Category: Silent Sunday

My Sunday Photo 1.5.16

Yesterday we went to A Day At The Lake at Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire. Despite the rain we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The festival was a delight, full of everything you’d expect from Wild Rumpus (who also organise the Just So Festival and The Lost Carnival). The day was full of magic and wonder; mermaids, marching bands, Victorian Jugglers in their bathing suits, circus sideshows, a fabulous storyteller, a helter skelter and an amazing tightrope walker who walks across a high-wire stretched precariously over the lake!

The small boy came home with a head full of imagination (more so than usual) and it’s really got us in the mood for Just So this summer. If you’re at a loose end this Bank Holiday weekend, then A Day At The Lake is well worth a visit! You can read my full review here.

I took lots of pictures of the day and I have a few favourites, but I love this one of the rowing boats. Hope you like it too.

Rudyard Lake

My Sunday Photo 24.4.16

This week Manchester has treated us to so much sunshine and warmth it’s been hard to believe that it’s still only April. Annoyingly I’ve been hunched over a hot laptop for most of the week and I’ve only really spied the warm sun from inside. On Wednesday it was beautifully bright and sunny and I really needed to get out, so I took myself off for a walk down by the river, clocking up a couple of Fitbit miles at the same time.

The trees are in full blossom, and looking up at the deep blue sky I snapped this with my Nokia Lumia phone. The soft pink blossom against the blue sky, the blur of the sun and a vapour trail from a passing plane. I love this photo and it hints hopefully of a fine summer to come. Fingers crossed!

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My Sunday Photo 17.4.16

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I promise hand on heart that this photo hasn’t been edited or messed about with in any way. We’ve been on holiday in North Devon all week and this was taken on Westward Ho! beach. The tide was just going out and the spring sunshine was dancing on the wet sand and creating a beautiful sky-sand mirror. This photo was taken with my Nokia Lumia phone and I think it’s rather beautiful and a little like a watercolour painting. 

The photo shows a silhouette of my husband as he approached an ancient shipwreck sticking out from the sand. We’d visited last year and had a good look at the wrecks and I was keen to see if they were still visible, which they are. You can read more about the history of the wrecks and see close up photos in this blog post from last year.

My Sunday Photo 10.4.16

A last minute break in what we think is one of the most beautiful places on earth. Smack bang on the North Devon and Cornwall border this is Welcombe Mouth, with gorse and heather covered cliffs, it’s own waterfall, jagged rocks and great surfing. What’s not to love?

It is cold though. So very cold. Brrrrr.

Disabled on holiday

 

My Sunday Photo 3.4.16

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The last week has been such a busy one and I’ve been busy with my camera. Scrolling back over the couple of hundred photographs I’ve taken this week, this is the one which stands out the most to me. It’s not a great photograph, if it wasn’t just a quick snap in passing it could be better, but it is the one photo which stands out as especially beautiful.

Last Sunday I went to the Gin Festival at Victoria Baths in Manchester. This beautiful Edwardian building is being painstakingly restored. Throughout the building there are stained glass windows and this caught my eye. She’s a beautiful Angel I guess, I’m not sure who she really is or who she represents, but I’m quite in love with her.

Happy Sunday! Xx

My Sunday Photo 27.3.16

Last weekend we headed to Wythenshawe Community Farm to check out the new arrivals. Alongside a 3 hour old calf and a day old set of triplet lambs, we found a field full of slightly older but much cheekier lambs. This cheeky pair caught my eye as they clambered all over their mother.

Nothing says spring like a field full of lambs.

Wythenshawe Community Farm

You can read more about our visit to Wythenshawe Community Farm here.

My Sunday Photo 28.2.16

This Sunday may I present to you my Manchester Tart….

Manchester Tart

I’m doing a spot of recipe writing for something which I can tell you more about in April, and this is the happy and rather delicious result of one of those recipes.

My Grandma taught me how to cook, she was a school cook and a pastry chef, so this, the famous Manchester Tart was one of her favourite things to make. I followed her handwritten recipe in a rather battered handwritten book and this was the delicious outcome.

If you’ve never had Manchester Tart before, it is shortcrust pastry blind baked, smothered with a layer of raspberry jam, topped with creme patissiere and sprinkled with toasted dessicated coconut. Some recipes (some very wrong recipes IMHO) include a layer of sliced banana on top of the jam, and most use much more coconut than I did, but it’s all personal taste.

Regardless of whether you are pro or anti banana, this Manchester Tart was a fine tribute to my Grandma, and I like to think she’d be tucking into seconds right now if she were still with us.

My Sunday Photo 21.2.16

As half terms go we’ve had a nice quiet one, a few play dates, some trips to the park in between showers and plenty of snuggling under a blanket time. We wont win any awards for adventure, but it’s been the kind of restful week we’ve needed. On Saturday in an attempt to blow a few cobwebs away we headed off to Rode Hall near Congleton in Cheshire to enjoy their annual snowdrop walk. 

The weather was not kind, but wrapped up against the elements we managed to enjoy two hours of outdoor fun and fresh air; and we were rewarded with a hearty lunch and a warm by the fire when we’d finished. 

My favourite picture from our visit is of one of my favourite places at Rode Hall, the boathouse, a small wooden boathouse, covered in moss and clinging to the side of the lake. It fills me full of memories of Swallows and Amazons and more recently a visit to the Dylan Thomas Boathouse.

It’s as pretty as a picture, even on a grim day and fills my head full of adventure and mystery.

Rode Hall

You can read about our visit to Rode Hall here.