Connected to the outside world..

Finally we are connected to the internet and interestingly I have nothing very interesting to post ha ha! We used a company called Quickline and they proved to be very efficient and seem in the first instance to have delivered exactly what they said they would but I'm not so sure....- Dr Freds very happy as he has got Spotify back in his life - next I need to sort out the tv and landline but hopefully its all coming together quite nicely.

We had family visit for the weekend include a young person who was all knowledgeable about internety things and helped me sort out the tv - and showed me how to test internet speeds as I'm not convinced we are getting what we were promised!!! It may necessitate a phone call tomorrow - why is technology so complicated!

beautiful lichen on fallen tree

Fortunately nature continues to deliver - we had a great walk around the Stanwick Iron age fort - very muddy and quite perilous in places but it made it an adventure - we had afternoon tea at the Ulnaby Medieval tea room not the best tea we have had I'm afraid -hopefully an off day we will give it another try... dirty tables and foreign bodies in the tea!!!! More adventure but not what I would have chosen.

adventurers (before the mud!)

Today we had a more in depth explore of Barnard Castle and some of the old houses are very lovely - down by the castle there are some really interesting buildings and yet more interesting statues...

lovely little stone statues on the side of the house - stunning house!!

We walked down by the very fast running river and contemplated the castle walls. it felt very spring like (but we still don't have lambs over the garden wall yet)

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Scotland part 2

The second half of the week continued in much the same vein. We had one rainy afternoon which was actually quite nice to be holed up in the house with the rain lashing the windows. It probably wasn't quite so nice for the two visitors that came on their bikes but they're tough cookies - and its only water- but I did feel sorry for them having to cycle six miles back down the track in the wind and rain, but given Scotland, it wasn't as bad as it could be. The big quest for the 2nd half of the week was to find some deer antiers! The chap that owned the house dropped in to visit - he was a very friendly fella and was chatting about how this was the time of year when all the Stags lost their antlers (he collected them and sold them) so after that we were on the serious lookout. It's always been Fred's mission to find some dropped antlers.... The Monro baggers continued with the mission to bag the remaining three Monros... there is discussion as whet...

Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town. Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now. The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art.... Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at...

Funchal

So after three days at sea we finally hit Funchal in Madeira. An escape from the ship, and I have to say it was very pleasant indeed. First of all the weather is really splendid. Especially when you know that everybody else in the UK is suffering grim storms and vile winds.. Over here it is between 22 and 25 degrees is really quite warm. Funchal is a pretty city. It's built on a hill it with lots of lovely white houses with stunning red roofs. In order to get the best of it we walked along the sea front until we got to the cable car and we took it up the hill. It was a really good ride much longer than we imagined and it's quite weird because it goes right through the town - completely over everybody's house... So not only do you get a lovely vista of the bay but you can view the beautiful rooftops and get to look in everybody's gardens and to look at their picnic sets.. clean washing nice plants... scratty b...

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