Hitting 60 🥳

Well …I’m not quite sure how that happened 🤔

I’m not sure how I feel about being 60. In some respects I feel pretty much the same as I did when I was 30 … in my head anyway.

It’s my body that keeps on reminding me otherwise 😜

It really is a strange one. There is the definite thought in the back of my mind that I could only have another 20 years, if I’m lucky,  … but then that is still a fair old whack … though the older I get the quicker time definitely seems to pass.

I guess it’s a good time for some kind of reflection but this month has just been too busy to draw breath so far … I’ve definitely been drawing out the celebrations … and here’s a bit of a 60th birthday photo dump to prove it.

I started early with a very lovely surprise afternoon tea organised by my good friend Tina. I thought it was just going to be Tina and I enjoying one of our favourite activities of an afternoon of tea and cake, with plenty of chat thrown in. 

Tina did a brilliant job of keeping her plans secret and when I arrived to meet her I was overwhelmed to see a lovely group of old friends all gathered just waiting for me to arrive. We really did have a lovely afternoon of catching up over afternoon tea and it was all the more special for being such a surprise …

I came home loaded down with good wishes, cards and gifts. It was a lovely way to start off the birthday celebrations …

A week later and I met up with my old school friend Lesley for a lazy lunch and a bit of shopping …

For my birthday weekend we had a family night in with a takeaway from a local Italian restaurant, which I topped and tailed with anti pasti and a limencello kind of tiramisu. The food was great and we had a lovely evening just eating, chatting and being generally entertained by Bobby …

It was an early start on the Sunday for a birthday treat spa day with very good friends …

And then it was actually my birthday and Martin and I just had a ride out to Hanbury Hall … a National Trust property we’d not visited before, where we just had a bit of a wander and a very nice lunch …

There was a Christmas afternoon tea with mum and my sister, Sarah …

… and a lunchtime visit to The Creperie, which is always a real treat … especially with these guys …

And that is very nearly it. We are now looking forward to a weekend up in The Peak District with Jackie and Phil, where we will be taking in the Chatsworth Christmas Markets and lights … but I will save that for another time.

I think I can say that I’ve made the most of celebrating and … for the moment I am enjoying sitting in the comfy chair, heating on, Storm Bert doing its thing outside, surrounded by cards and flowers …

I guess I will have plenty of time to reflect on how being 60 actually feels and I am building up to a final review of the 60 Things I wanted to do before I hit 60. 

Of course … I do know that, as well as free prescriptions, I can now get free soup and a roll in Asda cafes up and down the country 😂😂😂. Hopefully they are not the only benefits of getting older 😜

🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

Lodge Life :: October 2024

Hi there everyone 😀

We had a really lovely week at the lodge in October. We were blessed with glorious autumnal sunshine for the majority of the time and Martin was doing well on his new knee.

After our stop off at The British Ironworks Centre on our way over we eased ourselves in slowly … starting off with a short walk along the beach by Plas Heli. It was just what we both needed after six weeks back at home with pretty much wall to wall dull and miserable weather …

Our walk was followed by a very nice lunch in Caffi Largo, which has definitely become a firm favourite …

That same evening we had a real treat. Facebook had been flooded with predictions of a very good chance of the aurora borealis putting in a good show and we weren’t disappointed. We didn’t go anywhere special to see them but I just kept nipping out the back of the lodge to see what the camera could pick up.

I was really pleased with my first efforts … though I couldn’t really see much with the naked eye …

… but the second time I went out I was really impressed. It was awesome and something I’ve wanted to try and catch for ages so I was well chuffed …

It seems that there were pretty good sights everywhere and I’ve seen some absolutely amazing photographs … which did make me feel mine were not that brilliant … but I am still so glad we got to see them.

The following day we had a bit of a bigger day out, heading over to Betws-y-Coed for the day. We parked up in the other side of the river and walked back across the bridge. The views of the river were just lovely …

We walked along the Main Street and down to the station …

… where we had another very nice lunch …

… before retracing our steps to the car and heading out of the village for Swallow Falls, where we paid our £2 each and squeezed through the turnstile for our latest look at the falls …

There had been plenty of rain so we had a really good show. Martins knee didn’t feel up to walking down to the bottom so we just really took in the upper part of the falls before heading off.

Our next stop was the Ty Hwnt I’r Bont tea rooms in Llanrwst, where I was hoping there may be a few red leaves of the Virginia creeper on show. Having taken photographs when we were last over I really wanted an autumn display. Sadly we were probably two weeks too late … we will just have to come back next year. It still looked very pretty though …

For our third day we decided for a short walk along the beach at Nefyn. We hadn’t intended to go far, but actually surprised ourselves and walked round the bay to the harbour …

It was another glorious day and I couldn’t resist a quick happy birthday to Lesley, even though it was a day early 🙈. We are both 60 this year and I’m not quite sure how that happened …

The next day the rain finally put in an appearance and we didn’t go far at all. We had a mooch round Lavender House and finished off with a ride to Llanbedrog and The Gallery, where we couldn’t resist cosying up in the tea room for tea and cake …

We had one more day before heading for home and it was another lovely bright sunny day so we decided to try out a bit of a ‘proper’ walk.

We headed over to Garreg and through the village to park up on the side of the road by the Croesor with a plan to try and find the Croesor waterfalls. According to the book it was a fairly short, nice easy walk … so we thought we’d give it a go …

I have to say we were both actually quite excited. It has been so long since we’ve done any kind of really walking and we were both really looking forward to seeing how we got on …

We started out on a public footpath along a private access road which crossed a cattle grid …

… and ran alongside the river …

After a short while the path went slightly away from the river and up around a couple of pretty looking cottages …

Once past the cottages the walk directions took us away from the main path and down towards the river …

It did start to get a bit tricky underfoot but we were doing ok so carried on and started to see the first of the cascades …

We really wanted to find the higher of the falls so kept plodding on … climbing over fallen trees and over some chunky rocks …

With neither of us being that steady on our feet things were getting a bit dicey. I went on ahead a bit to see how things were looking but once past the fallen trees in the next picture I couldn’t even see where the path went …

We decided we’d done enough for one day and opted for retracing our steps rather than possibly getting ourselves into an awkward predicament. Whilst we were both pleased with how we’d done, especially Martin on his new knee, we were a bit disappointed not to have been able to finish the walk … maybe next time. 

It didn’t take us long to get back to the car and we decided to head for Llyn Mair, where we enjoyed our lunch in the sunshine …

… and very nice it was too 😋

That was pretty much it for October. Not sure we will make it back in November but I have everything crossed that we can make it back again before the end of the year 😀

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