What's going on at the cottages? - The Sunnybank Blog! (Dec 2009 onwards...)
| Aug 20 | Woke to find that we have had 20mm of rain overnight. The lawn is growing well after the recent feed has been watered in. The turkey seems to have deserted us at last. | ||||||
| Aug 17 | The latest sport in London.... Let's bounce on Mummy! Click Here to see what the twins can do when they work together!
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| Aug 14 |
Jill has been to London (AGAIN!!!) for a Hen Party with Alison and her friends/relatives. The group met at the Goring Hotel in Victoria for a very elegant and swish afternoon tea with champers and the full works. |
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| Aug 13 |
Rich woke this morning to find that a real turkey had decided to take up residence around the cottages. Pictured here in the field just over the wall from Cobbleholes garden, it later came along the front of the cottages and thought about coming into our porch! Rich convinced to think again! |
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| Aug 10 |
With the door between Cobbleholes and Fellside removed, we were able to have a luncheon party for twelve of our friends from the village. (Sorry that the picture is a bit bluey) |
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| Aug 8 |
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| Aug 7 | Today we were given a special treat by our "children" - Caroline and Ben. We were given a treasure hunt around Central London. We were told to take a bus to Waterloo, have a coffee in Waterloo Station at 1.30 and then open the second envelope. This contained instructions to go to Platform 2 for our journey (we even had a packet to open containing M&Ms, Fruit Pastilles, orange drinks and a packet of paper hankies). As we approached platform 2 of the old Eurostar terminal, we realised that we were going to see "The Railway Children!" live on a stage built over the Eurostar platforms! It was superb! Thanks to Ben & Alison and Caroline & Andrew for the whole experience.
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| Aug 7 | Today we had a day in London to ourselves, so we headed to Canary Wharf where Ben and Alison's wedding reception is to be held. After exploring the area and taking various photos we went to the restaurant (for the reception) and were offered a glass of champagne by the manager to accompany our lunch! Very nice too!
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| Aug 5 | Jill and Rich boarded the train to Euston for our Ruby Wedding Anniversary weekend with the family.
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| Jul 16 |
The drought is definitely over! Click HERE to see the evidence of yet another 20mm since midnight! |
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| Jul16 |
The roadworks team have finally made it to the potholes outside the cottages! To encourage good repairs, Rich plied them with cups of coffee. |
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| Jul 15 |
The woodpecker clan continue to visit the fat balls hanging outside our lounge window. So far Rich has drawn six different head patterns. The following link takes you to Youtube to watch a video of two of them taken this morning. |
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| Jul 11 | YES! The water tank is full and flowing in at a good rate. The dishwasher was given a ceremonial start up after three weeks of inactivity. We may even go mad tomorrow and do some washing! We shall miss our 13 mile drive to the launderette in Kendal (but not very much!) | ||||||
| Jul 10 (2) | At last!.... the water tank level has gone up an inch and there is a steady trickle running in! With the 24mm (and counting) that has fallen overnight the end of our restrictions looks in sight! | ||||||
| Jul 10 , 2010 | We have now had 3 inches of rain since July 1st. Surely it will start to find its way into our tank soon? Oh the irony of it all!!!! As Peter Longhurst pointed out "you go outside in driving rain to fill a bucket from the water butt to re-fill the toilet cistern!" |
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| Jul 1 - 9 | Rain has continued on and off and yet the water tank remains resolutely half full with little going in. The ground has been so dry that it is like blotting paper! | ||||||
| Jun 29 | 14mm more rain during the early hours including a thunderstorm at 3.15am which Richard watched but Jill slept on - blissfully unaware! | ||||||
| Jun 28 | True to the forecast - rain finally arrived at 4pm and by midnight we had 9mm. Enough to wet the ground but the water situation will need a lot more rain before it gets better! | ||||||
| Jun 22 | The water tank is now barely half full and thankfully we have managed to persuade a local milk tanker firm to bring us 2000 galls when we are close to running out. That was a big relief! To save water we took all our washing to the launderette in Kendal and brought it back wet. It dried in ten minutes in the sunshine! All the visitors are being really careful about water usage so the tank level is only going down very slowly. (A new launderette in Ambleside is planned - a welcome addition to the facilities instead of yet another outdoor clothing shop!) | ||||||
| June 9 -19 |
Caroline and the twins arrived for a stay and we thoroughly enjoyed the week with them. They are now both walking and the new gate ensured that they couldn't wander off! They went home with slightly tanned skin (factor 50 sun cream used!!) and "talking" ten to the dozen - we think "da" means dog and saying "Cha Cha" (Ben's childhood stuffed toy monkey) to them results in them waving goodbye!!. Jill went with them and even Rich stayed on the train to Preston to help get all the bags on and the twins settled, before returning to Oxenholme. Jill returned North the next day. Talking of babies, Willow the foal has now lost all her brown baby hair and is spotted like her mother! |
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| May 23, | Still no rain! Thirlmere is as low as most people can remember! There is a rumour that tomorrow the council or their henchmen (sorry- contractors!) will start the two week task of repairing the potholes which still remain from last November's rain storm! Access will still be possible however. | ||||||
| May 18-21 | A week of activities for us including Rotary dinners, WI do's and other tasks which make you wonder where all the week went. Willow (the foal) is now growing in size and confidence and is starting to develop her mother's mottled appearance towards the back end. | ||||||
| Apr 27, |
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| Apr 22 |
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| Apr 16 2010 |
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| Apr 16 |
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| April 12 |
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| Mar 25 |
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| Mar 25 | Ben quickly videoed the escapees and created "Lamb Cam" which is on Youtube.
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Ben and Alison have arrived for his birthday tomorrow and on a walk to the farm, to buy eggs,they were met by two Jacobs lambs who had escaped from the lambing shed! |
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Just over an hour later and we had 360 logs more than before! All we had to do now was drop them over the wall and into the barrow to move them around to our log store! |
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| Mar 23 |
Rich and Ben have been given permission to cut up a broken branch from the ash tree across the road. Armed with a chainsaw and barrow they set about the work enthusiastically. |
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| Mar 12 | The lambs have started to arrive on the farm alongside the cottages - a little early - perhaps a little extra-curricular activity by a keen ram! As soon as I went to take a picture they all ran across two fields where food was being put out for them by Roy the farmer. | ||||||
| Mar 6 |
Jill has gone to London for her birthday weekend and Ben and Caroline have planned a surprise trip to her home town of Brighton for the day! With Alison & the twins along for the trip (of course!) the group went onto the shingle beach at Brighton . The girls were fascinated with the pebbles and the waves. |
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| Feb 16 |
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| Feb 16 |
More snow! Another three inches to replace the previous fall which had melted. Rich decided to take pictures of Jimmy!
The sign might be true but they are less so in a 4X4 !!!! |
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| Feb 3 | Rich took Jimmy the Jimny to Kendal when he had his hair cut. Whilst he was away, the cottages had 2 inches of snow in an hour! Putting the Jimny into 4WD mode, Rich happily drove up the hill as other locals were exchanging insurance details after sliding into each other further down the road! Who's laughing now???
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| Feb 2 |
After searching the internet websites for garages, we took delivery today of a Suzuki Jimny (2004 model) from a garage in Bradford. Jimmy will make sure that we can get up and down the hill in snow and icy conditions!
Our cruel friends in the village are laughing at us and saying it will not snow now for three years! |
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| Jan 24 | The gas men are still around the village! Although most people are back on supply, there is still an area around the library and Lake Road where gas engineers are digging up the roads to drill holes in their pipes to get yet more water out! Three times in the last week we have been visited by gas men to ask if they can turn off our supply. We politely explain that it would be possible if we had a gas supply! It doesn't say much for the National Grid's record keeping!! |
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| Jan 24 |
Ben has captured 5000 shots from our webcam and "stuck them together" to form this video which is on YouTube. Click here to watch it! The squirrel is a regular visitor as you will see. There are also guest appearances from the pigeons, blue tits, great tits, chaffinches, blackbirds, hedge sparrows and even Rich! Watch the seed going down and the shadows moving across the garden. You might even spot the headlights of the tractor as it drives around the field across the valley one night! The steady white blob at night is a LED on the camera reflected in the glass.
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Jan 23 |
For a few seconds this atmospheric picture was there for us as we looked out of the front door this morning! |
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| Jan 17 |
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| Jan 16 | As we enjoyed the day, a drama was unfolding in Ambleside. Somehow, someone had fractured a gas main and water main which were alongside each other on one of the housing areas on the lower slopes of Wansfell. The result was that water filled the gas pipe and cut off gas supplies to the whole village!! Gas men and vans were summoned from as far away as Mid Wales, The Midlands and the North East. By next day Ambleside was a sea of yellow jackets and gas vans! | ||||||
| Jan 16 | We woke this morning to the onset of a rapid thaw! After 28 days of continuous snow cover, we finally have fields with big green patches in them and the road is basically clear a far as the village. Mind you, the ice no longer fills in the potholes caused by the November floods! Check the webcam for the latest pictures! You may even see the local squirrel on one of his daily raids. | ||||||
| Jan 14, | Today was supposed to be a day of intense activity! A new window in Sheepgates; the carpet cleaned in there and our three piece suite cleaned.... However winter dealt another two inches of snow overnight and one by one the plans were cancelled as we took phone calls from workmen who were snowed in wherever they lived! | ||||||
| Jan 9-10 | Local painter Liquid Les and his son Levi arrived as planned to rub down and repaint every bit of white gloss paint in Sheepgates. Fortified by regular cups of coffee and the odd biscuit, they did exactly what it says on the paint tin! By late Sunday afternoon, Sheepgates was finished and looking smart.... just the back bedroom window to be done now and clean the lounge carpet...! | ||||||
| Jan 5 |
After following the family to London with a car load of baby stuff, Rich and Jill returned to the cottage in time to be snowed in today by a new 4 inches of snow! Deja vu or what??
With the addition of watery sunshine, Wansfell is as beautiful as any alpine scene. Nededless to say, the bin lorry failed to make it up the hill this morning as did everyone else but somehow Lavinia and Michael Bonser made it down - leaving after their stay in No 2. |
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Jan2,2010 |
Richard and Andrew did another road salting exercise to help us to drive Andrew, Caroline and the twins to the station. When we reached Oxenholme we discovered that all trains south were cancelled due to a signal box fire south of Lancaster. So......Rich drove the family to Manchester Picadilly to catch a train from there!
Safely settled in their Weekend First Class upgraded seats, Megan gets down to the serious business of sucking the label on her pushchair cover.
It had been a bit hectic driving to Manchester (when I only expected to go to Kendal) but with a train to London every 30mins, the hassle was over! |
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| Dec 30, 2009 | After some concerted shovelling of ice on the road outside by Richard and Andrew, the coalman arrived and was able to deliver and (importantly) turn round without demolishing the coalhouses and head back down to the village! Today we have had howling gales with one gust of 37mph and although the temp was 2.3C the windchill temp was -5.6C. That encouraged us to work faster with the ice shovelling! The road is now passable to the cottages despite the "Road Closed" sign at the bottom of the hill. In other news- Megan cut a new top tooth and stood unaided for a while! |
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| Dec 29, 2009 | After finally getting their car up the hill - the Penn's now had to get it down with ice where there had been some slight hint of slush! We heard no rending of metal sounds so we assume that they made it! A delivery van heading for Patterdale made it as far as the cottage and the saw what it was like above the cottage and decided to reverse back to the village! The postman came today! After 10 days of no deliveries to anywhere in the valley, he abandonned his van in the village and dragged a sack load up the road so that we had a sudden influx of cards and presents! Still no sign of the coalman though! | ||||||
| Dec 28, 2009 |  We were invited to Tony and Michael's house down the road for a locals get together lunch and we gingerly made our way down the treacherous road and had a great time. The lunch was interrupted when a helicopter flew right over the house and then landed just outside the garden fence! It turned out to be the Great North Air Ambulance (G-HEMS) and it had landed about 10 feet from the top of T&M's septic tank lid (covered in 10inches of snow!). A few feet to the right he would have gone through the lid and into the tank! Instead of really taking off, he may have simply gone through the motions!!! (sorry - too good to miss!) |
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| Dec 27, 2009 |
Andrew has Jessica whilst Caroline has Megan. |
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| Dec 25, 2009 |
The view from the front door on Christmas Day. It is DEFINITELY a white Christmas . We wish all our blog readers a Happy Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year. |
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| Dec 24, 2009 |
With 10 inches of snow and no snowplough in sight, the last minute shopping took on a new form. Step 1 - get large blue plastic builder's tub; Step 2 tie rope to it and the step 3 - go shopping and drag it back up the hill. It's probably the first time a 14lb turkey has been dragged backwards up Kirkstone Road! |
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| Dec 22, 2009 |
"Whats all the fuss about this snow. I'm warm and with my Mum!" says Jessica |
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| Dec 22, 2009 |
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| Dec 20, 2009 | With 4 inches of snow on the ground and not a gritter or snowplough in sight we had to resort to help from Roy at the farm who used his Landrover Discovery to collect Caroline, Andrew and the twins from Windermere station. Many thanks to Roy for his help! We all breathed a sigh of relief when they were safely settled in but the next day we had to try to shovel the snow for half a mile down towards the village to allow Peter and Katie with 1yr old Lucy to carefully inch their way down the hill to drive home to Otley! They made it! |
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| Dec 15, 2009 |
At 8.45am we had a call to say our log delivery would be here in 5 mins! It was kind of Darren and Maureen who were staying in Sheepgates to come out and help us to shift and stack the 900+ logs. The four of us did it in about an hour. Many thanks!! |
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The twins get their first outing in their new backpacks. 
