14th July 2009 - July shop watch - Taste juice bar

I don't drink tea or coffee so never feel the need to stop in a cafe for a drink when I pop into town, but occasionally I do like to call in here for a take-away juice drink. They are all freshly made on the premises and as the shop is called are very 'tasty'! This shop is found in Mardol opposite my favourite shop - Lakeland.

13th July photo - my cookery books

Not very exciting today - but these are what I see each time I go into my kitchen - my cookery books. They sit on the worktop next to the cooker and tempt me every day to open them. Unfortunately I am not very good at experimenting with new recipes - I tend to stick to the old faithful ones. My most used cookbook is a very old Good Housekeeping one (covered in the brown flowered sticky back plastic!) that I had when I was a child and still comes out each week for baking recipes or for pancake mixture etc.

I think the above close up photo will be my POTD - but I like the one below because it reminds me that we still have not yet got the kitchen tiled - 12 months later!!

Taking these photos prompted me to have a look through them and I have found a lovely recipe for a cheesecake - so I may try that tomorrow, which will give the family a treat and me a photo for the day!

12th July photo - 'Life is just a bowlful of cherries'

I love the song 'Life is just a bowlful of cherries' which is meant to mean life is pleasant. My life is going fairly well at the moment - with a few hiccups here and there - so what better way to show it than with a bowlful of cherries!!

We found them at the market for £1.50 lb or would that be a kg? They seem to be £6 - £7 at the supermarket - so we tend not to buy them - but at this price we could not resist them. They were ripe & delicious so did not last long. Oh dear I think my blog has turned into a fruit blog!

11th July photo - still no ospreys!

Steven & I tackled another geocache this afternoon which took us down on a long river walk to see the osprey nest from a different direction. We were really hopeful of spotting them today after our disappointment yesterday - but still no luck! We could see the nest quite clearly but it remained stubbornly empty.

This is a photo of the nest in the background - along with the monitoring cameras. Sorry its rather distant.

However the surroundings were quite beautiful. We had a very long walk because the ospreys nest cannot be sited in a populated area - so it was nice & remote and the hills looked gorgeous. This may be my photo of the day.

But I am also tempted by this cheeky one of Steven. He felt a sugar craving half way though our walk and he was not surprised to find a bag of sweets in my walking bag!

10th July photo - thawrted at each turn!

I am not sure which photo to use today, as we visited a few different places today - but none of the visits produced anything remotely photo worthy!

First of all we had to take Liam to the Workhouse music festival in Llanfyllin, so called in to do a cache here at Llnclys heritage railway station. I like this photo of the sign, but the real steam engines were not running and there were just wrecks waiting to be restored. I had hoped for a good photo opportunity here.

Once we got to the festival I could see lots of multi coloured tents and stages - which looked gorgeous but not having a ticket myself I could not get close enough to take a photo - and Liam wanted his mother to clear off quickly!!!!

Then we called at an Osprey breeding project by Macynelleth - but no ospreys to be seen today. They had been on the nest earlier this morning but had not been seen since!

This is the hide they have built to view the nest - great views of an empty nest though!

Once we were at the caravan - Steven went out on the sea in his kayak and came running back after about 30 minutes for the binoculars - having seen a seal or porpoise or dolphin in the sea right next to him. I went back out with him but we did not have anymore sightings.

So lots of chances to take some good photos today - but none really materialised!

So I will have to choose one from this poor lot that I did manage today.

9th July 2009 - The Breiddens multicache

Today Rachel & I tackled a multi-cache accross the Breiddn hills. I had wanted to do this cache for ages - but as it involves climbing 3 different hills, I did not want to tackle it by myself. We had a fab day out - though some of the climbing was a bit of a slog.

Here we are with the final cache - which was a bit of a pain to find - we had to resort to PAF!

We were rewarded by lovely views all around though and a special treat - we startled a deer hiding in the bracken. He jumped out just in front of us and then leapt away. It was a real surprise as we did not know that deer were on these hills - but my camera was tucked safely away at the bottom of my walking bag when he jumped out!

As this was a multicache - it invloved going to different points to pick up clues to the next location. I have to take photographic evidence of the clues now - as I did not want to walk back over the hills in case I have written it down wrong. You can tell that this has happened to me before!

You most probably can't see see it as it is so tiny - but inbetween us in the distance is Rodney's pillar - which I visited last month and fell over and injured my ankle.

This is the second hill we had to climb - Middletown Hill. We were halfway down the first hill when I took this photo. This second hill was a nice steady climb - unlike the first one!

8th July photo - peachy peachy!

I had my first peach of the year today and it was delicious. Well actually it was a nectarine - but that did not rhyme so well! It was soft & juicy - just as they should be.

Ooh and look - I think I got the white background right - yay!