Scotland

My husband and I decided that it would be wonderful to spend a Christmas in Scotland.  We arrived in Moffat 2 days before Christmas Day.

We stayed in a really beautiful hotel that is in the middle of town.  I thought that the hotel would look wonderful on a sampler.  The hotel was originally owned by Lord Hopeton I think it was.  

One of the wonderful pubs in Moffat.  This is The Balmoral.  We had a couple of meals here.  You could say we had dinner at Balmoral :).  The locals were really lovely there.

 

Another building that would look wonderful on a sampler.  This was across the road from our hotel.  

War a Memorial in the middle of the town

 I love nutcrackers and have a few.  This one was a whopper.

 

Loved the window display in this shop.  The peacocks did it for me.

My DH loved this saying.  I wonder if he's trying to tell me something lol.  It's not working.

Our room in the hotel.  Loved sleeping in a four poster.  It was really a lovely room.

Moffat is on the Boarders and is a Milltown.  Bought some lovely knitwear here.  Loved the loom with the Blackwatch tartan.  Love tartan.  My DH bought be a beautiful Moffat tartan shawl which is grey, black, with a little bit of red through it.  He also bought me a lovely Blackwatch shawl that's like a cape.

Moffat is where all the Moffats no matter how it's spelt come from.

 

Christmas Day in Moffat.  It was a very misty day.  Had to take a photo of the Church of course.

A girl who loves samplers with sheep had to take a photo of some.  Added bonus was the Moffat sign.

These are the black sheep of the family lol.

We had to stop to take photos standing besides the a Welcome To Moffat sign.

On Christmas Eve we took a drive up past Glasgow to see something that was high on my DH's list.  It was to see the Falkirk Wheel.  These are the Furies.  Totally amazing.  Actually every thing there was amazing.

This is the Falkirk Wheel.  It was snowing btw.

The Falkirk Wheel is an amazing bit of engineering that joins two canals that are on different levels.

Check out the cogs and wheels.

What happens is that there are two of these carriages for a better word.  The barge floats into this section and there's probably another barge (but not necessarily) in the other carriage which is on top of the wheel.  Then the whole wheel turns so that the carriage that was on the bottom ends up the top where the other canal is.  It's really awesome to stand there and watch the whole process.  It creaks and groans as it slowly turns. It takes about 10 minutes to get from he bottom to the top.

It would have been wonderful to have gone for a ride on it, but because it was Christmas Eve, it was totally booked out for Children with Santa parties.

Another photo from Moffat.  Loved this photo.

This is Lockabie where the awful plane crash was.  This was also Christmas Eve.  We were on the hunt for a Celtic FC jumper for one of our sons.  It was getting near closing time so we had to hurry as this was our only chance of getting one.  Love the sheep.

Lockabie.

Wherever we went in both Great Britain and France,  there were lots of these wind farms everywhere.  They always remind me of The Day Of TheTriffids.  Rather ery when you see a red flashing light in the gloom of the mist.

 

Beautiful Scotland in the snow and mist.

I hope you have enjoyed our trip.  We both had a wonderful time and hopefully we will be able to go again at another time.  It was a wonderful 6 weeks. 

Wales and Liverpool

This is a very long list, so settle down with a cuppa :).

After we left Cornwall we headed up North as we had to be in Liverpool by Friday night.  About that further down.

So most of the time after we left Cornwall involved a of driving.  This is Gloucester where we spent the night.  

The hotel were we stayed.  Henry VIII is supposed to have stayed here.

Because my DH had never been to England before we decided to go into Wales for the day.  Another Church where I had to take a photo of the graveyard.  For some reason I'm attracted to them.  Maybe it's because they remind me of books by some if my favourite authors. Elizabeth Gaskell, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens etc.

We were driving through Wales and we came across this lovely village in South Wales.  It's called Caerleon and what is fascinating is that there's a lot of Roman Ruins there including a Fortress and Roman Baths.

We were really lucky as the Baths were open which was wonderful.  They are a bit different from the Roman Baths is Bath.  They Have water inside of them.  The water  in these ones are created by lighting and there are holograms of Romans bathing which was interesting to see.  Plus there were a lot of Roman artefacts there.

We found this quite fascinating.  If you look closely you can see the sole of a Roman sandal that is on a brick tile.  There is also two other footprints on another tile, but the photo is a bit blurry.  They are the footprints of a cat and a dog.  They think that a cat walked onto the tile while it was still wet.  A dog chased the cat and his paw print was placed there and then the Roman chased both of them.

Roman mosaics.

We had lunch in Caeleon and there were some amazing wood carvings outside.

Beautiful Welsh Mountains in December.

While travelling through the a Mountains we came across this site.   We had to sit and wait for half an hour while they transferred the wooden logs from one truck to another.

I decided to get out if the car to take some  photos as it was quite pretty and also stretch my legs.

Suddenly there was a huge bang above me to that frightened the life out of me.  It turned out to be one of these.  Then there was another and another.  You really don't hear them coming until  they are on top of you.  I now know where the expression about wearing brown cords comes from lol.  They came around a couple of times.

The next day late in the afternoon we arrived in Liverpool.  A lot of people go to Liverpool for The Beatle experience.  This was the closest I got to anything connected to The Beatles.  The photo was hanging in the hallway in the hotel they we stayed in.  It was outside our room.

The Mersey River.

My DH and 3 Sons are HUGE Liverpool fans.  It has always his dream to go to Anfield the Home of Liverpool FC.  He has been an International Member of the Club for many years.

We had booked in to do The Liverpool Experience on the Saturday morning.  As soon as he saw this come into view he told me that "there was Heaven" and The Gates To Heaven.

This is the Memorial to the 96 people who sadly died in 1989 when there were to many people in the stands and they were crushed to death when people started to panic.  What I found quite touching while standing on the footpath opposite was a taxi that drove past it.  The driver bowed his head and crossed himself.

While waiting for our tour to start we decided to go into the Merchandise shop.  Bad move.  With 4 Liverpool  fans and Christmas it turned out to be a very expensive place to be.  Think we could have bought a new player for the season :).  This is just a very small section of the shop.

My husband wanted this photo of his hand touching this Sign.  All of the players walk underneath it and touch it when they go out to play a game.

Some of the Silverware that they have won.  These are the UEFA Cups - Champions of Europe.  Liverpool have won 5 of them and can keep them.  They are quite big.  You can only keep them when you win the UEFA Cup 5 times.

While we were there on Saturday I decided to try and see if it was possible to get 2 tickets to see Liverpool play Arsenal the following day.  It was a long shot and we got lucky as they say because we got 2 tickets.  Only problem was that they were 10 rows apart, in the same section though.  But it wasn't a problem, as we were THERE.  Tell you I learnt a lot of new words that day sitting with the guys lol.  Especially from the young guy sitting next to me.  My goodness.  He certainly wasn't Stirlings fan.  This was before all of the stories that he was leaving.

Before going to the game on Sunday we went for a quick tour of Liverpool.  Didn't see a lot as we were worried about finding a spot to park our car.  

Don't you love my hat.  Because it was quite cold and I kept getting earaches my husband bought this wonderful Harris Tweed with Imitation Mink hat while we were in Bath.  Did the trick and I didn't get them again.

Don't you love this photo of Steven Gerard.  He's one of my Sons favourite players.  He looks like he's getting a bit peeved at somebody.

We were in Liverpool for 2 full days and spent all of the time at Anfield.  What an experience.  It's something my husband will never forget.

Thought that I'd show you something that I have wanted to work on for a very long time.  I call it my dream sampler.  There is no chart for it and I'm working it all out from a photo that I have had for a long long time.  It's my interpretation of a sampler that is in The V&A.

Thank you for stopping by.  I know that I have been a terrible Blogger lately, but I don't seem to have the time to sit down and write as I did before my DH retired.  Next time we are in Scotland.