Vale Richard

(oops and big oops. I did spell the name wrong.It is Richard Kenley Ludbrook)
Our dearest Richard,
We miss you.
Our family has been touched by you and your warmth and fun.
We are locked into Yarnuff for ever and ever.
We love you for that.

here are some pictures of my trip to Kent . South of London to visit a friends, mother-in-law. A very sprightly 83 year old in her flash car. Narrow english roads are no barrier in a car like this.

Also some images of her garden and her house. there was a bird feeder with young blue tits and a woodpecker who came to visit just outside the breakfast window.


You can see me as a ghostly image in the window

Then off for some stately home action. This is the home of the young Anne Bolyn including a bed of Henry the 8th

A giant Yew hedge for us girls to wonder about

Inside the kitchen of Blickling Hall just near Norfolk. I love the details of the kitchen without the theme park looks of some of the rooms with on over abundance of antiques etc.

I want the job of polishing these beautiful copper pots.

My trip to England was full of highs and lows. I miss my sister already and Richard in his frail condition. I am back home now and the weather is very wintery and cold. I have cooked for the masses,sewed up a storm, visited a very unwell Matcham, dug my garden and weeded and whipper snipped to get the sweeping therapy really going. It is also good to be home with my family again

so.... to pics of england

We are on our way to London.
It is quite expensive to travel on the train from East Harling
but if you book your ticket ahead it brings the price down a lot.

This is as we arrive at Liverpool street station.
It is the main station to arrive at from Norwich.
Then we had to proceed to the underground,
to find the train to buckingham palace.

.
On the way to the palace we spotted deck chairs
and wondered why not many were being sat on ..
.Then came along the man with the machine to take our money
for the privilege of sitting on the chairs so we immediately sat on the grass!


SQUIRREL!!!!
OH so cute and English. The little squirrel was so tame
he was very used to being fed by the tourists.

The walk through Hyde park,.
The weather was sunny and warm lots of people visiting
as it is the summer holidays for all of England, and then the beginning of a new school year.



This is the Princess Dianna memorial in Hyde park.
A water feature for all to enjoy . A favourite place to play in the summer
with little pale children in bathers having fun.

A special place for Joey the Macaron shop near Picadilly circus.
Very expensive but so beautiful.

Us inside the "Queens Theatre" .
We are ready for the performance of "Les Miserables"
which has been going for twenty five years in the same theatre.
A very special treat thanks to Roxi for finding a two for one ticket deal

Then after a three hour performance we were off to Carmody street
for some window shopping. These pictures are for Lena

We even found shoes with tape measures on this one is for Amy xxx


This is honesuckle in the garden of Ickworth, a stately home we found

Roxi and I out the front of Ickworth.

Some serious sock knitting has also been done. Second pair on the way

Diss auctions a world of the unexpected .
And england on a good day to prove that there IS blue sky in the UK..

a ruinous day

Roxi and I headed off for a small adventure to Bury St Edmonds. A big town nearby, with a big cathedral. We also found ruins from the 13th century.So hard for us to even slightly comprehend.
This building was actually built within the ruins, adding windows and doors in the ancient rock walls.This area of the UK...(Norfolk) is known for its buildings made from flint.
This building also shows how it was built on the ruins and stone columns of the 13th century.

We walked and walked and found areas of true ancient ruins
with families picnicing all around.
There were also amazing gardens very finely manicured and tended.
I did find in the flower beds, beautiful grevilea robustas
.I wonder if they realise how big they could grow.




we

a mid summer walk

We are off in the car for our morning walk
. The roads are so narrow that going in the car to the woods is the best way to go.This is school lane which is the back of jo's hous .
At the end of this road we head to the left and on down the road. Past the gypsy camp with horses and a true wooden gypsy wagon.

We then walk on the Harling Heath. With the occasional sheep and such an abundance of wildflowers.
These flowers are a common knapweed.
Amongst the other flowers we have seen are....
Wild carrot,Yarrow,Perforate St Johns Wort,Field Bindweed,Harebell,
Vipers Bugloss,Ragwort,White Campion,and Scabious.What a bunch of wierd English names..

one by one

this is a hollyhock outside. the church in East Harling.. you can also see the flint walls and a glimpse of the lead light windows.. summer is here and so are the hollyhocks and wildflowers

my first pictures of the uk

here is my first image of the UK as I sit on the train to Norwich.Out the window is a field of wheat already to be harvested So many hours to get here but once you touch down it all seems not nearly so far...The Friday that I arrived was a heat wave of about 30 degrees and everyone was flagging in the heat although I still had a couple of layers on.It was so lovely to see my little sis and give her a real life hug and no more virtual world kisses.I have also been to the hospital and given a big hug to Richard from the land of Oz. It is so wonderful to be near them and for me to find my role as the mothering type here as well.
As Jo visits the hospital I have stayed home and cooked and knitted and read (Girl with the Dragon Tatoo)
Roxi is also here from the land of OZ . It is an amazing thing to be here in Summer and it is a concept the Brits find hard to realise... that its ...Winter in Australia.....

Far away across the sea

I am here at last. What a long way to fly.I managed to find my way from Heathrow to East Harling ,(well actually Diss ,where Joey picked me up in the car). On a couple of trains and a wait in the Liverpool street station with opera music blaring.
hate to brag but the weather is so sunny and summer here.The sky is very blue and the sun is positively warm!
We do head off to the hospital every day to see Richard .Many hours are passed either talking or reading or just sitting quietly.Although we have managed to play a couple of rounds of Yarniv with Richard. He can manage to walk to the Day room which is for families and friends to chat without the other patients listening and staring..... Well I do stay home sometimes and knit and cook the dinner while Joey and Roxy visit Ricardo. Richard is doing OK . He has good days and bad days and on the better days you can see joeys shoulders rise as her spirit lifts as well.

I have also been on the double decker bus from the hospital into Norwich to go exploring.Up and down many small alleyways and narrow streets to find textile galleries,bridal shops,juice bars,homemade things shop,market stalls selling spices and nuts and seeds etc.,a helpful visitor centre for my hit of postcards,a small supermarket for supplies for dinner,even found a gallery with "ink and spindle" fabric from Melb.

Travelled slightly further afield and found a fabric shop, wool shop and furnishing fabric shop. In amongst Indian food stores and lots of op shops and pawn shops.I think I might have to go back for some money spending next time.
I did find out the hard way that the buses all finish by 6.30 at night so I wandered around for ages to really be sure, even though the hospital is open till 8 for visiting hours. So I had another adventure in a British taxi. Very spacious . Quite pricey as well.

I will sign off now and will write more soon and try for some pics..

Our holiday to Bruny Island

Bruny Island Isthmus. The sand spit near the penguin colony and the narrow road to the south,

.The "Lady Nelson 'in the still sunny waters of Hobart.
Then largest ocean liner in the harbour we have ever seen.
As big as a whole shopping centre.
Consequently the city was tripled in size by the crowds.

On the car ferry across the water to Bruny. The weather was so lovely.
The best summer in ten years according to the locals

This is the view of the water from the house we stayed at.

On the north end of Bruny.So still and blue.

This was a board walk to the beach to see the penguins. At dusk the fairy penguins come ashore to find their babies huddled away in there burrows.The boardwalk is there to protect the sand dunes.We did go back in the dark with torches to see them. There was a very full moon and so the penguins were easy to see. No crowds only us . The other special thing was as we left to head back to the house in the car in the west in the dark but with the moonlight and a slight drizzle there was a RAINBOW. In the dark maybe it should have been called a moonbow!

We also found oysters growing in the tidal bays of Bruny near the house. Joe from "Get Shucked" has his oysters growing in the waters of Great Bay.
The baskets were hanging in the clear waters. The oyster farmer had the inspector
coming so had to have all the mussels cleared from the oyster racks.Well lucky us we hopped in to help

In the low tide we found about five kilos of mussels very quickly and also pippies floating to the surface just ready for us to scoop up into our bucket and the off to our dinner pots.

It did have a bit of a boys weekend at this point!

This is the lighthouse at the Southern end of island.The weather has turned to more like normal about fifteen degrees and a freezing wind and all the coats on a bit like an add for a raincoat company.

We did think though that it was the best way to see a lighthouse so far south and on the edge of the southern ocean

We then walked and walked and walked and walked about fifteen kilometres. up a hill climb to the ragged bluff, along the sunny clean waves of the south side of the island. Coming eventually to the penguin viewing ramp and the five k's more to get back the the car. Phew a bit hard on the sore heel and challenging on the stamina..

The when our time was over back on the ferry in the sun again .Tasmania was a great place to visit in the days of global warming....

the new year

the sun is so hot that we all have our different ways of keeping cool
I found a clean wheely bin from the garden and made a lovely vertical
"plunge pool " Every time I got too hot inside I would come out
and step into the water from the tank and cool down. Then at the end of the day
I would drive over to the vegie garden and syphon the water out
onto the garden.There's recycled water for you... On the next hot day Lena and I made a trip to the Yarra Valley
to find a cool place to visit.

What a lovely grown up girl!

I just love these trees,