Prize Winners

Saturday we headed into Carnforth to meet up with a friend from Telford who is cycling from John O Groats to Lands End.  The route goes straight through Carnforth, he had been going for 5 days when we met up with him, we were the first people he met.  We took him to a pub for a pint and a lunch (a bowl of chips) before waving him back on his way.

We then headed into Lancaster for a look around some car dealers (we are thinking about changing cars in the next year or so) and ended up at Hest Bank watching trains (of course!)

Blackberrying

Splashing around

Sunday was a lovely day so we decided to head to Austwick to go blackberrying.  We thought we would head to Crummackdale for an explore.  This is a really lovely walk, before too long you are immersed in typical Dales scenery - so so scenic, and we had the place more or less to ourselves.  We stopped off at a stream and bridge for lunch and a paddle (it was very very cold and I was bullied to go in!).  We then came across some brambles and the blackberrying began.  We did really well, I think because it was a good 2 miles to the nearest road, meaning that the bushes hadn't been raided.  In about an hour we had collected over 6 pounds.

Crummackdale

We then headed back home because we had to get to the Ingleton Horticultural Show.  Yes this year we had decided to enter a number of classes to see if we could penetrate the Ingleton mafia.  Matt entered the photography classes and a jam class.  Tom entered the lego model class and I entered the quiche and scone classes.

We headed straight to the children's room and found that Tom's lego model had won 3rd prize.  Pretty good considering there were quite a few models and the ones that came 1st and 2nd were obviously kits whilst Tom's very much wasn't - he made a Ghibli style fantasy plane which I thought was ace.

Tom and his plane

We then went into the home baking room.  I failed!!!  Not even a mention.  I think maybe I went too off piste with my quiche as it was goats' cheese, red pepper, sun-dried tomatoes and caramelised onions and ALL the others were bacon.  There were other cheese scones though and mine didn't get anything.  Oh hum, we enjoyed cheese scones for lunch and breakfast and Tom and I enjoyed my quiche (which I thought was rather good) for tea.  Matt had entered some jam - his being the best of our jam made so far this year - but that didn't get placed either.  The winning jam was raspberry but it was a bright bright scarlet red not the deep claret red of Matt's.  However, Matt managed to get a 3rd place in the photography competition - quite something as the same two names came up again and again as the winners, so he has managed to break through there.  Matt has declared that he will make a loaf of bread for the competition next year.  We will get Tom to enter a couple more classes as well (especially a 'home baked goodie by the under 9s' as that only had one entry this year!)

Anyway I had two happy boys one of whom was extremely proud walking around with his rosette.  Well done boys x