Gardening

In the picture below you can see a tidied up 'bird' garden with some new planting and some tubs 'borrowed' from the front of the house

Here you can see the rest of the new planting and also some of the slabs left over from the refurbishment of the front drive being used to provide a wheelchair 'ramp' to get mum into the house through the back door when she came out of hospital

Get well soon...

Here are some of the flowers, cards & presents that mum has received from well wishers. 

(Not pictured are: cards lost from the first ward she was in at LRI. 

Also not pictured: drinks, maltesers, grapes, scones and cakes)

Underview

Some of you will be all too familiar with our main concern at the moment 

that is getting Jacqui's foot healed.

But the sun was so inviting this afternoon

that I stepped out for a few minutes

with camera

into the garden

hoping to find something to photograph.

And here is one of the photos I took...

Can you see what is is yet?

I like this picture because I think you can see the feeding tube 

(OK it must have a proper name but I don't know or can't think what it is)

[You may have to click on the picture to enlarge it]

So here is the reveal...

... a small tortoiseshell butterfly

And on to Aldeburgh

Our first walkabout in Aldeburgh took in the lifeboat station

(The lifeboat is now launched off a crawler tractor base but my first memories of Aldeburgh go back to the time when it was launched down a slipway and later hawled out of the water across tarred planks where the ones that were finished with behind had to be dragged round to the front)

Amazingly the model yacht pond is still there

And the centre piece Moot Hall is still in fine condition

We stayed at the White Lion Hotel with a sea facing room...

...from which we could watch the early morning catch being landed...

...and gutted and sold to eager buyers (and the seagulls queued up to be fed the "guts")

Framlingham Castle

Our route took us via Saxtead Green and its famous Post Mill, but we only paused to take the snap.

[If you are wondering why the Post Office needs a mill, you need to re-think - it is a mill that revolves around a central post to best catch the wind]

Looking for a break in the journey to our next major destination we stopped at Framlingham to look at the castle [English Heritage]

It is a very satisfying miniature castle with a complete outer wall and a bridge over the "moat" to the only entrance

It has several splendid chimneys

In the exhibition area there is this old map of Suffolk

[Click on the map to enlarge and then try looking for Worlingworth and Framlingham in the middle below the line]

Of course it was necessary to climb up and walk the wall (complete circuit)

Inside the castle boundary are the "Poor houses"

And inside the museum I was amused to see Robin advertising cigarettes

A nostalgic look at Worlingworth...

Worlingworth is the first village I have any memory of...

I can remember riding my 3-wheel cycle round and round the concrete path which formed a full circuit of our house (which was then the Police House)

This is my first school (two classes: Mrs Goddard & Mr Piper)

This is what the Tuckwell farm has grown up into

And in Worlingworth church

everything is just as I remember it

with the closed pews

and pipe organ

which is powered by a hand bellows

(someone has to keep an eye on the falling weight hanging from the string 

and pump it up with the lever before the organ runs out of air)

And finally the old 'fire engine' is still there with its inscription (hidden) 

"The gift of John Major Eʃquire to ye pariʃh of Worlingworth 1760"

[For more about the church and fire engine see e.g. here]

On to Elveden

We stayed in the Lakeview Hotel

although the lake view was almost obscured by the trees

but on the top floor was the restaurant which served a first class breakfast

and it revolved

slowly (c.f P.O. Tower)

So we had very leisurely breakfasts

taking in a full 360 degree turn.

There was a 'hide' marked on the village map

from which we saw these deer

and spotted woodpecker, great tit, blue tit, coal tit, chaffinch, blackbird and, for the very first time 'live', siskin. Back in the early 70's I was shown a siskin (mort) after it had tried to fly through a pane of glass but I do not recall seeing one since.

We were entertained for ages by (younger) people taking on the arial forest trail culminating in a zip wire. We swam a couple of times in the SubTropical Paradise Pool Area

We come not to Bury St Edmunds but...

We started our week's break by heading for Bury St Edmunds

and apparently arriving at St Edmundsbury

Inside the cathedral the organ loft catches the eye

There are individual cushions on the choir stalls and this one (Saint Fursa) we thought was worth further investigation - how many legs on that ox?

No visit to the cathedral is complete without a visit to the tea garden where we found this piece of artwork