This is The Tynedale Hotel, on the promenade at Llandudno, overlooking the Victorian Pier, handy for the shops.......... etc., and we have booked our first holiday for 2007. A sea-view room on the first floor, which should be interesting at the end of January. But it will be fun and there is a certain attraction and style to going to the coast in the middle of winter.
We can wrap up warmly and go to the top of The Great Orme (by lift or tram of course) and there are excursions, and door to door transport arranged by the coach company - with whom we have been very satisfied in the past. Our Tenby Holiday for instance was one of the best we've ever had.
This is the promised Victorian Pier and although we don't expect it to look summery, it should be interesting - if open. I would settle for large waves crashing over the rails but I can't speak for Y.Looking at the photograph however, I note that the older lady has her coat firmly fastened. Not my photo of course, it is out of the Llandudno publicity material, so I guess they would be pleased rather than touchy, to have it reproduced.
I had done another Liquidamber picture, because the colour becomes more and more intense, seemingly by the hour. But it was reluctant to upload - maybe try again tomorrow. Tried but failed to photograph some coal-tits on the feeders. They are very nervy little creatures and although I wasn't really close (with my telephoto lens on a tripod) but even the focussing noise sent them to flight. It's my assumption that they are coal-tits - duller and smaller than the great-tits and with black and white striped heads. Why not look them up? I hear you ask. Simple. The books were packed for the move and I canna find 'em.
Routine sort of day. Bit of shopping, Y still cutting back, and I made a beef-stew with a delicious piece of shin plus onions and mushrooms. Cooked for hours on about 12oC. The we finished off some apple-flan which I made yesterday, with some cream left over from TJ's do. It was the cream what did the trick! Well you can't waste food can you?
Touch wood - computer seems OK. And my newly found friend Roger (camera club) is coming round for an hour this evening, to help me with Photoshop.
Ta Ta.................
2 comments:
We are enthusiastic about British seaside resorts in the winter too - we have been to Llandudno but in early spring, when it was still jolly cold - winter woollies are a must! Brighton is one of our favourite out-of-season places, as is Broadstairs. It's still very warm here - or I would have fancied your shin of beef stew. We had visitors and I cooked a hot bacon joint with parsley sauce, that's another favourite.
Nature Notes.....
Cole-tits are what you probably have in your garden - unless they have very long tails, and are therefore long-tailed tits, we have a little flock of them in our garden at present, just passing through. And I saw a goldcrest in the fir trees in next door's garden - we do occasionally get them this time of year - devilishly hard to see, they are tiny, same colour as the trees and move so quickly. It's just the bright yellow/orange crest I can pick out.
The Llandudno (pause to bring tissue to mouth) hotel and pier both look very attractive. I think the last time I went there was as a child and I was obviously unimpressed (which means little) – or perhaps I am thinking of Aberystwyth? I do remember Rhyl which was extremely unexciting. That’s Wales sorted.
I am very fond of Coal Tits. We are entertained by a pair in our garden too. They are so very lively and I can understand the difficulty snapping them. As Jill says, the Long-Tailed Tit is very similar apart from having a long tail – a Coal Tit with extensions? The Marsh Tit and Willow Tit are very difficult to tell apart (even if they are together) and also closely resemble the Coal Tit apart from the latter’s white stripe splitting the black of its head – a Willow Tit with a highlight?
I sympathise with the hidden books. Sandra recently decided, quite unnecessarily as it would have been fine as it was for another decade or two, to redecorate our small bedroom (which was once my beloved Amstrad Room). She took down all the shelving and boxed all the books. What worries me is that the new shelves are smaller than the old ones. But are your books still packed for the first attempted move to Woodthorpe or have I missed something? Am I being sidelined? Are you ‘going to ground’?
I do not like wasting food or anything else (although. when I have had enough, I consider it more of a waste to shove something down my throat than to leave it on the plate) but I read somewhere recently that, as a nation, we throw away about a third of the food we purchase. Probably a good idea, I'd say, in the case of MacDonald’s (not that I have ever entered one of their establishments). I have to admit that a lot of food from our freezers is thrown out (or fed to Ralph) after 3 or 4 years; something which I consider proligate.
I lied about Wales.
In the 1980s I spent an enjoyably different weekend on a short course in Passive Solar Heating at the Alternative Energy Centre near Machynlleth (pause to spit again) and, aged 16/17, I cycled to Snowdonia with some friends and a tent. 100 miles to Chester on day one, calling at a pub for an illegal half of mild, and on again to pitch in the dark at the side of a gorge by the old road to Bethesda on day 2. The following day we set up proper camp beside Llyn Ogwen.
For a week we enjoyed brilliant sunshine, sunburn, and corned beef stirred into reconstituted mashed potato. The tops of the mountains were never obscured by mist or rain and we scrambled up Tryfan (although I did not jump/stride from Adam to Eve) and the Glyders, wearing just shirt, shorts and pumps, and screed down again.
On the second day of the ride home, from Chester, it rained constantly and my hands assumed a clawlike state around the handlebars. They remained like that for a month, which made a T-square hard to handle, and my doctor diagnosed it as the first stage of frost bite.
My bike was a fixed-wheel orange Triumph Tourer with drop bars, and when my father first saw the width of the seat he offered the opinion that he would rather ride round on a spade handle.
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