New Year in Scotland and coming home to snow

On the 28th December I headed north to visit Morag and Tony for New year. Lets be clear now. Most of the UK has been bound by snow this last fortnight, but it is only most, not all. As can be seen from this photo. You will have to look closely but you can tell that part of main land Britain actually escaped the snow. If you know where the Solway Firth is, that inlet that looks like a smile on the west end of the Scottish border, now follow the Scottish coast west, there is a bump belly below Dumfries, followed by the point protrusion which is the Machars of Whithorn. Carry on past and just as you are getting to the point that seems to point out westward, look again carefully and you will see a double penisula, with little or no snow on it. That is the Rhinns of Galloway and it was where I was staying. We got very cold spells and severe frosts but very little snow indeed. If you wish for further proof there then my pictures of the time are up on Flickr. We spent the time, taking things as easy as we could with two excited girls and a bearded collie puppy called Dora. I think I am probably in big trouble with her at the moment as I seem to have escaped permanently! She does not like people escaping from her pack. Sorry I have no pictures of Dora, the main reason being that what she wanted was attention and that meant physically being fussed. We did most of the usual things, we climbed the creeky hill (don't look for it on a map, these things are relative, and basically this was a walk from sea level to the top of the peninsula, Creeky is short for Creechan, went on a walk with the Ramblers Association, which was meeting locally (Morag is trying to get a walking group going in Stranraer as one of her jobs) visited the old parish church site (pre Kirk Covenant and I refer to by its dedication St Catherine's to distinguish it from the present parish church, St Medan's, the middle parish church, Kirk Covenant). If that was not enough religious sites, there is a pilgrimage site and several other former churches in the parish, excluding the link to Sandhead and Ardwell. No I am not even starting on religious sites in the Machars of Whithorn. We are talking about setting up a website to bring together the things we discover while we are doing the exploring. It looks like it will be a mix of information of religious sites (no decisions made on Standing stones and such), short walks, coffee shop - local eatery reviews and places to stay. It may include bits of theology, devotional works, fiction (Mo tells her daughters stories about people who were once around these sites), information on other things to do nearby and so on. In other words its a method of focusing what we would be doing anyway. 

Getting back was interesting. As a rule I could make any journey but the last one hundred yards. I actually got stuck, trying to turn the car around at my parents to put it in another place. Two fostered children by a neighbour came to help and we got it moving again. The next day I went A6, A625, A623 and A612 back to Sheffield as both the Snake (A57) and the Woodhead (A628) were closed. Dad was in favour of me using the M62. I was slightly worried of about the route from M62 to Sheffield, unless I used the M1 which seemed a very long way to go. I got to Sheffield again fine. The roads were very clear here and I was okay until I tried to park my car in my parking bay. I simply could not get it out. In the end went down to Waitrose and bought cat lit which I mixed with dishwasher salt (the advantages of having a non-standard dishwasher which cannot take tablets). Anyway I was glad to get the car back to Hertz on Friday!

While I was at Drummore things kept dropping out of pockets, and pockets that were buried deep too. The first time it happened it was my B&B ladies keys which I had had so I could lock the door. That day, I had done practically nothing, except walk Dora on the beach and get pulled over by her. The assumption I made was that in the fuss of being pulled over and tidying up (I succeeded in scratching the outside of my lip and it bled slightly)  that the keys dropped out. The next day when all we did was the walk up the Creeky hill and around and my mobile phone went missing. I left it twenty four hours to see if it would try and tell me its power was running out. There was no point in ringing it as there is no reception in the area, I use it instead of a watch. However this resulted in me giving permission for someone to try to ring it knowing they would fail: no reception, battery flat and the chances being that the electronics were ruined due to a wet night on the Creeky hill. Anyway I was due a free upgrade and the replacement sim cost me all of five pounds. The new phone is apparently Sony Ericsson T715 although I wish it was in the silver colour scheme rather than the one I got (grey) the difference being that the silver has white font while the grey has a metallic aqua font. I have not changed my phone number (old sim disabled, phone too old to bother about), however if I had your phone numbers on my previous phones I now no longer have them. Would you mind ringing or texting me, so I can store them on this one please.

Otherwise, I have bought myself some more thermal underwear, baked bread, worked on designing the website, warming the house up (another of my storage heaters had gone phut. I guess I must look to replacing it this year which will be interesting. Storage heater is really great for the one that is left functioning in the house but the rest of the rooms are better with timed heating as I am not usually in much after 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. at night. So storage heat, heats the house largely when I am not in. For core heating which is what the hall does that is fine but for rooms used only some of the time a pattern of heating is better. So am looking to replace one storage heater with an electrical heater on a timer, with probably a second electrical timed heater in the room next door replacing a panel heater that has a wonky timer, I thought it was broke but it is only the timer. Oh well I shall no doubt find it interesting when I decide to do it.

Oh Morag I have long cherished the idea of getting Tony a paper log maker, but since you don't yet have solid fuel heating there is still no point. However there may well be some peace over you buying the Guardian. The question will be whether you could keep long enough to read it. Did I ever tell you of my experience with the Times. I had answered a survey which said I was an occasional reader. They rang me to ask whether I would like to become a subscriber. The first question was when had I last bought the Times. I answered honestly that I did not think I had ever done so. They presumed because I read it occasionally I bought it occasionally. I don't buy it, my father does and I read it when visiting him i.e. when on holiday. Therefore I am an occasional reader but am unlikely to want to subscribe. After all I only have the time for such activities on holiday.