Fifty shades of rock
9th February 2018
When panning for a jolly good day out, one must always
remember to send out a reminder: sorry Lynn but you were with us in our
hearts. Meeting at around 1215ish, we
topped up our vitamin D with a quick dose of February sun and headed down
towards the National Stone Centre for our first refreshment of the day.
What happens when the rock is full?
With glorious blue skies, sunshine, rocky outcrops and vistas
in the offing, we could have been anywhere in the world. However, this outstanding landscape is
literally on the doorstep of a couple of lucky babes and today offered a special, physical
reminder of many of the places we have been to over the last few years
together. Infact, this place is good
that Don Quixote went off-piste from his adventures in Spain…
Proof!
Okay, enough of the waxing lyrical and back to normality.
Whilst waiting for Pam to arrive, Jo, Maggie, Alison and the Helens’ chatted
about the varying skills we have (or not) in our ability to learn a
different language. And thanks to Alison, we can now all remember
the german word for an underwater flying parrot: Papageientaucher.
But, how the auk will we remember that she was talking about a puffin! Unfortunately, Betty was a bit too keen to teach us yapping
for ‘I am bored and should have had a walk first’ so her lesson ended abruptly with
a bit of ‘time out’ on the naughty step in the blue van.
So, why was Pam late? It seems that Pam does not appear to own
her own name and needs her man’s name to help her get through a bit of security!
Oh dear, what did the suffragettes ever do for us? Never mind Pam, we are right
behind you, but probably not chaining ourselves to a railing just yet.
An underwhelming lunch, but as Helen J pointed out, there
would have been a bit more left-over had we all been served her recent experiment
with her home-made consommé
We’ll try the cakes next time
We decided against the exhibition in favour of our walk,
but these babes couldn’t resist a bit of retail therapy.
What a pair of
gems
With
Betty now forgiven we set off on our
trail towards Black Rocks
But it wasn’t long before she was up to mischief and
stole a ball from another dog! Extracting this was like trying to get money
out of a rock, but fortunately the other owner was skilled in naughty dogs’
playing ball and we all now know that…
Twist and pull works best!
Yeah… twist and pull does work best!
A burst of energy led us uphill for views of local stunt
man, who adds a new move to the twist and pull….
Hop, twist and pull out…
‘cos the are babes about!
And whilst we haven’t yet added a visit to this quarry as
one of our days’ out, this photo marks the start of some of our memories
elsewhere
The quarry…
Crich
Hardwick Hall and Teversal
Carsington; a winter favourite
And whilst we haven’t visited Breedon-on-the-hill
together, we know that Calke is close by…
Jo looked for her house
Whilst Pam found hers
And Betty looked wistfully at Pam’s stick…
With the sun on our backs we headed
back with exchanges of advice about money-saving tips: aldi vs lidl (again),
our next holidays and even started a new
topic on our family trees and how far back some of us have got. Whilst we can’t, yet, compete with the 30
million year old local history, finding out information about family from the
1600s, is still pretty impressive.
An underwhelming birdlist of:
Great tit
Jay (first view this year)
Jackdaw
Long-tailed tits (first for this year)
Magpie
Sparrows (the copper beech variety)
Woodpigeon
And Alison saw a goldcrest in her garden this morning.
Swaddling babe of de wood
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