To blow away the cobwebs Jill, Caroline and the girls walked up to Sweden Bridge.

The girls posed by the beck, after finding money the fairies left uner the bridge!

Today, Andy the kitchen fitter, has returned to complete the refurbishment of the old kitchen in Cobbleholes to make it our new dining room.

Here Andy prepares to add the extra drawer fronts and doors.

The top unit with its glass cupboards and LED lighting is looking better

Last night, Rich repainted the newly plastered walls and now the kitchen/dining room is looking much better.

As Dan works on the reatining wall outside in the cold, Alec Brood sets about skimming the walls of Cobbleholes kitchen.

There was not a single straight wall and the uneven walls remain as evidence of "character" but with good smooth walls.

This picture shows for the last time the gaudy colours (yellow and green with a thin black stripe) which were on the walls from perhaps the building of the cottages in 1815.

After working for two days with Mike to pull down the wall to its foundadtions, Dan has now started the rebuilding of the wall and by the end of today it was about two feet back up, with some very large stones to take the weight of what will eventually lie on top of them!

Meanwhile, Alec Brood the plasterer had arrived to skim the walls of Cobbleholes kitchen!

A day out in Manchester today! Our Rugby League team were in the Grand Final at Old Trafford versus Wigan. We parked alongside Old Trafford Cricket Ground and then met Ben who had driven up from Reading and had our tickets!

However, the game was only two minutes old when a Wigan player assaulted Lance Hohaia when he was already knocked out! His sending off meant that we were no longer the underdogs and the match ended in a famous win for Saints 14-6.

After prolonged celebrations, we left the stadium and said bye to Ben and his friends before setiong off for the drive home.

On the way back to the station, we took Jessica and Megan to Covent Garden to see the new and famous optical illusion.

The installation appears to be a house unsupported in the middle. It was designed by Alex Chinneck and is called "Take my Lightning but Don’t Steal my Thunder". The top of the building is entirely supported by girders which go up from an unassuming "wooden shed" at the far end of the building just beyond the chap with the yellow coat.

Jessica and Megan appear to be dicing with death under the window on the left!

On return to the start, we searched around the O2 arena area's eating places and finally chose Wagamama's noodle resaurant.The girls loved it and practised their chopstick technique and also threading long noodles into their mouths (and of course so did Nana!).

We returned to Waterloo on the Thames Clipper before taking the train to Gipsy Hill and home to Caroline. She was most impressed that the girls had tried and enjoyed Wagamama!

The good news is that she and Andrew had found a house and later they submitted a successful offer for it. So our trips to Crystal Palace will possibly soon become trips to Staines-upon-Thames?!

After putting our suitace in the left luggage office at Waterloo, we headed off on the 188 bus all the way to - yes you've guessed it - the cable car!

The girls were not phased by the height of the ride and loved it all.

After returning to the hotel by clipper, we rested before returning to our favourite restaurant , The Campini, for another excellent Italian meal.

To end in style, we assembled on Waterloo Bridge to see the lights and pose for the final group photo.

Today we packed an awful lot in! We started by taking a bus to Waterloo Bridge and then walking to Emankment Pier where we boarded a Thames Clipper to Greenwich. We aimed to go on the "Boris" cable car across the river (see above), as well as splitting up for various visits in the Greenwich area.

These three pictures show (top to bottom):

HMS Belfast with The Shard in the background

Tower Bridge

The Houses of Parliament

Only later did we learn just how queasy Jacqui and Ray had felt on the landing stage!

Once the clipper passes Tower Bridge the speed rapidly incresed to 35mph for an exhilarating ride. Unfortunately we sped over a decent wave in the river and several of the group got drenched by the spray!!!

A close up of a couple of hundred poppies!

Later we went off to the Savoy Theatre to see "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" which should have included Robert Lindsay but he was on holiday! Nevertheless, the evening was a great success and we were even give a free upgrade to £80 seats in the stalls!

The poppies were amazing. When completely installed there will be 888,246 ceramic poppies - one for each soldier lost in WW1. We have ordered one for delivery when they are all removed. As we watched, a team of volunteers in red and a small group of soldiers were assembling the poppies and then "planting" them in the moat of the Tower of London.

Here they appear to be "pouring" out of a tower into the moat.

After lunch we had a short tour of the Palace of Westminster before posing in front of Big Ben, or to be more precise St.Stephen's Tower.

From here we departed and walked past the Eye to catch the RV1 bus through a little known part of London along the South Bank to Tower Hill, where we wanted to see the sea of poppies.

Today we met up with Rachel and her three children and their grandma, Marylin, at the Whinlatter Forest Park near Keswick which has superb adventure areas for adults and children

Caroline tries to slow down (or is it speed up?) the giant swing with Megan, Max, someone else, Emily, Jessica and Sophie all enjoying the fun.

Jessica tries to keep hold of the bottle!

The highlights of the visit included watching Sarah the cow being milked and then some of that milk was used to feed the lambs.

Here the girls get used to the feisty feeding habits of a lamb which was desperate for the bottle full of milk!

Megan has a go!

Today we had discovered a farm near Bouth (at the southern end of Windermere) where you could visit and experience feeding and milking the animals.

There were lots of old vehicles on display and here the girls and Caroline are sitting in an old charabanc which started its life as a fire engine!

Ben offered to help replace the broken cast iron gutters at the back of the cottages with new plastic ones.

As we reached the end of the job (the centre downspout) Ben decided it was time for a roofie (that's a selfie of roofers!)

Today Ben, Alison, Daisy and Poppy arrived for a week with us. Ben always does a pose by the farm gate and this time the men building a barn at the farm had left a blue hard hat on top of the gatepost so that the concrete lorries would know where to turn off the road.

Poppy looks unimpressed with Daddy's new hat!

Slowly but surely, Ashley pushed the liner down the flue and then cut off the spare two metres before fitting a new stainless steel cowl.

Note how Ashley is standing on top of the chimney stack.

We have been preparing for a new woodburning stove in Cobbleholes. That involved removing the fire (heavy) and the old canopy (extremely dirty!). We then spent four days with three bottles of Cillit Bang and numerous kitchen rolls and a steamer removing 50+ years worth of soot and tar from the back wall which was soon to be on show.

Frog on a log on a blog!

As Jill lifted the tarpaulin from our log pile to let the wood dry out in the sunshine she was met by this frog!

It had climbed to the top of a 5 feet high pile of log disks in darkness....

On the official day of our "retirement" we have received another card from two of our regular visitors Ged and Pat Power. Their hand made card has a photo of Cobbleholes garden with a rainbow and has been embellished with little gold jewels!

Inside the message said it all...

We have had so many cards and gifts from people who have shared our cottages over the years. Your kind words and thoughts mean a great deal to us...

and although we shall really miss seeing old friends in the future, we shall also enjoy our chance to relax and to travel without worrying about the cottages.

Thank you all!

Richard and Jill

Today, the first Saturday in July, is the traditional day for Ambleside's Rushbearing procession. Hundreds of people watch the procession of children and adults as it makes its way around the town with the walkers holding "bearings" which are traditionally rushes and flowers woven into a design.

Click here to watch a Youtube video of today's procession.

Dent is a most unusual village. This is the main street! The centre is fully cobbled and the roads make no concessions to modern traffic! The traffic has to negotiate the corners carefully as there is no bypass for the village.

The large stone on the right is a memorial to a local man, Adam Sedgwick, who is regarded as one of the fathers of geology in Britain.

Several houses were for sale. The one on the right has three floors for its asking price of £165K.

Later, after exploring the beautiful village of Dent with its cobbled steets, we drove up the hideously steep road to Britain's highest mainline station at Dent to watch Galatea power through on its way south on the return journey from Carlisle to Lancaster.

Richard set his camera to "continuous" and fired off about 20 shots in 10 seconds to make sure that the best picture wasn't missed.... and here it is!

Determined to see a steam train cross the Riblehead viaduct, we tried again today! We made another early start to see the train as it headed south at Bolton-le-Sands near Hest Bank, we again drove to Ribblehead and took up position at the side of the line just after the viaduct. Just after 1130 the train arrived, pulled by Stanier Jubilee class 45699 Galatea.

Here Galatea works hard to pull its 12 coach train off the viaduct and up the steep gradient to Blea Moor, an area famed for its harsh winter conditions.

Galatea's maroon livery matched perfectly with its coaches. The occupants were waving with smiles on their faces as the train passed.

Yesterday, the lady staying in No2 cottage had a rather too close encounter with a highland cow in Langdale. Susan and her husband were walking through a field of cows with their dog when one cow decided to attack her and flip her up in the air and land her on her thigh. As it came towards her for a second go, she leapt over a wall to safety.

Susan was able to laugh about it later but it certainly scared her!

Here is the cow! The picture was sent by Susan when she arrived home after her stay at Sunnybank!

You can almost imagine it saying "come on lady - make my day... just come back in my field!"

Today we decided to go out for the day to see the Fellsman steam train (which runs every Wednesday in Summer and goes over the Settle Carlisle route.)

That meant leaving home at 6.45am to see the empty train at Hest Bank between Carnforth and Lancaster.

Here the driver and fireman are producing a decent amount of smoke as it speeds through Hest Bank alongside the coast of Morecambe Bay.

By 11.25 we were at the side of the Ribblehead Viaduct (with about 300 other spectators) and awaiting the train's arrival over this iconic engineering national treasure.

So imagine the disappointment of us and the other 300 when it came along behind a diesel loco. Apparently the loco had injector problems by the time it reached Preston and so the diesel was sent by the direct route to Hellifield where the locos were swapped over.

Maybe we will try again next week!

After weeks of planning by Richard, the Rotary Club of Ambleside had its 50th charter dinner tonight. With 73 people attending at The Salutation Hotel, the evening was a great success with the main speaker being Richard Rhodes, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Cumbria.

Here, our youngest member - Nigel Hartley - presents our Founder member - Malcolm Tyson with a silver photo frame to mark his continuous 50 year membership of the club. To the left of Malcolm is Alec Mann, another Founder Member who, although no longer a member, was delighted to join in the celebrations.

Today we met up with Jill's neice Rachel and her three children. We walked up the valley from Tilberthwaite Quarry (near Coniston) and paused on the route for a picnic lunch.

Here Max (left) stands as the twins are amused by Emily (right), whilst Sophie (front) sits eating her sandwich.

The route was around 2.5kms and had its share of steep scrambles, level paths and river crossings by boulder hopping and a rickety rackety bridge, under which there was rumoured to be a troll!

Ladybird Cottage was a big hit with the girls during their week's stay. The bunting was put up and the verandah was used for everything from an ironing board centre to a tea party location.

Here, Megan looks out at the donkeys in the field.

Jessica and Megan served many imaginary meals to us and to Caroline and Andrew. Wooden blocks became sponge cake and the yellow pad in Jessica's hand doubled as a pancake and a CD whilst the pretend microwave oven also doubled as a CD player!

During the week we also watched Disney's 101 Dalmations twice and Cinderalla twice (if not three times). The girls loved it when the two baddies in 101 Dalmations get bitten on the backside by Pongo the Dalmation and their trousers pulled down revealing purple underpants!.

Click here to see the girls reaction to the prurple underpants scene!

Caroline, Andrew and the girls arrived for a week's stay on May 24 and their stay coincided with Caroline's birthday. Megan and Jessica made a chocolate cake in secret with Nana and Grandad whilst Caroline was out shopping with Andrew.

Here Caroline attempts to blow out the candles as we prepared to try it out in Cobbleholes garden. It was remarkably light and the chocolate frosting made it look very luxurious.

Jill seems slightly confused about whose birthday it is as she tries to blow out the candles too!

Apologies to the headless Andrew!

Today, with our friends Roy and Jean, we took the bus to Barnard Castle for market day. This classic bus runs every Wednesday from Ravenstonedale near Tebay and takes a rambling route through Brough and Middleton in Teesdale to Barnard Castle. It picked up 20-30 local people with shopping trolleys and took around 2 hours for the journey. We explored the market and then had lunch at the Three Horseshoes before wandering down to the castle and river and back up The Bank ( a street which is aptly named!).

Here Harvey the bus pauses in Middleton in Teesdale for a few minutes.

The great news is that the entire trip is free with your over 60's bus pass! (or £10 return if you have to pay)

The bus was FULL of shopping on the way back!

Just after leaving Middleton, we passed Jill's great-grandparents' house at Eggleston.

The last time we were here, in 2013, it was during a cloudburst and low cloud and so was not even fit enough to get out of the car!

Today we had sunshine and summer fair weather clouds.

By the time the fire brigade, police and Network Rail staff had arrived, together with a relief driver (as the usual driver was in shock and treated by paramedics), it was 12.20am when the train limped into Oxenholme where everyone had to get off and coaches were ordered for the 100 or so people who still had to get to Carlisle or Glasgow. Rich was provided with a taxi which he shared with three Spanniards who were going to Bowness!

Ironically Rich arrived home at exactly 1.45am (the same as on Saturday!)

This trip counts as the worst experience ever, but Rich felt so sad for the families of the victims and the poor train drivers who could do nothing to avert the accident.

Due to our enthusiasm for planting troughs, we ran out of plants! So, being a Wednesday, we drove at 5.30am to Kendal and the very popular plant market stall. This week we arrived after the lorry was unloaded and by 6.05 am there were over twenty people all assembling their orders into piles on different parts of the pavement. This picture is about 1/3 of the area and there are 11 people in this shot.

15 minutes and £28.50 later we left, went to a deserted ASDA and had the shop to ourselves before returning home via a layby overlooking the lake for a bacon roll and tea!

Now we have to start planting tubs again!

Just for a change we decided to have a day out so we drove to Fleetwood and then parked the car and took a ride on the new super trams to Starr Gate (at the south end of Blackpool) before changing to a bus for a ride to Lytham where we found a lovely Mediteranean restaurant with an outside terrace. To sit in warm sunshine and watch the world (and an amazing number of daschund dogs) go past as we ate was a real bonus.

We returned to find that our new back gate had arrived in our absence!

A lovely sunny day but we had a chance to prepare two cottages in advance for tomorrow, when we are dure to go to Richard's brother, Robert's 65th birthday celebration in Stoke on Trent. The visitors had left early as they were moving house today!!

Robert has recently had a knee operation so he sat to greet his guests.

During the evening party two musicians from London - The d#gents - played their flute and acoustic guitar to offer a selection of tango and choro flavoured music from Brazil and Argentina.

They have recently graduated from the Royal School of Music and have started providing concerts in people's homes!

The music was followed by a music ride outside performed by Katie, Robert's daughter and 16 other girls from the riding school which Robert owns.

We returned home after several days in Poppy's company and a flying visit to Caroline in London to try to assist with the imminent move back into her flat after her Christmas-time flooding. However, there were so many workmen in the flat finishing things off we stayed out of the way and Rich took Caroline off to buy extra supplies of paint and such like for the "rapidly approaching completion" flat.

Poppy showing a distinct lack of respect for her grandparents!

Drove down to Ben and Alison's at Reading on Mother's Day. This was our "scheduled" visit timed to be after Poppy had arrived (see below Mar 19th). We had arranged to stray at Alison's parents' house about 6 miles away whilst they were away on holiday. However, due to family circumstances, Sally had to go up to the Dundee area for most of the week to do a house clearance so we had the company of Martin. It was good to have the chance to cuddle Poppy and feed her when required.

Daisy looking cute in the garden.

About 3.00 pm today the peace of the valley was disturbed by a RAF Sea King Rescue helicopter which arrived to assist a rescue of someone just below the summit of Wansfell, opposite the cottage. After winching down a doctor?, the helicopter circled for ten minutes whilst the person was stabilised. It then returned to hover (with its rear rotor fairly close to the ground!) and the casualty was winched aboard before being taken off to hospital (probably in Lancaster or Preston).

With the aid of Richard's large telephoto lens, here is a picture showing the scene as the person and crewman are lifted towards the open door. The chap in red is a member of the local mountain rescue team.

At 0724 we were on the train to Euston and by 1125 we were in Reading and met by Ben. At 3pm we had our chance to visit Alison and Poppy in the hospital and met our newest grand daughter!

Ben Poppy and Daisy pose for the camera.

Finally, it was back to London and then the trusty Pendolino to Oxenholme. We were back home by 11pm after a very hectic but exciting few days!

Later we drove westwards along the coast to Arundel and after checking out a model railway shop, we went into Arundel town centre for lunch. The castle was not far away and makes a great backdrop to the town!

Then it was a leisurely drive back to London for a birthday meal with Caroline and the girls.

Rich's birthday. We woke early in our hotel room (tenth floor at Jury's Inn Croydon) to a weird sight. The early sun was glinting off every window in an office block about three miles away and looked for all the world like a square sun! Below it and left the sun's red rays glance off another building.

We were up early for a nostalgic trip to Brighton for the day.

Today we decided (almost on a whim) to drive to Glasgow for the night and visit the Scottish Model Rail Exhibition at the SECC (like an armadillo shell). We got a really good deal at a hotel almost next door and so off we went.

It was good to just get away and have a short break before driving home at a leisurely pace on the following day. The giant crane was once used to load real sized railway locomotives onto ships for export. Our hotel was just through the girders of the tower for the crane.

Today's outing was by an open top bus (actually a single decker today on account of the weather) ride to Bowness where we visited the World of Peter Rabbit.

The girls liked the displays - here they look at Jeremy Fisher on his lily leaf.

A lovely sunny day, so we walked to Grove Farm on the other side of the valley and later the girls enjoyed playing in Ladybird Cottage in the garden.

This is the view from Grove Farm, with Roundhill Farm across the valley and our cottages over towards the left.

In the distance, Wetherlam and Crinkle Crags are dusted with snow.

Today we left for London on the 0724 from Oxenholme, arrived at Euston at 1030 and came back on the 1130 ! (with the twins - Megan and Jessica). This is their first holiday with Nana and Grandad and without Mummy or Daddy.

Posing on the farm gate ouitside the cottages.

Jessica on the left, Megan on the right.

It is now officially winter!

As the Somerset Levels get set for more rain we are "enjoying" weather of a cooler variety! It started snowing just after 1035 and soon the valley had taken on a wintery appearance!

The men finally arrived to put us back on mains power at 10am today! A beast of a 4X4 truck arrived with another van; the cables were unplugged and our power was back on. Then "the beast" hooked up to the 2.2tonne generator and set off up the hill at almost 1mph! The queue of traffic which had had to wait whilst it hooked up were in for a very slow drive up to the top of Kirkstone!

The generator had run non stop for 36 hours and had made life a lot easier for us!

At 0825 the power went off for us and 2000 houses around the town. After an hour most of the town was back on but not us! We were due to go to the theatre in Keswick at midday and still we had no power. Not even when we returned at 6pm. A main cable had broken at the bottom of the hill and we were told that it would be tomorrow morning before power was back on!

The man from the company whom Rich found down the road, waiting for the gang to fix it, said that they were sending for generators from Edinburgh!

After a candlelit meal we went to bed at 9pm and at 10pm the power came on. However it was not mains power but this massive generator which had appeared on our car park! The label suggests that this one didn't come all the way from Edinburgh!

We had an early morning visitor in the field alongside the garden today. A buzzard spent 10 - 15 mintues strutting around the field picking up tasty morsels before he/she finally flapped off.

The telephoto lens was quickly attached to get as close as possible. No time for a tripod, so apologies for the slightly grainy pictures.

As you can see, the resident sheep were quite unphased by his/her presence!