Friday Smiles2023 #Week 37

Thank you all for patiently ploughing through my post last week. Today I am covering the rest of my holiday (partly for your entertanment and partly as a reminder for me so that I can scrapbook it later), but to keep it a reasonable length I have made several collages of my photos. I hope you can click on each one to see the individual pictures.

I mentioned last week that the Saturday after we arrived was a special family day held at our son's vicarage. The weather was not at its best but we had two marqueés to sit under, plenty of warm wraps, and to the side the barbeque was lit so we had warm food to keep us going. It was wonderful to have all five of our sons together as well as most of their partners and children. The array of drinks on the table are all soft drinks or 0% alcohol, but there were a few bottle of beer and wine consumed as well. Everyone had a great time catching up with those they hadn't seen for some time. The pink flamingos were evident in the candle glass and inflatable drinks cooler. One grandson couldn't be there but it was lovely to see Skye, Mike's third child, who was just moving to Brighton where they will be starting at university to study medicine. (They achieved superb A level results of three A*s and and an A, so maybe we will have a doctor in the family one day). Mike had celebrated his 50th birthday two weeks before this and in one picture you can see the family all enjoying watching him open the scrapbook I made for him, mostly with the old photos taken when he was young, that he has no didgital copies of. It was a super day and I am so glad we managed it.

So my last port of call was Manchester to visit son number 4, Jonathan, his wife Ella and their daughter, little Aisling. Manchester showed its usual weather, grey and wet! though we did have some sunny intervals and had one lovely afternoon in the garden. We also visited a couple of parks. At Bramhall Park we saw the impressive mansion though we could not go inside on that day, and Aisling had a fine time scattering the pot of oats she had brought to feed the ducks. At their more local park, which is a huge area of green fileds and trees, there is a play area with a high slide that 'Little Miss Independence' was well able to climb up without our help. I liked the mother-and-baby swing and she wore herself out running from one to the other. On the way home we stopped to see the animals. Aisling insisted on climbing the wet and slippery railings, but was adamant I shouldn't hold her, so I stood as close behind her as I could. In this collage you can see their dog Rudi who really is a gently giant and loved climbing up beside me to rest with me. Aisling is also showing off the little dress I took over for her. She is a mini image of her mum in this one.

Much earlier in my holiday, after visiting my sisters in Bournemouth, I went to see our second son, Mike. I only arranged to be with him for a long weekend, mainly because he has been partly wheelchair bound, or else dependent on crutches for some time, and was awaiting the date for his spinal surgery, so it was difficult to make plans. That said we did pack a lot into the few days I was there.

On my first afternoon, his partner Lucy drove us to the Osprey project in Dyfi Valley, N.Wales. Although the birds were a good distance from us, the round look-out tower had several telescopes focussed on their perch and what remained of their nest. I was pleased with the photo I took using my phone camera, through the telescope. 

Of course the centre had a much more powerful camera on them, and we had some close up views on their screens, both of the birds, (there were two, both this years chicks now fully fledged), and of the magpie cleaning up what was left of their nest.

The surroundings were beautiful and peaceful. This lake was home to a family of beavers, hence the basket weave statue of one, but as they were mainly active only at night, we watched a film of their antics taken with a night vision camera. The boardwalk we followed had a black edge, and warmed by the sun it had hundreds of tiny lizards basking on it. I have inserted a small photo of one of the birds we had watched circling in from the hills miles away. I took this with my phone on full zoom so it is a bit wobbly but it does show their huge wingspan.

After the osprey centre we drove on to the coast to Aberdovy, so the boys could have a quick dip in the sea!

On Saturday, Lucy and her boys had other plans so Mike and I took a bus to Welshpool and walked through the deer park to Powys castle. We only wanted to see the grounds which are really stunning. The castle is famous for its trimmed trees, not exactly topiary as they were not trimmed to any shape, but they were mounds and mounds of green that looked like velvet. I saw on the internet this week that it takes a man eight weeks to trim them from a high crane. The flowers were lovely too as were the views of the castle from the gardens below.

We got home in time to have a brief rest and then caught another bus in the opposite direction, this time going to Oswestry. This was my home town and I enjoyed having a look around it, and seeing all the changes that have happened in the fifteen years since I left. However we were there to see the hot air balloon festival. It took place in Cae Glas park. This always has a great display of flowers in the front area and this year was no exception.

Behind the flowers there is a big open space of grass land where the balloons were. Sadly it was just too windy for the balloons to have lift off, but at 9.00pm they did manage to inflate five of them and use their fire blasters to give us a light show in time to the music. You don't realise just how big the balloons are until they inflate right in front of you, and it was a very exciting spectacle. I showed a couple of pictures at the time but here are some more.

Sunday was a special day for Mike and for me because he invited his family to come and have lunch with us, and they don't manage to get together very often. So Mike's daughter Emma, her husband and their three little boys were there, as well as her brother Mikey (the only one who couldn't make it to our family day earlier in the month). Unfortunately his partner had an accident that week and was not able to come. But there was Mike's partner and her two boys and Mike's younger son Fin so we were quite a crowd. Despite needing to lean on the table to balance, Mike was determined to cook his usual Sunday roast and I was only allowed to help with a little bit of the preparation. But he managed it and as you can see, we all enjoyed his hard work.

I didn't take many photos but I did manage to get an update of our four generations - baby Reuben, his mum Emma, her dad Mike, and his mum, me. I also got a quick one of Reuben sitting on my lap but he was much more interested in running round the garden with his brothers. He had only started to walk that week! (The cat on my lap is Bobby who came to live with my son Ben to keep him company when his partner died, but as Ben's life changed it became harder to give Bobby the care he needed so he moved to live with Mike where he has a brother and two dogs for company and he is well settled there now).

On Monday, Ben came to collect me and drove me to his house in Congleton, Cheshire (see last weeks post) and the next week we drove the short way across to Manchester for my stay with Jonathan. On one day both Jonathan and his wife had to work and Aisling was at nursery, so Ben came over again and we went to the nearby town of Altrincham. The market was more 'up-market' than I remember from a previous visit, but there was a nice cobbled street of shops which we enjoyed browsing and a lovely bakery where we bought fresh baked foccacia sandwiches for our lunch. We also went into a Sketchers shoe shop and both bought some expensive but very comfortable shoes! For a relatively small place the multi-storied car park was very full and we had to go up to the top floor. The view from there was amazing and we could see the skyline of Manchester city.

Ben then spent the night (part of it anyway) on Jonathan's sofa and at 4.00 in the morning he got me safely to Manchester airport for my flight home. I am so grateful to him for all the running around he did for me.

This picture shows me watching our flight arrive at Almeria airport for our trip out, and then off to get the return flight home. 

So my adventure is over for this year, but what a lot of lovely memories I made.

This week has been basically routine but I did have a nice outing yesterday. A friend at church organised a 'ladies tea' at her house and it was lovely to be able to relax and chat together as there is never much time for that after church on a Sunday. One of our friends needs a wheelchair so her husband drove her there and then acted as our 'maitre d', dressesd only in a pair of black boxer shorts, a red striped apron and a red bow tie! He kept us well supplied with food and drink throughout the afternoon. You can see him in one of the photos with his wife and our hostess Dawn. She gave us a lovely spread for our tea with fresh finger sandwiches, followed by scones with jam and cream, Then there was a wide choice of cakes - Dawn enjoys baking! - home make truffles, and finally a strawberry trifle. We were very spoiled and very full! She even made a plate of each selection gluten free for our friend.

And now I will close with two photos of the sky. The first was taken at teatime on Aberdovy beach in Wales on 17th August, and the second was sunrise here yesterday morning. Both beautiful in their own way.

So it is time now to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles, and I promise my posts will be back to much simpler things next week