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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Garden fruits

Its an early autumn this year and already the weather has turned colder.  But the summer has been a good one and the fruits are on the trees and ready about 3 weeks earlier than usual.
 
 
Worcester apples
These are very tasty with a champagne sparkle.  There were 17 apples on this small tree.

 
Hazel nuts.
 
 
 
Crab apples
 
Makes nice crab apple jelly but they are so sour you need to use a huge amount of sugar.

 
Berberis berries
 
These are for the blackbirds, when the weather gets that bit cooler.
 
 
Red grapes.
 
Well hopefully they will be.  They need a very long warm autumn to produce enough sugar to be sweet enough to eat.


Monday, August 18, 2014

..............to the beauty and toughness of the valleys.


 
 
They breed them tough in the valleys with an outside bath all year round.
 

Friday, August 15, 2014

From the city of dreaming spires......

 
The Head of the River, which features in Oxfords Rowing Club races.
 

 Part of Oxfords indoor market.
 



Was maths taught near here?
 








 
A few days in Oxford in the van seeing the city, and its one I never tire of as there is always something new to see or do.  Its a great place to visit at all times of the year.

Friday, August 08, 2014

Cheltenham

Cheltenham Spa is always a favourite place to visit.  A relatively new town as it only really grew up in the 1700's with the discovery of its "waters" and people started to come to enjoy them for both pleasure and medicinal purposes.
 
 
 
This is the Montpelier area when it was first built.
 
 



 Part of the Crescent originally built when people came to stay to "take the waters".  Queen Victoria had a houses on the end.


This beautiful dome building is now a bank, but they dont seem to mind the visitors coming in to enjoy it.



 When they built a new block of apartments they did it in the original style and this was incorporated into the development.

 
Cheltenham has many festivals and on the day we were there it  was the ukelele festival, with lots of groups all over the city.
 
The biggest festival by far is the Cheltenham Races and the Gold Cup week is one of the richest weeks racing in the UK.  The Irish contingent visiting is the biggest of all the festival goers with thousands and thousands visiting each year.
 
Part of the Racecourse is used for Camping and caravanning so its an ideal all year round place to visit.