October 2010 – Out and About

Sue and I visited Kingston Lacy on a beautiful afternoon for a walk around the grounds. It was a Monday so the house wasn’t open (National Trust properties are rarely open on Mondays). We almost had the place to ourselves. The house used to be the family seat of the Bankes family. They owned huge tracts of land in the area.

On the following weekend we visited Maggie and Andy in Gloucestershire. They took us to Westonbirt Arboretum on the Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately it was dull and so we didn’t see the colours of the trees which are magnificent on a sunny day.

Sunday we did a circular tour to Newnham, west of the River Severn and Lydney where the Austin 7 club were having an outing. The car below, with the decal on the side, was driven from Peking to Paris in 2007. Not bad for a car of that age.

     

Austin 7 – Ulster Replica

The weather perked up on Sunday afternoon and we had a very nice lunch on the patio. A great weekend.

      

Throughout October there has been some very good summery weather and we have tried to be out and about on the better days. There has been a preponderance of fungi this year I spotted this ‘fly agaric’ on Holmsley caravan site.

View from a very small beach near Stanpit Marsh.

New Forest ramblers, on a sunny but chilly day, at Hengistbury Head. Julie, spot your sister!

 

I wanted to go geocaching and Sue wanted to go to Bournemouth (shopping?)so we split up for a couple of hours. I learnt from the geocache that Mary Shelley author of Frankenstein is buried in a local churchyard.

Wooooo!

The Bournemouth balloon and the French market.

      

In the afternoon we went for a walk along the prom by Branksome Chine. These sculptures are in Cliff Gardens. The one with the hat on is me – just in case you were confused.

 

I’ve had a bit of fun and games with Dell computers recently. The screen on the laptop went blank and stayed that way. It is only just over 2 years old. Looking on the internet it is a known problem with the graphics chip overheating. I wrote to Dell – no reply. I wrote again threatening them with my solicitor (next door neighbour) sending them a County Court Judgement – result. They phoned within 24 hours and the laptop has been collected for repair. The only problem is that they replace the chip with a similar one so the same thing could happen again. Watch this space!

We took delivery of a new car at the end of September. The Volvo had served us well, but it was time for change. We wanted something a bit more substantial that could cope better with the potholes and standing water that one encounters in UK from time to time. Also it has to be heavy enough to be safe pulling the caravan. So here it is a Honda CRV.