are

I can't remember what it felt like when you held me

I can't remember the tone of your voice when you laughed

I can't remember how your mouth tasted when you kissed me

I can't remember the sparkle in your eyes when you looked at me

I can't remember the curves of your body as my hands traced them

I can't remember why we agreed we were better off alone

 - Carice ZumHofe

The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is and the future less resolved than it will be.

 - Marcel Pagnol 

There may not be marriage, there may not be sex, but by God. There'll be dancing

Bourbon Banoffee Pie

This weekend my grandparents came to stay, so i made a Banoffee Pie!!!

I Love Banoffee Pie!!

Normally i make the base with ginger biscuits, but we didn't have any, so i used bourbon biscuits.

Banoffee Pie

300g Bourbon biscuits

75g Butter

50 Dark chocolate broken up

1 Tin nestle caramel

2 bananas

325ml Double Cream

1 x 25cm deep fluted tart tin with a loose bottom

• First crush up the bourbon biscuits (i used a magimix) and add the butter and broken up bits of chocolate. Add the butter and mix it all so that the biscuit mix starts to stick together.
• Squish the biscuit mixture into the tin and place in the fridge for 2 hours

• Add the tin of caramel and smooth it out over the base

• Slice the banana on top, if you have too much for the base, either double it up or eat it!

• Whip the cream in a bowl until it forms peaks and smooth it on top.
• Grate some chocolate on top, grab a spoon and enjoy! :)

Stuffed Globe Courgettes

The other day i made my sister and i stuffed globe courgettes for lunch. They were so yummy, so decided i would share them :)

Globe courgettes are just the same as normal courgettes, but round (and often cheaper in supermarkets). My dad has been growing them this year and we have loads at the moment.

For 2 stuffed courgettes
First chop the top of the courgette off (where the green stalk bit is) and scoop out the inside and put them in a bowl.

Chop and fry an onion

Take 2 tablespoons of couscous and cover with boiling water for about 3 minutes. When the cous cous is cooked add paprika, cayenne pepper and a bit of chilli powder to taste. Add the fried onion and some mixed herbs and season with salt and pepper. Add the inside of your courgette (i only used the inside of one courgette). I also had a bit of left over chorizo in the fridge so i chopped that up and added it to the mixture. Grate some cheese and add half of it to the mixture.

Stuff your courgette with the mixture and add half the cheese to each courgette.

Pop the 'lid' back on top

and place in the oven at 200'C for 30-40 minutes, until the courgette is soft to touch (and is a bit squidgy).

Enjoy with a lovely green salad for a scrummy, healthy lunch.

North-western Scotland days 4-6

Day 4 was beach day. There is a fantastic beach called Guinard bay, about 1 hours drive from Ullapool. The sun was shining when we got there, so we got the fire going for the BBQ, and walked up the headland to find some cliffs to jump off. This year we discovered some new cliffs which were great, lots of different heights  into clean deep water. The sea was warmer than it had been in previous years which meant that we could stay in the sea for longer which was so much fun. After a BBQ lunch we played rounder and had beach olympics, consisting of 50m sprint, relay, shotput, long jump and wheel barrow race. It was the beast day at that beach we have had, and there have been a lot. The weather definitly helped and the company was fantastic.

The weather on our 5th day promised to be as good as it had been all week so went went for another walk. A small party consisting of myself, my sister and my dad went off to tackle 3 of the Fannichs which are munros and the rest of our party went up Seana Bhraigh, which is another munro that can be walked to from the house. Our walk was great, well the 1st munro was hard work, as we walked stright up the face of it due to the lack of a path, but the 2nd and 3rd munro were on a lovely undulating ridge with great views either sides and a lovely walk down the valley to end it. The scenery, again was amazing, so wild and quiet and everyone we met (bar a wierd party of 3) were lovely.

We got back about half an hour before the others and had a supper of beef stew and sticky toffee pudding, topping off a great day all round.

The last day; We had a lie in, which was very nice and after a lazy breakfast we headed off to Loch Achall and went trout fishing. However the sun was too bright and warm so after catching only 5 trout in a morning, we went to Ullapool for fish and chips and off for a swim by a near-by lighthouse. We then sadly said goodbye to the James' and headed back for a finishing up dinner and last game of pool and table tennis.

then on day 7, we packed up and left the valley for the last time this year :( But we will be back next year for another week of food, walking, beaching, fishing and fun and laughs.

North-western Scotland days 1-3

So, last week we had our family holiday up in Scotland, near Ullapool. To get a scale of how far north it is, it's about 6-7 hours driving north of Carlisle!

So we loaded the landrover up and headed north at about 10 on saturday. We got there at about 5 and met the James family who were staying with us that week who are family friends and Joanna and Freddie Graham-Campbell and Mark Forster. Freddie and Mark are friends of Tobys from school and Joanna is Freddie's mum and a friend of my mum and dads.

The first day was a simple day fishing on Loch Damph and the Clar lochs and teaching the James' how to fish. Everyone caught at least one trout (except me :( ) and we went home to roast chicken.

On the 2nd day we went for a walk up a mountain called Cul Mor, which is about 800m and was a great 4-5 hour walk and fairly easy. We parked opposite Knockan crag (a geological site) and walked up a good path, the path kinda ran out but it was easy to pick a way up to the summit by following the shoulder up, whilst the 'kids' went for the "north face" option and went straight up the steepest face which involved a nice bit of scrambling. Once up on the top we had great views of the surrounding landscape. This area of Scotland is known of Assynt, and the mountains just rise up out of the land like great monsters and it is so impressive. I think a lot of people would be surprised by the landscape up there and how quiet ad beautiful it is. It is awe inspiring. We didn't stay too long at the top as the wind had dropped and the midges had come out! If you have not encountered midges then you are lucky! They are horrible little creatures. Similar to mosquitoes, but much smaller and worse as they swarm around you and bite everything in site. So we made our way onto the next top and down the mountain. On the way down it started raining, but it wasn't long to the car and then it stopped. On the way back down the valley it started raining again, which, surprisingly we were pleased about! It meant that the rivers would rise, stir the fish up and improve our chance of catching them.

Thanks to the rain the previous day, we went fishing up on the Rappach today which is one of the most remote salmon rivers in Scotland. It is either 1.5 hours walk across bogland in wellies to the top of it or and hour in the landrover on a rough track and a 20 minute walk to the bottom of it. We took the walking option. The day started off couldy with little wind (bad for midges) but ended up warm and sunny. It was a lovely days fishing in amazing scenery, we saw fish and had some bites, but non were pulled out of the river unfortunately. We got back to the house at about 7 and so didn't end up eating till about 10 as we were having roast beef, but it was worth it :)