Apologies for the late blog - no excuse really apart from just enjoying a quiet and more relaxed week! We have spent most of the week dodging the storms and the April showers!
We are fully in the midst of lambing season now in the Dales and there are literally thousands of them up and down the valleys. We have tried to get out walking as much as possible to see them in between the rain storms.
We have taken the iffy weather this week as a sign to slow down and chill out in the cottage. For me - a chance to just lay around watching mindless TV and reading my book. I even managed to get my early retirement blog on 'Purpose and Identity' finished and published! Richard has been practising his French duo lingo and enjoying time learning how to sketch architectural buildings.
We were hoping to be able to get into the garden and start some of the clearing but that will have to wait until this poor weather improves.
Subsidence saga
Tuesday was a slightly more manic day. In the ongoing saga of sorting out Richard's mums house which has subsidence, we had to go across to Bingley to meet one of the monitoring team.
We first activated an insurance claim in August last year as we noticed some considerable cracks appear down one side of the house both inside and out. The insurance company have been pretty good and have done a survey and sent a drainage company in to fix and line the drains.
We now have to wait for 3 monitoring visits 2 months apart to assess if there is any further movement. Fingers crossed that all is OK. After all the monitoring visits are completed, if there is no further subsidence, they will send in a team to repair all the actual cracks and redecorate the affected areas. It is only at that point that we can get a certificate to say that the house is no longer subject to subsidence and that all faults have been fixed so we can sell the house. At best this will be October!! It is a long drawn out process and all the while the house is empty.
We are fortunate that Richards mum is not relying on the funds of a house sale to pay for her care at the moment, however her funds will not last forever and the empty house will continue to deteriorate.
In all of this we are just grateful that mum is in a safe place where she is happy and settled. Her care home is fantastic with a really caring set of staff that have remained constant throughout her year there. We don't know what we would have done had she still been living in the house with all this going on!
Life in the Dales
Later in the week, we have had some friends visiting for a couple of days which was lovely. I don't think we will ever tire of showing people where we live and the surrounding areas which are stunning, even on wet rainy days. We took them up to Malham Cove and on a little drive through some of the places used in the filming of the James Herriot 'All Creatures Great and Small' new series. We also enjoyed a pint and a lovely pub lunch in the Lister Arms - a must visit place if you ever go to Malham.
Surprisingly, the weather in the Dales appears to have been much better than elsewhere in the country over the weekend. We woke up to blue skies on Saturday and went for a long hike out of Settle. The scenery is absolutely beautiful, with the craggy cliffs, green pastures and thousands of lambs. We went a little further out on the path that eventually leads to Malham - luckily most of the walk back was on a farm track and not as muddy as we had anticipated.
Best laid plans
We were going to set off on Sunday for our South West Coastal adventures, but decided that storm Kathleen was not the best conditions to be camping out in. Instead, we got the van all packed up and ready to depart on Monday morning.
A quick check of the weather before I got up on Monday morning showed a further day of storms and high winds of upto 65mph on the south coast so we stayed put for another night! We love our campervan and we love getting away - whatever the weather - but storm force winds are hard work and best avoided if possible.
Luckily, the weather was much improved on Tuesday and were able set off.
Catch up with our travels through Dorset and Cornwall in next weeks blog
Jackie and Richard
Hope you guys have better weather than we did in Cornwall last week, still beautiful part of the country. Enjoy
Great part of the country Cornwall and Devon looking forward to seeing how the trip goes.