glorious walk along the coastal path

Steven and I had a fantastic day out in Wales again. We ventured further into Wales this time and went to Aberystwyth. We had a few geocaches planned along the coastal path so started off by climbing Constitution Hill - aptly named because you clearly need a good constitution to climb it!
Lovely views over the town when you get to the top though.

We found our first geocache on the hill - but due to the growth of the gorse over the summer it was a bit of a battle to get to it. Steven did not go in because he was wearing shorts - so I had to do it!

After we stopped at the lovely cafe on the top we then set out along the coastal path to pick up some more geocaches along the way.

We couldn't have chosen a better day - glorious sunshine & blue skies. I did catch the sun a bit though!

Along the coastal path overlooking Clarach Bay.


We found the next one easily, but the we were foxed by this one - clue not helpful as there were lots of trees! trying to find the piece of string holding the cache was like looking for a needle in the haystack.
when we arrived at Clarach bay we very surprised, lots of things to see & do. We had never been here before and really liked it, so we stopped and had lunch and dreamed about owning a caravan of our own here!

We then ventured on towards Borth,this walk along the coast cliff top was gorgeous. The geology of the area was very interesting and the views fantastic. We only managed one more geocache at Wallogg before time got the better of us and we had to turn back. We left the lovely Dolphin geocoin here at this one because it wanted to be placed by water - so overlooking the sea was an ideal place.

When we got back to Aber it was so lovely & sunny we sat on the front and tucked into fish & chips!

This mornings purchase!

These new chipboard embellishments.

At the last crop Anne & Caroline told us that they had some new chipboard coming all the way from Australia from a company called Buzz & Bloom - they have an excellent blogg. We were quite excited and wanted first dips before they put them up on the web site shop - they arrived yesterday so were all had a rummage through the box this morning and it would have been rude not to buy - wouldn't it?

I was quite restrained and just bought 4 items - could have bought lots more. This lot came to £18.00 which is not too bad considering it is all the way from Aus and not widely available here.

I actually don't use chipboard! So now with these there is no excuse and you should see it cropping up on many layouts from now.

3 layouts from this mornings crop

These are the layouts I finished this morning. 1 DLO and 1 SLO taking my total now to 71 towards my 104 target for the year.

This Glastonbury layout was dictated by the title. It was the front cover of the programme which I scanned in and then printed out onto A4 photo paper. The black card stock is from the coredinations range. I sanded the top parts of each page for the smaller photos - not quite sure of the result. The journalling is under the photo by the date - I could not find any room to put it directly on the page.

This layout shows Eleanor playing with her new doll and pram on her first birthday and I actually cut up some genuine old photos - they are scanned into my computer just in case I made a mistake! At least I am making a start on using the old ones up now.
Paper is Prima Angelique Collection: Heavenlies. Rub ons - Karen Foster ( rub ons that actually work! they are a delight to use), Pocket frames by Heidi Grace - have had these for a while now and initially was not really sure about them - but have used them a lot lately and only got a couple left which is a shame as they are really nice & useful. Tab - Kelly Panacci. Heart tag & brads - Papermania. Stickles - glitter glue.

My new book -

This new book arrived from Amazon today and its gorgeous. I can't wait for bedtime so I can start reading it.
I love Francesco da Mosta - he is so intelligent but a bit cheeky at the same time. His BBC programmes on Venice and Italy have made me desperate to visit there - have not made it yet but still keep hinting to Steven!

When I saw this book on Amazon ages ago I popped it in my basket and have been patiently waiting for the price to come down. It was £25 but this week it went down to £11.25 so I grabbed one and boy it is actually worth £25, the photography and writing are just fab.

Unfortunately I missed the start of the programme on the TV but luckily it only started this week so I was able to download them both on BBC i player to watch on the computer and have set Sky + to record all the others. Its on on Tuesday & Wednesday nights BBC2 at 20.30 hrs.

This is a map of the journey he took from Venice in Italy all the way around the Mediterranean to Istanbul.

The book is huge! It is a large hardback book and is really heavy with 240 pages. It will keep me quiet for ages.

Because the book is so big you can really appreciate the beautiful photography - I wish I was there now!

was preparing this for the crop on Saturday but...

got carried away and decided to finish it! Everything was in place so it was silly to take it all the way there on Saturday just to stick them all down. Still have 3 more nearly prepared layouts so I won't be stuck for something to do at the crop.

I am quite pleased with it - just don't like the alphas at the bottom. Wish they had all have been single letters not some of them having lots of the same on each square.

The cards stock is Nana's Kids from DCWV again and so are the silly alphas - this time from the 8x8 stack. The red edging is Bazill 'edges' already cut into the scalloped shapes like this. Journalling spot is from Sceinic Route Blue lined white paper. The rub ons Title are American Crafts 'Jack' on to acetate.

Quite pleased with the photos - obviously they are old pre-digital ones from 1987 - but I have scanned them in - then cropped and photoshopped them - so they look much better than the originals. Though this way does not help me reduce my photo pile!

Had a good news letter from Jessica Sprague - photoshop Friday series on touching up photos - so will have a good read of that this afternoon.

Lovely summer's evening stroll .......

with some deer, a geocache and a new car thrown in!

We had a lovely stroll around Attingham Park this evening and for once the deer were right next to the path so we could see them really close up- usually they are so far in the distance you can only just make them out. Managed to get some really nice photos of them.

Here is Steven just watching the deer.

This one walked right in front of us!

A new geocache has just been placed next door to the park so we popped over and did that one quickly. It was in the church Yard of St Etas Church Atcham,and is part of the Shropshire Church Gems series - we must go and find some more of these. We sat for a while and enjoyed the tranquility of the surroundings.

Steven holding the cache - he is really but it was a small camouflage container and you can't see it!

Then, as we have got to get a car for Jess when she comes home, we walked to Paul Caswells garage just to see what he had for sale and for what price and there was the perfect car for Jess - obviously it was closed at this time of day, so I am going to pop back in the morning and have a better look at it. so all in all an exciting evening!

A return visit to Wales

Steven and I had a fab day out back in Wales again on Sunday. I really wanted him to see the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and he was suitably impressed! Unfortunately we were foxed by the geocache on there (Coin exchange GC19PAP) and it was a DNF! We will have to return again.


We parked the car at Trevor Basin and walked into Llangollen along the tow path. It took us 2 hours but we did stop for a couple more geocaches and Lunch.


This Steven at the first geocache (Ban Rivets GC1(PW7) we left the Poison travel bug I had picked up in Hertfordshire here. He also found (Sir Bors de Granis holy grail from the Knights series GCY1TF) - no pic I am afraid. Next find was the elusive Bridge View GC1B6HV which had foxed us girls last month.


he found it easily! We picked up this beautiful Dolphin Geocoin, which wants to be placed near water. Just need to think where to put it - somewhere by the river Severn or over to the Norfolk coast next week? Llangollen was basking in beautiful sunshine when we arrived and was full of Sunday afternoon tourists - it is a nice place though and we got to see a steam train (my favourite! ) in action.

IIt was getting late but we decided to do a quick geocache as the GPS said we were close. We did** up on Geriant Hill. Well it was not a quick one - the GPS took us up the hill the wrong way and we had to scramble through a Forrest until we reached the right spot! We followed the road back down, which was a much easier route. It was a CD only cache and we were hoping to pick up a nice CD but they were just the ones you get free in Sunday papers! We left A Catatonia CD.

We were quite tired after this jaunt up a hill and fearful of the long walk back to Trevor we stopped for refreshments at the canal cafe. Nice cup of tea for Dad and a Magnum ice lolly for me.

We had a great but tiring day out and in fact it had poured down with rain all day in Shrewsbury and we had a glorious day - just one shower whilst we were searching under the Aquduct.

However for those of you that rushed out and bought a new SD card for your camera - don't do what I did and left it at home stuck in the USB port of my laptop! These photos were taken on the new phone, but they have come out OK I think.