Acrorn Bank Garden and Waternill

Arch into courtyard at Acorn Bank

For the second part of our holiday we headed south, not too far, but into the Lake District.  The morning was wet, so we stopped at the Rheghed Centre just outside Penrith for our lunch and a look around the shops.  By the time we had lunched it had cleared up and I had collected a pile of tourist leaflets. 

Clock Tower at Acorn Bank

In one of the leaflets I found Acorn Bank Garden and Watermill just outside Temple Sowerby between Penrith and Appleby, as we were heading to Appleby it couldn't have been better placed.

Walled orchard garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Waterlily in pond

Newt!

We started our visit in the walled garden which is full of fruit trees and also has a lovely pond covered in water lilies and hiding two differnet types of newts, they took some finding but once you could see one you seemed to 'get your eye in' and could see more hiding in the weeds.

Medical Herbal Garden

The garden is best known for it's collection of medicinal and culinary herbs.  There were some lovely specimens, they even grew nettles - deliberately!

Damson Tree

Winter Sorrel

Foxgloves

Foxglove

After our tour of the garden we changed into our walking boots and headed down the river walk to the restored Water Mill.  It wasn't far and there were a few features on the way, like this quiet backwater.

Pond on walk to Water Mill

Queen Janice on her throne!

There were two of these hand woven wicker chairs looking out over the river.

Rooster and Chickens at Watermill

The water mill itself wasn't much to look at, the one at New Abbey, close to home is much better, so I didn't take any photographs, but they did have this rather handsome cockerel and his 'ladies'.  It was a very pleasant way to pass the afternoon before we headed to our hotel - more of that soon.

GIRLS Album

Okay, brace yourselves! This is a long post with many pictures - however, as the girl in Marks and Spencers said to my friend and I:"The Lake District is an unusual place to go for a Hen Weekend, would you not rather go to Blackpool?" Well no, actually we had a great time in the Lakes and this is the album I made to give to the bride to remind her of the fun we had. The album template was part of a kit from Bubbly Funk.
This is what the album looks like from the front now that it is filled up.

Inside the first page is the bride taking part in a Mr & Mrs contest, her groom had generously allowed himself to be videoed giving his answers -it was a lot of fun.

Everyone was instructed to bring silly headgear, that's the bride's mum in the England hat and her sister in the 'ears'. Also featuring is one of the highland cows that was just next to us behind that fence, and William the Westie (a familiar sight to regular readers of my blog).

More pics from the Mr & Mrs - and more silly hats.

Next day, sore heads were no excuse for not going to the Rookin House Activity Centre for a bit of Archery and some Human Bowling! My excuse was my sore shoulder which I didn't want to hurt, so I did get to sit this one out.

I wasn't quite sure how to get all the pictures into the album so I made this little pocket and three tags for the full effect of the human bowling.

And here are the pictures, including an action shot.

After the activities, we went to Glenridding to catch the Ferry across Ullswater, everyone was feeling rather tired by that time.

We had a picnic lunch on the side of Ullswater, that's me in the 'coat of many colours' with the big sunglasses.

On the back page is a picture of all of us, outside the fantastic cottages we stayed in. Jo (on the left) had to go home on Saturday night so I added her in. I'm the one in the yellow jumper.

Special thanks to Doreen and Jane for letting me use some of their photographs. The wedding is next Saturday, so there should be some more photos to blog after that.

Too busy to blog

Oh dear, I have been having such a busy time, I haven't had time to blog at all. I hope to get some pictures of the hen weekend in the Lake District (that is where I was last weekend) and hopefully also get some crafting done.

I may also show you my stairs - has she gone mad? I hear you ask. It must be the fumes from the paint. We have been stripping the paint off our bannister and repainting the spindles of our wooden stair case. The carpet is coming today, in fact will already be installed, and I was still painting last night at 8.30pm. Third night in a row, Monday night we finished at 9.30pm, Tuesday at 9pm, so getting earlier every time.

Didn't get to bed till nearly midnight last night as I was in the Bubbly Funk chat room and on the phone with Tracey arranging our hotel booking for the Bubbly Funk Meet at the NEC in November. Sooo excited about that, it should be a lot of fun.

Hope to be back soon with pictures and more regular contributions.