15th December photo - bikers annual hospital jaunt

I took these photos on my mobile phone on Sunday, but forgot all about them until today - so do you think I can use them for today? Its a bit of a cheat - but they are quite interesting and I do want to print one for my album. Sorry about the quality - this is what happens when I venture out without a camera - you would think I would have learnt after a year of missed opportunities!

Steven & I went to town on Sunday to do some Christmas shopping and arrived just in time to see the annual bikers ride, up to the hospital leaving from the Square. They do it every year and it has become quite an institution now. Lots & lots of them - I would guess about 500, ride from the Square and present presents to those in hospital.

I am not a biker, but I must admit the sights and sounds of all these bikes roaring off was very impressive. The traffic was held up for about 15 minutes while they set off. I think those at the front would have arrived at the hospital by the time those at the back had just left!

14th December photo - frosty grass

I awoke to a lovely frost this morning, so I ran outside in my dressing gown and took some close up shots of the frozen grass, before the sun melted it! Not very exciting - but quite seasonal.

13th December photo - Christmas Decorations

The Christmas decorations went up yesterday and they look very nice & festive. I had wanted to take a nice photo of the Christmas tree decorations for my POTD, but as my photos have to be in landscape orientation for my album and the photos I took of the tree decorations have come out better in portrait mode, I have decided that this photo of the decorations over the fireplace looks better, so this will be my POTD.

Close contender for POTD - some of the tree decorations.

12th December photo - Quantum Leap

It is a very foggy day here today, so I needed a bold structure to stand out in the fog and what better than the new bold sculpture which has just been unveiled in town - the Quantum Leap. This is our Council's commemorative to Charles Darwin in the 200th anniversary year of his birth here in Shrewsbury.

As you can imagine, this has been a major topic of discussion - lots of people don't like it (it is huge- I would say about 20' high), others can't see the link to Darwin, some find it a waste of tax payers money - it cost 1/2 million pounds! - which is £100,000 over budget, because half way through construction they found they were 18" out of alinement - so it would not all meet up - so that had to do major work to correct it.

I quite like it - if I don't think about how much it cost! I like its setting down next to the river - not that you can see the river today because of the fog! I hope that now it is in situ - the town's folk will take to it and put all the controversy put behind them.

The top photo is my POTD - as try as hard as I could - I could not edit out the red life ring, very well, from the middle of the photo on the middle photo.

11th December photo - night caching

This is a slight cheat photo as it was taken late last night - but I did not have time to upload it to my computer till today - so that's my excuse!

Last night I joined a couple of other geocachers (Allun & Joni) to do a night cache over Nescliffe Hill. We had to shine our torches around the trees to find reflectors which would point the right pathway - there were lots of different ways as Nescliffe is dotted with lots of different paths. We had great fun - especially when the reflectors ran out and we were not sure if we were on the right path or not! We had to make our way through mud, negotiate tree roots and stumps in the path - which we keep tripping over because we were too busy looking in the trees for the reflectors. It was a great night to do this cache though because it was not raining!, it was not cold and there were no clouds - so we had a sky full of stars to watch as we journeyed around.

We eventually found the cache and it had an extra treat in store for us - a bloody severed hand!! This would have been an excellent one to have done on Halloween night.

10th December photo - holly

I have been hoping to get a nice festive photo with some frost on holly leaves - but as we just keep getting rain, rain and more rain, it seems the likelihood of getting a nice festive holly shot before the end of the year is becoming less likely - so when I saw this lush holly bush out on my walk today - thought that I had better snap it just in case ( I am still on the lookout for a frosty holly photo though).

9th December photo - more cake!

On Saturday we had lunch in the Lakeland cafe and for desert we each had a slice of home made cake and I really enjoyed my banana, cherry, walnut & sultana loaf. I decided there and then to make a cake like this. So today I have experimented and come up with this.

I found a nice recipe for banana loaf and then added a generous amount of walnuts, cherries and sultanas. it is not quite the same as the Lakeland one - but it tastes delicious. The trouble is Jess says she does not like walnuts nor cherries - so she won't even try it! Even Liam says he will only try it if he is starving! All the more for me & Steven then.