A grand day out

Today I took ds and a friend to Twin Lakes, the nearest theme park to us. Although not on the scale of Alton Towers, it is pretty fun for a day out, and doesn't suffer from long queues. If you go on a hot day, remember to take swimming things, so you can make the most of this fabulous attraction:

That giant yellow bucket you can see right at the top fills with water, and then tips up, splashing water down the slides and on everyone beneath.

The boys had SO MUCH FUN! Although they are getting a bit too big for some of the activities and rides now, they especially enjoyed the falconry display and the reptile house.

Since our last visit I can report there is now a wonderful choice of ice-creams, but the lunchtime catering is still not up to much, so I was glad we had brought our own pack-up.

A Spectacular Angel

This post continues the "what I did in my holidays" post I wrote a couple of days ago.

Our route to Hadrian's Wall country took us along the motorway close to Gateshead. As we drove along, I was astonished (and charmed) to see this famous piece of public art come into view:

This giant sculpture is the Angel of the North by Antony Gormley, that was funded with National Lottery money in the late '90s. On our way back, we stopped off for a better look, and walked right up to the installation. In the pic below, you can see me and ds at the bottom right corner:

I'm really pleased to have seen it in real life, as I'd only seen pictures of it before.

Hadrian's Wall Country

I haven't posted for more than a week because I've been away with ds, visiting Britain's most famous Roman site: Hadrian's Wall.

If you want to know more about the historical background to Hadrian's Wall, there is plenty of information linked from here. In the course of three days, we visited three Roman forts, one Roman temple, one museum about the Roman Army, saw a live archaeological dig (at Vindalanda, highly recommend!) and walked along sections of the Wall twice.

Here's some pics of the historical sites for your enjoyment:

Wall in background with view towards Scotland

Roman Milecastle 37 and another view towards Scotland

Roman Temple of Mithras

At Vindalanda Roman Fort

The countryside in this area is simply beautiful:

We stayed at High Keenley Fell farm B&B and I can highly recommend it. It's a working hill farm in a beautiful remote location, with peace and quiet, and home comforts, about 12 miles South of Haltwhistle. Here's a picture taken up by the farm

I'm back home now, but still have another week on leave, so look out for some day trips! 

Stashdown #7: July 2013

I didn't do a whole lot of knitting in July. The welly toppers were the only thing I knitted. I had to buy three skeins of yarn to be able to complete those, so 369 yards came in. 340 yards were knitted up for the welly toppers.  I also discarded the remaining yarn in one of the stash scrap balls I used for the toppers so that was another 60 yards, meaning I used up more yarn than I bought in July, yay!

So the position at month end is:
-1481 brought forward end June
+369 new yarn bought in July
-340 worked up
-60 discarded
New total YTD: -1512