Five On Friday (on Saturday)

Hello, thank you for calling in.  Today I am joining in with Amy at Love Made My Home so please feel free to hop over there with a click and see who else is joining in this week.  The weather here seems to have forgotten that it's summer - it's mostly overcast, we had rain for nine days out of ten and it's been bloomin' cold.  We have even thought about lighting the fire in the evenings.  I am officially having a moan.

 

I have cabin fever: although the Best Beloved is "on holiday", I am not (this can often be a source of tension for teachers' spouses and I am no exception).  I have been very busy and when I have had some free time, the weather has not been good enough for us to get out and make the most of it.  It's driving me nuts.  We met my parents for lunch in Church Stretton on Monday but it was so cold and wet that we didn't wander around the town, camera in hand, we just dived into the pub as quickly as possible, which was a shame because the town is very picturesque.  It's the blog post that got away.  (I should add that lunch was very good, thanks Dad, as was the company.) 

 

On Thursday, I knew that I would be free just after 1pm so before I went out, I asked the Best Beloved to organise an afternoon outing.  This is always a risky move as he is not good at organising anything, but he is good at recognising when I need to be "out".  So when I arrived home, off we went.  As we were leaving the house I noticed that he was carrying his fleece and walking boots so I asked him if I would need mine?  Oh, yes.  If I hadn't noticed, we would have gone without them, me wearing short sleeves and dolly shoes.  I did say that he is not good at organising things.

 

We got into the car and he decided to program his new satnav.  "I know the way so I don't need to use it, I just want to try it out," he said.  Fifteen minutes later he was still pressing buttons and I was Quite Tetchy.  I may not have been able to hide my tetchiness and he may have snapped at me.  It didn't augur well.  He eventually started up the car and we drove to Ellesmere in Shropshire's "Lake District" (don't get too excited, gentle reader, it's not like Cumbria).  Lovely, I thought.  We haven't been here for a couple of years, we can go for a walk by the mere and then go and look at the canal boats in the basin.  So, the Best Beloved parked the car, walked over to the pay-and-display machine...and discovered that he hadn't brought enough change to pay the £1.70 fee.  As I said, he's not good..."It's expensive here," another driver said to him, "It's free at Colemere."  So he got back in the car and drove us to Colemere.

 

Colemere is lovely too, but we went there in April, which you can read about here if you'd like to, and I can't deny that I was a little disappointed.  By this time it was 2.30pm and I was starving.  The Best Beloved had made a scrummy picnic (credit where credit's due), but it was too cold to sit out so we ate it in the car, in the car park.  The view through the windscreen was...ok.  Then we put on our boots, our fleeces and, in my case,  a scarf (in July!) and off we went for a tramp about. 

Goodness me, the wind was cold!  It was sheltered in the woods but when we came out beside the canal, the wind was whipping up the waters.  We didn't linger there for very long, certainly not long enough for Mr Impatient to take a cracking photograph of a canal boat under the canal bridge.  However, by the time we got back to the car the wind had dropped and the sun had come out.  It was quite pleasant - I took off my scarf and even unzipped my fleece.  It was also time to go home.

So, here are my Five photographs of Colemere on a cold day in July, rather than Five photographs of a warm, sunny day in Church Stretton in July.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you, Amy, for hosting these Friday parties for us, they are fun. 

 

I do hope to see you soon, but if the weather doesn't improve I fear I shall continue to have nothing particularly interesting to share with you. 

 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x