A trip to The Lake District with DeeJay & Penny

A lovely week with David, Penny and the dogs in Dipper Cottage on Coniston Lake, with a stopover with John and Jane on the way up and babysitting for Gail and Martin on the way back. The weather was very kind to us and we managed several walks:

Although we took #duettovan, we didn’t sleep in it; so the only trip it did was a trip to Furness and Barrow.

An inter-active version of the trip is available here.

One of the highlights of the trip was to see this little bird at the window of the cottage whilst we ate our breakfast.

We reckon (after some advice from Paul) that it could have been trying to see off a rival – attacking it’s reflection in the window. Seems a good theory.

Here are some pictures of the week – if you have Flash you will also see them below as a slideshow.

Christchurch

We spent our last full day in New Zealand walking around Christchurch. This was Christchurch a week before the major earthquake that hit on 22nd February, 10 days after we left. The quake itself was not as severe as one that had hit the city the previous year in September, and they’d had another one on Boxing Day 2010 as well.

I think as you look through these pictures, the poignant ones are of the cathedral and the flower festival that had only just begun on the day we visited. It’ll be a long time before a similar event will be held there.

We liked the Botanical Gardens a lot, wonderful to stroll through them and enjoy an early autumnal day. We popped into an exhibition of Sir Walter Scott’s fateful polar expedition that had left from Christchurch 100 years before.

You can also see the photos here, rather than as a slideshow.