A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 20th April 2024

April's photo an hour day was on Saturday 20th. If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen that my Mum died on 11th April after both a long illness (a stage 4 cancer diagnosis in 2019) and a short illness (swelling from brain tumours). It was also mine and Andrew's 17th wedding anniversary on 21st April so we thought Saturday 20th would be a good day for a trip to the seaside to both remember my Mum and celebrate 17 years of putting up with each other. We chose Teignmouth in Devon - one of my Mum's favourite seaside towns. 

Here's what the day looked like...

13 lovely others joined in:

Christine from Christine Lucas joined in on Instagram

Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on Instagram

Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on Instagram

Josie joined in on Instagram

Alex joined in on Instagram Stories

Jane joined in on Instagram Stories

Danielle from Underland to Wonderland joined in on Instagram Stories

Lucy joined in on Instagram Stories

Rebecca joined in on Instagram Stories

Nicky joined in on Instagram Stories

Hannah joined in on Instagram Stories

Denise joined in on Instagram Stories

Jennifer joined in on Instagram Stories

And myself on Instagram and on this blog post :-) 

May's photo an hour date is Saturday 18th - see you there!

 

 

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 21st January 2023

The first photo an hour for 2023 took place on Saturday 21st January. The Small Person had requested a couple of birthday day trips and that Saturday was the first one. She had chosen to go to Teignmouth in Devon because she really wanted to play Jurassic Adventure Golf on the seafront :-D

Here's what the day looked like...

10 lovely others joined in:

Josie joined in on Instagram

Sarah joined in on Instagram

Lucy joined in on Instagram Stories

Jane joined in on Instagram Stories

Denise joined in on Instagram Stories

Emma joined in on Instagram Stories

Jennifer from Pastry and Purls joined in on Instagram

Hazel from World of Joy joined in on Instagram

Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on Instagram

Christine from Christine Lucas joined in on Instagram

And myself on Instagram and on this blog post :-) 

February's photo an hour date is Saturday 18th - see you there!

 

 

May and June at the Duckpond

A two month round-up this time, as I didn't get round to actually writing a post at the end of May!

• We went on holiday to Butlins in Bognor Regis; on a break which was booked back in 2019 and had been postponed twice. It wasn't quite the break we envisaged when we booked it as we steered clear of all the indoor activities (not wanting to risk catching Covid) but we certainly made the most of the outdoor fairground and childrens activities. 

• Whilst we were in Bognor Regis we also explored the south coast area, doing an afternoon drive to Brighton on one day and a drive to Portsmouth and Southsea on another. And we also surprised Lily with a mystery tour to Paultons Park - which she loved!

• TV - obviously we're 10 years behind everyone here but wow, 'Line of Duty' is rather good isn't it! We binge-watched it over about 2-3 weeks and probably ended up with far too many late nights as we wanted to keep watching the next episode. We watched 'Vigil' as well, which was also excellent - although watching it immediately after 'Line of Duty' meant than we suspected everyone in the show :-D

• Music - I've been listening to Arcade Fire's new album, 'WE' which is brilliant. I've only seen them live once (Glastonbury 2014), I'd love to see them on their tour later in the year but it's not worth the Covid-risk. I'll stick to listening to the tunes on repeat!

• After we'd finished in Bognor Regis we headed down to Cornwall for the weekend to see another show at the Minack Theatre, 'Calvino Nights' - which was fabulous. Lily asked to go to that theatre again so we've booked one of their October shows, 'Horrible Histories - Terrible Tudors'. 

• We've been visiting one of our local outdoor swimming pools a lot recently so that Lily can practise her swimming. We decided to cancel her indoor swimming lessons; she hadn't been since last September (when the Covid rates started rising) and she didn't want to risk it herself. So we've been doing lots of afternoons out in the sunshine, taking a picnic and enjoying the water. 

• I did my usual shifts at Glastonbury festival. helping to look after a farm and a lane in Pilton village. I took Lily into the festival on Thursday when the Kidzfield opened and she had a fantastic time, I think her highlight was playing on the adventure castle and watching 'Andy and the Odd Socks' from CBBC. We didn't go on site the rest of the weekend though, there was just too many people and it wasn't worth the risk. 

• The other half turned 44; we had an outdoor fish & chip supper at a local farm shop which was tasty. Not sure he's looking forward to next year though, being halfway through his forties!

• The other half picked a birthday day trip out to the West Somerset Railway to see the steam trains and eat chips by the seaside. 

• May's photo an hour was Saturday 21st (the day of our visit to the railway) and June's date was Saturday 18th. The next date is Saturday 23rd July. 

• Andrew took his vintage lorry out to its first show since August 2019 - the Bath and West show. It rained quite a bit but he still enjoyed it. 

• We watched some of the Jubilee celebrations on the television. It was brilliant to see the carnival cart from Bridgwater take part in the pageant parade (anyone involved in carnival has been following its build progress over the last year on social media!). If you want to see it all lit up, come and see it (and lots of others) during the Somerset carnival season in November. 

• I've been eagerly making my spreadsheet of all the wonderful shows on at this year's Edinburgh Fringe. There seems to be lots worth seeing although I haven't actually booked anything yet - not sure if any of them are worth the risk. We'd be wearing our FFP3 masks anyway but still, I haven't decided yet what to do. 

What have you all been up to? 

 

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 21st May 2022

May's photo an hour date was Saturday 21st. It was the other half's birthday a few days previously so we went out for a birthday day trip with his choice of destination being the steam trains at West Somerset Railway!

Here's what the day looked like...

9 lovely others joined in:

Andrea joined in on Instagram 

Jennifer joined in on Instagram

Denise joined in on Instagram Stories

Sarah from Sarah Rooftops joined in on Instagram

Bev from Confuzzledom joined in on Instagram

Christine from Christine Lucas joined in on Instagram

Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on Instagram

Jennifer from Pastry and Purls joined in on Instagram

Jane from Is That You Darling joined in on Instagram Stories

And myself on Instagram and on this blog post :-) 

June's photo an hour date is Saturday 18th - see you there! 

 

 

A Photo Every Hour - 2018

So the last photo an hour post I wrote on here was for February 2018. As I mentioned the other day, for the sake of completeness, I'm going to cram the whole year into one post. 

Here's a whizz through March to December 2018 where in the space of a few seconds of scrolling, you can watch Lily go from just-turned-2 years old to almost-3. Also watch in amazement at all the things we used to be able to do pre-COVID!

24th March 2018 - We had a day trip to the West Somerset Railway for their Spring Steam Gala and managed to find the tallest tree in England!

28th April 2018 - I had a child-free day trip to London to see Kneehigh Theatre's fantastic stage production of 'Brief Encounter' at the Empire Cinema Haymarket. I did a bit of sightseeing too, collecting some geocaches at Paddington Station, Kings Cross Station and the British Library. 

19th May 2018 - Happened to be both the Royal Wedding of Harry & Meghan and also Andrew's 40th birthday. We went along to a local church to watch the ceremony (they were providing free sandwiches and cream teas), Lily did some flag waving (or should it be "fleg" nowdays...?) and in the evening, had a birthday meal at Toby Carvery. 

16th June 2018 - I volunteered at a local NCT sale, helping with the running of the stalls. We were also selling out stuff too and managed to shift quite a bit (as well as bringing home a few purchases of course). 

28th July 2018 - Was the first day of our annual roadtrip around the UK to Edinburgh and back. Our first stop was Leicester for a couple of nights so we drove along the Fosse Way doing some geocaching on the way. We finished our journey with a holiday treat of a meal from Five Guys. 

18th August 2018 - There was another Gromit Unleashed trail that year and we'd spent a large amount of time finding them all. We took a trip out with my dad to tick off a few more Gromits and ended up at a playground in the nice weather. 

22nd September 2018 - Carnival season had rolled around again and it was Frome Carnival that evening. I spent the day doing some tidying and cleaning then we headed out to watch the procession, picking up a McDonald's for dinner on the way. 

27th October 2018 - We started the day at Lily's nature class then did some cleaning before heading out to Warminster carnival. Dinner that evening was a meal from Morrisons Cafe, sheltering from the rain!

17th November 2018 - By this time, we're into proper "big" carnival season and it was my first time back dancing on a carnival float after having had a few years off. We started the day with a big breakfast before getting my costume and clothes ready then heading out to Glastonbury Carnival. It was the last procession of the season so we always try and do a big cast photo and after the show, the float is packed up and driven back to its shed to be taken apart ready for next year. 

15th December 2018 - Me and Lily went out to watch a Christmas music concert then we spent the afternoon making sandwiches and mince pies ready for helping run a Christmas quiz night in the evening. 

Excellent, that's 2018 done. Now to do 2019, 2020 and the first 3 months of 2021 :-) 

Railways and Trains in the West Midlands

One completely long-overdue blog post...

This has actually sat half-written in my drafts folder since the end of April last year, when we had a holiday after Easter back in 2015 that seemed to revolve around trains. It wasn't particularly planned like that but we knew we wanted to do the Severn Valley Railway and everything else just seemed to crop up along the way.

If you're a railway enthusiast (or know one) here's a rundown of what we did - anoraks and notepads not included...


Visited Oswestry and stumbled across the Cambrian Railways Museum
We stayed in a Travelodge on the A5 near Oswestry and headed into the town for breakfast. It's on the Welsh border and is quite a nice little market town with lots of old architecture and a railway line that's trying to be restored as a heritage line. Next to the old station building (which contained a WW1 exhibition) is a museum, a pretty ordinary-looking building from the outside but inside, crammed full of all sorts of railway memorabilia, signs, maps, posters and signals. Admission to the museum is free, although donations are appreciated. In the town centre as well, we spotted an excellent mural of an engine.

Travelled on the Severn Valley Railway
All the years we've been holidaying in Anglesey, we've always driven under the Severn Valley Railway line at Bridgnorth saying "we'll do that one day". It's a sixteen mile heritage line which runs between Kidderminster and Bridgnorth, stopping along the way at Bewdley, Arley, Highley and Hampton Loade. We bought an all day 'Freedom of the Line' ticket (which is cheaper if you buy online before your visit) and planned our journeys so we could see as much as possible. All the stations are beautifully restored and the route itself is very pretty with lots of photo opportunities!

Stopped off at The Engine House (about halfway along the Severn Valley Railway line)
The Engine House is the Severn Valley Railway's visitor and education centre, home to its reserve engines, artefacts and archive. It's free entry with the 'Freedom of the Line' ticket but if you've just got a standard ticket, there's a small charge. The only downside to it was that there was so much stuff, it was a bit difficult to take photos! I did rather like this news article though...

Had a cuppa in Kidderminster Railway Museum
One end of the Severn Valley Railway is in Kidderminster and tucked away on the platform is this little gem of a museum complete with tea and tuck shop. It's filled to the brim with historical objects, railway memorabilia and there's quite a bit of it you can play with as well! Definitely worth a visit if you're doing the line.

So there we are, only 15 months late with my post!