Cresswell Bay

The holiday park we stayed at was on Cresswell Bay, a beautiful beach that we'd discovered - by accident - the last time we came to the north east.   The park was lovely - so quiet - and I'm so glad we didn't read the trip advisor reviews in advance as they were shockingly bad, although we can't think why as we loved it here and have said that we would like to revisit.

The beach goes on for miles and we kept returning to it over the course of the week and, of course, it provided the scene of our first leg stretch as soon as we arrived.

It's a well used beach - although you wouldn't think so from these photos! - with plenty of car parks along it, nestled in the sand dunes.  And we could see plenty of other dog walkers taking advantage of the miles of sand.

We had to keep an eye on Finn as he kept disappearing up into the sand dunes for some reason!

All this space - and barely a soul on it.  Just how we like our beaches!

Yes, definitely somewhere we will return to in the future.

Angels of the North

This is one of the first photos taken on our holiday and pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the holiday!

We love the Angel!  We've passed her so many times now but thought we'd like to go and explore her and let the dogs (and us) have a leg stretch.

It was very cold and she's quite moody looking in the clouds!

I was surprised at the amount of people there - lots of dog walkers, lots of kids coming home from school.

I love this next photo so much, you can have it again.   You're welcome!

Holiday Randoms - Northumberland

I love holidays!  I love exploring new areas, or even re-exploring areas I've been to and love.  Northumberland is a very special place and we were lucky to go back in October last year, albeit for only a week, nowhere near long enough.  But we had a very action packed week and there are plenty of posts to follow obviously!

This is the "holiday randoms" post, showing us lounging about the caravan and eating mostly, although we did have a very exciting trip through the Tyne tunnel - I'm so easily pleased!

We cooked all week for ourselves but one night we had the simplest tea - pate on toast, with pate that we bought at Craster.  The last time we were up here, we ate outside - again pate on toast - but it was way too cold this time around! 

We did work our way through quite a lot of prosecco too!

I should say that we also ended up driving through the centre of Newcastle on the way up - over the Tyne bridge, but, sadly, no photos of that - I was too traumatised at having to drive through a city centre and not knowing which lane I should be in.  And Amanda was probably singing "Fog on the Tyne" and being totally unhelpful in the photographic department!

Other People's Gardens - January 2018

It was so cold in January - still is now in February - that we spent a lot of time working in the glasshouses at college, potting things up, including the sweetpea and calendulas that I'd sown as seeds before Christmas.

The joys of base heating!

We've also done a few more assessments including soil testing - stupidly, I forgot to take any of my soil in so I had to pretend that I live in Weston Longville near Becky!

We've also been working in the tropical glasshouse which gets really nice and toasty - mainly tidying up, but also wandering around with magnifying glasses, actively looking for pests and diseases.

There's only so much you can do indoors so we have braved the elements a few times - mainly planting up the orchard area - with sixteen apple trees of four different varieties.  We had such a fab afternoon, but we did get snowed, hailed and sleeted upon for our efforts!

One thing I've discovered from college is my love of working in a team - I'm not sure I'm now cut out to set up my own gardening business as it can be a bit lonely.  The team working is excellent though and I'm now thinking of concentrating my horticultural efforts at working in just such an environment eventually.  Who'd have thought?!