Twixtmas

On Christmas Day we pretty much visited all of the people that we know and love and spent the majority of the day with all of the family at mum and dad's.

We opened lots of presents, ate far too much ...... dinner was lovely, played the His & Hers Logo Game, which was very controversial, and managed to get back home early evening to crash out in front of the fire and the TV.

Boxing Day was another day visiting friends, Lesley, Tom, Lauren, Jess & Auntie Dot, for the annual Boxing Day lunch of cold turkey and chips, followed by more game playing and snow!!

I didn't leave the house then for the whole of the weekend and Martin didn't do much better, just nipping to Sainsbury's for a few bits and pieces.  I'm sure we could have managed, but you know what it's like.

Come Tuesday, we were well in need of some fresh air and a bit of gentle exercise.  Mum, dad, David & Alison were doing some of the caches we had set along the canal, which is not far from where we live, so we decided we'd have a walk and meet up with them.

We thought it would be freezing so were well wrapped up, but after walking not very far at all, we realized it wasn't actually that cold and we were far too warm, even though the canal was still frozen solid and the birdlife wasn't quite sure how to handle this.
We soon bumped into the family to join them for their walk.  Whilst we were standing on one of the bridges we heard a very strange rumbling and cracking sound and wondered what on earth it was. It turned out to be a canal barge breaking its way through the ice, which we stopped and watched for some time.  It was pretty fascinating and definitely counted as the "interesting thing that we had never seen before" for this walk.

We were quite surprised at how thick the ice was.  If the birdlife was confused before, it was even more so now, with ducks swimming for a bit, then climbing onto sheets of ice to pass them, before slipping back into the water.
We left the family at their car and made our way back along the canal and home, boy we were shattered, with very aching legs ..... and we'd only walked about 2 miles!!

Now, where's the Quality Street, I'm having withdrawal symptoms.