The assembled clan on our walk around Tarn Hows. From left to right - Jill, Alison, Megan, Ben, Jessica, Caroline, Eunice, Andrew, Richard and Keith.

After exceptinally heavy rain, Stock Ghyll in the centre of Ambleside is now raging.

Click here to see the short video.

We woke to this scene this morning. The road was like a skating rink and a van driver had abandonned his van on our car park and walked home (further up the road). Our salt bin arrived this afternoon! Spent an hour filling it with half a ton of salt!

A fantastic day for the Lights Switch-On. Mild, dry and over 7000 visitors flocked into town to see the lantern procession and the lights being turned on by Father Christmas with his "magic" dust!

Click here to see a video clip of the drummers performing at Market Cross.

Coniston lives on! It might have closed in 1957 in real life, but it is soon to be a thriving station on Richard's railway layout.

For train buffs - a Jinty waits outside the goods shed whilst a Stanier 8Fwaits with a passenger train. Between them - a Fairburn tank loco 42267 and a Standard 3MT tank loco is on the extreme right.

The modelled station with the distinctive windows in the train shed. In the background is the panorama which we photographed some weeks ago (see Oct 1 - below). Climbing boot boxes were cut up to make the strong side walls and were then covered with stone or slate paper.

Coniston station, painted in 1976 and the inspiration for the new layout extension.

The actual station is long gone and is now a building supply yard and a row of local houses.

The problem? None of the buildings are anything you can buy in a shop.

With the help of Neil (owner of No 2 cottage) we set to and mixed one ton of concrete for the base of our "new" shed in the garden next to the car park. It is actually an old dog kennel/run 10ft by 4ft which will be a new wood store. The shed was given to us by a friend who lives nearby.

The concrete will now need to cure for at least ten days before we start to drill into it to fasten down the shed as we reassemble it.

The afternoon's peace was shattered when this motor home, which was coming down our road (even though there is a sign saying no vehicle over 6'6" wide) met a car going up. The driver then drove into a tree in his efforts to avoid the car! Unfortunately, the motor home is basically made of aluminium, wood and polystyrene and these don't react well to tree trunks!

The bad news was that it was a hired motor home and it was the first day of their holiday from Scotland...... ouch!

How to keep two girls happy on the train from Kendal to London -

1. Take one Nana, one I-phone and one pair of headphones,

2. Play nursery rhymes from the inbuilt Ipod player,

3. Relax!

(The scheme worked until Kenton In North London and then they kicked off!)

At 3pm, with due pomp and ceremony, the West Wing was declared open by Maureen Harrison as she cut the purple ribbon across the new doorway with gold coloured sign alongside! Like all official openings, it was not quite complete with the plumbing remaining to be done.

Note the perfect timing of the picture as the two halves of the ribbon fly apart!

Despite the forecast of good weather - we wake up at 6am to the sight of heavy showers outside! The roof needs to be totally dry for the fitting, so it's not looking good! However, Keith Sutton has set off from Preston at 7am and by 8.30 he has arrived. The rain stops and we carefully remove the Visqueen polythene sheeting so that he can start work. The forecast has said it will be better by 10am. It was - in fact it was actually sunny with occasional large grey clouds scudding across the sky!

Today the windows were finally glazed! This is the view from the window (before the units went in!)

A good day's weather means that we have largely finished the walls except for the top piece over the window. The weather for tomorrow is suspect so the plastic sheet is all ready to pull back over the roof to keep everything dry.

Good progress this last couple of days - we now almost ready to put on the roof and start cladding the walls. Nigel and Julie from the village have offered to come up and help lift the 18mm plywood sheets into position.

Today we have made more progress and the first window is in place.

Day one of the Windermere Airshow. At around 4.30pm the famous Vulcan Bomber flew low over the cottage on route from the North East to do its display at Bowness. As we sat in the garden it just about flew directly above us!

After a good three days to harden off the concrete, the shuttering has been removed leaving a perfect base with the wooden base and anchor bolts which were waggled into the concrete just after it was laid.

With the concrete mixer on its way back to Barrow, Ian and his helper set about levelling the concrete to give us a really solid and level floor.

In an hour we had a 8 inch thick slab laid and the bonus was that there was enough concrete left in the pump's hopper to concrete the coal house floor and after that we laid a slab for the three wheelie bins.

At 1pm as arranged, Ian Parker arrived with his helper and the lorry mounted concrete pump.

At 1.30 the concrete mixer arrived and started discharging into Ian Parker's pump which sent it down the tube into our garden. In 20 minutes 3.5 tonnes of concrete were in place and here Ian pushes the concrete into place whilst the mixer lorry driver squirts the concrete into the far caorner. Ian's helper was up on the farm track controlling the pump and the mixer lorry.

Note Richard's shuttering using the timber from an old bed to keep the side shuttering in place. It worked - not a hint of a movement or bulge!

Since the lack of concrete means that we cannot progress further as yet, Rich decided to play with the Homebase kitchen planning software! The West Wing (decided to call it that) will be using old kitchen units from our friends Maureen and Ray.

The ton and a half of hardore has been barrowed round from the car park and then shovelled into the inside of the concrete blocks and now we use a wacker plate to flatten it all down to a hard level base ready for the concrete slab to go on top. The next job will be to add the wooden shuttering to contain the concrete.

We scoured the cottage area looking for any spare rocks to fill in the lower parts of the interior (where the patio had been) and then added the concrete around them to bind it together.

Ready to start!

Looks like the new PC is happy with the weather station. It's run without problem for 5 days now (touch wood!)

Today we have started work to enlarge the chalet which will allow more space for laundry and even more space for trains!!!

Drove to London for Caroline's birthday weekend. We went armed for DIY and took a child's slide for the twins to enjoy this summer.

Over the weekend we cut down several spindly trees in their garden; refurbished the slide and watched as Megan and Jessica tried it out.

Here, Megan goes down at speed whilst Jessica waits her turn!

We had left a wet Ambleside and now we were in the dry part of the country!

Spent the morning in the Library with local resident Joan Newby. She has put together a collection of photos of shops in Ambleside in the 1930's. Keith Rich and Jill have worked for about a year on producing a digital map of the town showing who owned the shops in those days.

You can see the results by CLICKING HERE

This afternoon we watched in amazement as this glider circled over the top of Wansfell. The two questions were:

1. Where did it take off from? (Cark airfield near Barrow is the nearest place.)

2. Where would it land? (Not exactly the flatest land for a runway around here.)

We never found out! It suddenly went off to the north.

The fish stock in the newly revamped pond has increased. Two Sarasa comets - one all red; one almost all white have been added. They are known as Wills and Kate (think about it!). In addition five small golden orfe were added to replace our two large orfe lost last year when the pond was inundated with flood water from the farmer's field containing (allegedly!) a large amount of cow manure. The five are now officially called "the bridesmaids" and seem to enjoy dashing around the pond and annoying the other fish (very much in the style of Peter Kaye's stories about children at weddings)!

Rich had wanted to buy these fish on Royal Wedding Day (April 29) but was given the big NO! by Jill. The fish were added today (which by pure coincidence was about 4 hours after Jill had gone off to London to see the twins!!)

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh have since returned to London on the Royal train from Stockbridge Junction (after changing from her yellow outfit to a post box red creation by British Home Stores!)

The Official pictures released!

Richard spent the weekend with the twins but on the Monday whilst they were in nursery and Caroline was out for a shopping trip with Andrew, Richard decided to play bus roulette! Basically - armed with my over 60's bus pass - go to the bus stop outside Caroline's house; take the first bus - choose a random number of stops before getting off. Wait at that stop - take the second bus, again for a random number of stops....... and so on!

	This is the first place I got off. The second bus was the 315 which weaved its way through a housing estate! Later on outside the Dorchester Hotel I almost had to take a bus to Luton Airport!!! Fortunately another bus beat that one to the stop.
	I finished up at Hampstead near the Royal Free Hospital and then took this bus back all the way to Pimlico at the end of the trip!

Feb 10

The Queen has paid a visit to Sunnybank! Accompanied by Prince Philip and a corgi, The Queen joined the Royal Train at Stockbridge Junction to return to London after a short visit to officially open Scandale Bowling Club! The Queen was wearing a red coat with matching hat and a black belt. The corgi disgraced itself by cocking its leg on the stationmaster's prize dahlia display on Platform 6. The Royal couple were accompanied by several Peers and the Lord Lieutenant of the county. The picture shows the couple about to board her personal coach, hauled by a Class 67 loco "The Queen's Messenger".

The royal protection squad were understandably nervous as three trainspotters were standing nearby waiting for Jill's favourite steam loco, "Leander", to pass with the Fellsman steam special!

In case you haven't realised.... the picture was taken on the model railway and the Queen is just under one inch tall!

The new shelves to house the blue recycling boxes in the No 1 coalhouse are now complete. Richard's measurements proved to be spot on as the unit slid into place with about 3mm to spare! The kindling box is now alongside instead of its old position. The old space was needed for the smokeless fuel for Sheepgates' new stove.

Who says sheep are cuddly?

This is a Texel sheep which lives down the road at Oaks Farm. With his wrinkly nose he looks like he's thinking..."come on... make my day... just put one foot in my field and see what happens!"

Today we had our new door fitted in Cobbleholes by Andrew Dugdale. The door has been made to order and is exactly the same as our door in Fellside . The old solid door made the lounge darker in Cobbleholes and as soon as it was finished we could see a big improvement in the light available in the room. We also took the opportunity to have the door hinged on the other side which makes more sense.

Bow waves!

A car creates waves as it drives through the rushing water outside the cottages.

82mm of rain in the last 36 hours- so it was a case of manning the defences on the road to ensure that the rushing water found the grid and not the surface of our car park!

All Christmas decorations are safely stashed in the attic, using the new loft ladders.

After weird effects on the weather station software which has led to various crashes recently (sorry if you are an avid weather checker) Rich downloaded a new version and things seem a lot better except for low barometer readings! - I am working on that one. However, everything else is now working properly again.

Electrician arrived to move the light switches in Cobbleholes - in preparation for the new front door.

The milder weather means that our washing machine in the chalet is now thawed and back in action.