Country Living Christmas

Friday 12 November - Visited London and the much anticipated Country Living Christmas Fair. We had so much fun at the spring one we decided to try the Christmas version. Nat and I took the bus again and met up with Sam at the Fair. It was heaving as was expected. We saw lots of lovely crafts and christmas ideas.

From Brecon to Hay

Saturday 6 November - Taking advantage of renting a car for Bridgewater, we drove to the Brecon Beacons for a nice walk. We ended up with much more of a walk then we had intended which often happens as we both seem to have the attitude of, well the top isn't that much farther. We made our way up a pretty steep fell and had some terrific views. After we looped back to the car we drove to Hay on Wye for a very late lunch and some shopping. We had an excellent time in Hay, as always. There was a small artisan christmas market which added to the festive atmosphere. We had some sheep's milk ice cream at shepherd's before heading back to Bristol

Bridgewater Ablaze

Friday 5 November - Bonfire Night! We celebrated by once again returning to Bridgewater for the annual parade of lights and the squibbing. We held out despite the never ending rain, and enjoyed a very nice parade. The best part was of course the squibbing and this year was as good as we remembered, with one squib going on for quite awhile after the others had finished. This time because we had planned our parking much better we didn't have to sprint back to the car. We made good time on the road and got back to Bristol before 1pm, an excellent evening.

Happy Halloween

Sunday 31 October - After an excellent evening on Saturday with our Steam railway murder mystery and dinner, we decided to have a relaxed day on Halloween and to celebrate Ian's birthday by taking a nice walk. We went to Blaise Castle estate and saw the foliage and walked along the stream. Then we made our way to Kings Weston House where we had lunch and did some more walking, then we had a brief walk down by Severn Beach before zipping back to Bristol. We had a nice dinner at Brown's with Tom and then Nat joined us for pumpkin cheesecake at the flat.

Bath to Keynsham (or nearly)

Saturday 16 October - Ian and I decided to do some shopping in Bath. After a nice tour of our favorite shops we had a very delicious and hearty lunch at our new favorite Bath Restaurant Wild Cafe. After eating we still had lots of energy and decided to walk to Keynsham, the next stop down the train, heading toward Bristol. We thought this would be simple enough by following the canal path as we had done from Bradford on Avon to Bath. We roughed some heavy down pours but had a mostly enjoyable walk until we ended up on a road with no more public footpaths, no sign of the canal or any signs for Keynsham. We'd already been walking for about 3 hours and thought we must certainly be close. After asking a local couple we discovered our mistake. The kindly couple very generously offered to drive us to the station, which was much appreciated as it would soon be dark. We were dropped off at the station and duly made our way back to Bristol, much later than we had intended. It was a quick dinner before heading out for a pub crawl to celebrate Tom's birthday.