Category Archives: Personal

Bruges in Belgium – by water

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Like many towns in Belgium and Holland Bruges is ringed by water, it’s part of the charm of their towns. Bruges is in west Flanders and is known as the Venice of the north. The city centre is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Mind you, I don’t think I would like to be living in one of the houses that have water lapping at their walls, they must be terribly damp. There have been settlements in this area since the Bronze Age.

Boat trip

Anyway, we decided that a trip on the canal was a must although as the boat filled up with fellow tourists I was looking over the edge and wondering if it was safe, they don’t half pack people in! I think it is partly the boat trip that made me think that Bruges was so busy with tourists because when I look at the other photos it doesn’t look too crowded.

Boat trip

The name Bruges actually means bridges – obviously because there are so many small bridges all over the town, they’re all quite low but there’s only one that you have to duck your head to get under it though, when you’re in the boat.

This is definitely the best way to get a view of the many ancient buildings around the town. It must be quite annoying though for the people living in the houses with constant tourist filled boats going past – with a guide talking through a microphone.
Boat trip

Boat trip
The swans mainly seem to congregate in this area, probably they take to the water when the boats retire for the evening.

Boat trip swans

We noticed what seemed to be two Swaene Hotels, a bit confusing.

The Swaene Hotel, Bruges

The Swaene Hotel, Bruges

A lovely lilac tree overhung the canal.

Boat trip

More photos of Bruges will be forthcoming, eventually!

I’m Back! – and Bruges, Belgium

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In fact I’ve been back home for a couple of days now, but I’ve been busy getting back to ‘normal’ and doing the garden, it looked very lush when we got back – and I had been worrying that it would all be frazzled up as I knew the weather had been dry while we were away. It’s amazing how much everything had grown in the two weeks we were away in Belgium and Holland.

We got the car ferry from Hull in the north of England, sailing to Zeebrugge in Belgium. You might know that I enjoy a good rough sea, I keep saying that but for all I know I might suffer from sea-sickness now as every time we sail anywhere it’s always a flat calm, even when we were in the notorious Bay of Biscay. Luckily I don’t seem to suffer from claustrophobia as the cabins on the car ferries are teeny, definitely not even space to swing a cat – if you were that way inclined.

We sailed into Zeebrugge at 9.30 am and in no time Jack was driving towards Bruges which is just ten or so miles away from the port. There’s always that slightly hairy few minutes before you get used to driving/being driven on the ‘wrong’ side of the road.
Square in Bruges
Neither of us had ever been to Bruges before but had heard from loads of people that it is well worth visiting, and they were correct. It’s actually much bigger than I had imagined it would be – lots of tourists of course, but also plenty of locals around. Bikes are almost as popular in Belgium as in Holland and I saw a tandem that was for hire amongst a pile of bikes, I was tempted by it, but J isn’t a cyclist so we explored by foot. Well the horse drawn carriage trip cost 50 euros, so I settled for taking a photo of them, but loads of people did hire them.
Square in Bruges horses
Between us we took over 500 photos, but I won’t inflict them all on you – honestly, these are just a few of them for now.

Square in Bruges

Everything here looks slightly misty. I didn’t think it really was even if the sky was a bit overcast.

A blog holiday

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We’re off to Belgium and Holland again soon so blogposts will probably be a bit thin on the ground for the next couple of weeks although I intend to try to do a few – particularly bookish ones – in case I forget what I wanted to say about them!

My spring garden

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Although I say it myself, my garden is looking very colourful at the moment. I especially love the pansies in the photo below, but in reality they look more purple than they are here.
pansies

My so-called rockery, which isn’t very rocky – is full of primulas and the aubretia is just beginning to bloom too. There’s always work going on so buckets and tools are likely to be lurking in the background as you can see.

rockery

rockery

I wasn’t going to bother planting any daffodil bulbs as there are so many wild ones growing around where I live but I couldn’t resist planting some miniature ones.

miniature daffodils

Below are some of the wild daffodils just outside my back gate.

daffodils

Or are these ones narcissi, I’m never quite sure? As you can see – some of the trees have really started to green up now, it seemed along time a-coming!

daffodils

daffodils

Guernsey Style knitting

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It’s ages since I did any serious knitting, in fact I’ve done very little in the way of crafting since we moved house almost three years ago. So I decided to get stuck into some knitting – a jumper for Jack, and if you think that the word jumper is weird and unknown to you, it’s also known as a sweater or jersey, presumably that word jersey is originally from the Channel Island of that name, just as Guernsey or gansy as they are sometimes known – is.

Knitting

I think this knitting pattern is called Guernsey style because ‘real’ Guernseys are knitted using a circular needle, that’s something I’ve never used so I was happy to tackle this one which uses the two needle method.

Well, I say happy but to tell the truth I was a wee bit daunted by the pattern because it is set over twenty-four rows and I wasn’t at all sure that I would have the concentration to tackle that, but it turned out to be fairly easy to do. I’m quite pleased with it so far, but I’m not really looking forward to knitting the sleeves, keeping the pattern right at the same time as increasing the stitches might be a wee bit tricky!

Spring garden in Fife, Scotland

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It seemed like Spring arrived early this year with everything beginning to bloom sooner than expected. Well it has mainly been a very mild winter with very little in the way of snow, and what we did get melted very quickly.

crocuses

The crocuses above are multiplying each year, but they only look their best when the sun is shining on them. Typically we got the heaviest of snow after everything began to flower and I thought that the delicate snowdrops, aconites and primulas would be flattened, but they’re not as fragile as they look.
snowdrops

When warmish weather appeared after that I had intended to get stuck into the garden and clear away the winter debris, but suddenly the wind seemed to be coming from Siberia again and it was just too cold to brave it. I can’t wait to start gardening again though.

The winter aconites below are already seeding themslves around the garden, I always feel so lucky when that happens, flowers for free, just because they’re happy.

aconite
The clump of primulas below really needs to be split up, I must remember to do it when they stop flowering, which probably won’t be for another month or two. They’re such good value.

primula

I’m never sure if my hellebores below are Christmas roses or Lenten roses as they always flower in between the two festivals.
hellebores

Isn’t the snowdrop below a beauty? They’re clumping up nicely but this one below seems to be a bit of a loner, splendid in its isolation. It reminds me of a wind turbine, and I mean that in the nicest possible way, as I happen to think that wind turbines look elegant.

snowdrop

Last week I received my free tree and dog rose seeds from The Woodland Trust in the post, and they’re germinating already. Exciting times! I’ll keep you posted on their development.

Cicero quote cushion

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I got some bookish presents at Christmas, including the cushion pictured below.

Cicero Quote Cushion

I had never heard of the Cicero quote before:

IF YOU HAVE A GARDEN AND A LIBRARY YOU HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED

but I completely agree with it, what a wise chap he was. It has made me think that I should get down to reading some serious Cicero. I think I might have read some when I was at school, in Latin.

I’ve had a look online for any information about a garden belonging to Cicero but haven’t had any luck finding anything, so his garden must have disappeared – as they often do.

Charity/thrift shops – Clark’s Scintilla Silk

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I’m not really a big fan of shopping and I would never trail around shops as a sort of hobby the way a lot of women do. It’s bad enough if I am looking for something specific to wear for a particular occasion, so shopping for kicks is just not for me.

I have to admit though to being a wee bit of a charity/thrift shop junkie. I don’t often buy anything mind you but as I always say to myself, you just never know what you might find in one of them, unlike the normal shops which seem to be the same, no matter even which country you’re in nowadays – that’s a form of globalisation I suppose!

Anyway, just before Christmas I was really chuffed to find these boxes of thread in a charity shop in St Andrews. At first I thought they were just empty boxes and I loved the old fashioned design of them, but looking inside I was thrilled to see the balls of thread inside and in pristine condition.

Vintage Threads

Aren’t the colours fabulous?

I think they must have been meant to be used as crochet thread, or maybe for doing very fine silky knitting, such as knickers! I have some old patterns from the 1930s that would use this sort of thread. In fact I think this is when these boxes date from, but they’re a bit of a puzzle. As you can see the manufacturer was Clark’s, a very well known Scottish make, and they are described as being artificial silk for knitting, crochet and art work. But I’m wondering why they are weighed in grams rather than the ounces of the Imperial measures that were used back then? Also the word Colors is spelled in the American way. The box also says Made in Great Britain. Coats/Clark was a company that started up in Paisley in the west of Scotland in 1755. Real Industrial Revolution stuff. In 1864 they expanded the business to Newark, New Jersey, USA as the Clark Thread Company.

I plan to use the threads, maybe in an embroidery project. They’ve obviously been in some woman’s thread stash for many decades, and no doubt she had great intentions of using them too, until she died and her house contents were ‘cleared’ to a charity shop in St Andrews, Fife.

Lorient in Brittany – bagpipes!

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We had a fairly miserable weekend weather-wise, freezing overnight and thick ice on the car. I was painting a spare bedroom while Jack went to a football match. It began to snow just a few minutes after he had left the house.

Paint roller in hand, my mind went back to that cruise we went on in the autumn. I realised that I hadn’t mentioned that we were assailed by bagpipe music on the wharf at Lorient.

At first I thought I might be hearing things but as we got closer to the ship, after having visited the town on foot, it was definitely bagpipe music, but not as WE know it.

Bagpipes are popular in various parts of the world but it has to be said that it’s the Scottish bagpipes that are full strength, the type of noise that was a good weapon in many a battle, terrifying the enemy before a sword was drawn. Other bagpipes are pale imitations, but I must admit, much easier on the ears at close quarters!

If you want to hear what the Breton bagpipes sound like – hop over to Jack at A Son of the Rock and click on the photo of the bagpiper, and that’ll take you to his Flickr for the wee video. It has to be said that a Scottish bagpiper’s traditional outfit is far superior to the Breton attire though!