I like to think that Siobhan saw her northern lights that evening - and that the four of us were able to share them together.. 🥰💕
One of Gormley's men at Crosby beach
Monday 25 March
Carol, Chris, Jeanette, Linda, Liz, Sue, Trisha, Wendy.
We all arrived, unpacked our bags and sorted out our rooms.
A beautiful house in a lovely setting on the river Esk - with the river literally at the bottom of the garden.
View from a bedroom.
As we had plans for later in the evening Chris organised an early meal - DIY pizza - delicious. Such a good idea which we will certainly use again.
We set up our tripods whilst waiting for Kate to arrive.
Luckily she was late as it took us half an hour to do that!
Of course there were the usual double entendres, malapropisms, slips of the tongue etc - and of course as usual we howled with laughter, said we must remember that for the blog - and then promptly forgot. Most of them were muttered as we tried to set up the tripods..
Liz: I've only got one hole..
Linda: I can't get my legs apart any further..
Kate: I can't get this knob any higher..
Linda: I'm special..
.. and later..
Liz: That ice cream looks cold..
.. plus many more that we can't remember. This is when we titter like the adolescent school girls we revert to when we're away together.. 🙄🤣🙄
Kate was very patient with us all as she explained about the Exposure Triangle of shutter speed, ISO and aperture. We all desperately clicked through our camera menus to find the appropriate settings. Some took notes.. 😁
Kate patiently went round to all of us checking and finding modes and settings when we said that they definitely weren't there.. 🤷
Then we practiced taking photos in the dark - with varying degrees of success. The lights were on, the lights were off and we all fumbled around trying to remember where the buttons were and trying to set a ten seconds timer. We all had drinks in hands too - not sure if that helped or hindered.. 🤣
I thought my photo hadn't worked - until I spotted a tiny Liz in the distance.. bit of cropping and there she was!
We then tried a bit of editing - some interesting results!
Kate was a good teacher and talked to us on a level we could understand - and she coped very well with 8 women all asking questions about different cameras and different phones.
It was good evening which made us feel a little more confident in using our respective cameras.
Thank you Kate!
Tuesday 26 March
Behind the lens.. 🤣
So lovely with all the daffodils.
Lots of history about a previous owner damming the river to make a salmon farm - which eventually resulted in a battle with the Scots up river who relied on the fish as a main food source.
Chris taking a photo of me taking a group selfie.
.
The house looked as though it was originally three cottages.
We assembled for a walk into the village.
Our first obstacle - to get off the property via a stile. No problem for us young things.
A lovely walk along the river Esk - and a pretty little folly on the opposite bank.
Linda edited her photo of it later - with great results!
A large, random hook set firmly into the middle of the path - no idea why. Perhaps to moor up a boat from the river at the side?
Lots of evidence of the sheep nearby.
We reached the village of Longtown, crossed the bridge and went off in search of a coffee shop.
We stopped at the first one we saw and were excited to find that they had delicious looking scones.. 😋
.. so we bought/ate some - despite having a load of cakes and sweet stuff back at the house.. 🙄🤣
Off we went, with some full of cake, to warm up baguettes and quiches for lunch. Even those who had eaten scones managed to tuck in.. 😁
After lunch Sue and I set off over the border into Scotland for another walk at Langholm moor, Dumfriesshire.
Very beautiful walking across the moorland.
The others walked to the church and the suspension bridge.
In the evening we sat down to discuss ideas to celebrate Siobhan in the future - and we talked about all the lovely things she had done for people and how generous she had been in making quilts, bags, jewelry cases, make up bags and many more things for us all when we went on our schoolie trips together.
We had fish and chips which we were lucky to get as Trisha and Liz arrived at the local chippy in Longtown just as they'd started to close down for the evening.
Luckily the owner took pity on them and fired up the friers again to make our supper.
We then settled down to draw our raffle. We had organised this as a little starter for our fund raising.
As part of our celebration of all things Siobhan we decided to open a fund raiser for a charity which she supported - the Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis.
With our little raffle we raised a total of £80 to start the ball rolling.
We have set ourselves a target of £1000 and one year and already have several
ideas for ways to raise funds. It is a chance for us all to come together to celebrate our lovely friend - and raise funds on her behalf for a charity which was (literally!) very close to her heart.. 💕
We will open a donations page and give out more details in due course.
Wednesday 27 March
A trip to the Kielder Observatory was the highlight today - Jeanette had planned us a route to reach there with short walks, interesting places to visit and plenty of food and coffee and cake stops.
But first of all breakfast..
Chris cooked up a scromlette - cross between scrambled egg and an omelette..😋
Veggie on one side with everything left over from the pizza apart from the ham, added ham on the other side and a no man's land in the middle.. 🤣
Jeanette gave us the order of events for the day - making our way towards the Kielder observatory via the Roman forts along Hadrian's wall.
First stop was Cawfields.
Very cold and blowy - they were a hardy lot those Romans!
Sue and I climbed up the other side to look down on the fort and the schoolies.
The views of the surrounding countryside were impressive!
Second stop was Steel Rigg where we set off on the short walk towards the Sycamore Gap.
Grey skies with a tiny bit of sunshine but at least it didn't rain on us.
On a fine, dry day it would have been a fabulous walk but it was too muddy and too slippery so we got part way up and then turned back before one of us went a over t.. 🤣
But the scenery was still stunning!
When we set off again Sue took a photo of Sycamore Gap from the road. It's there somewhere..
We stopped at The Sill for a light lunch..
.. and a little walk on the roof.
It rained heavily whilst we were inside but it had cleared up by the time we were ready to leave.
The skies started to clear and there were some impressive cloudscapes.
By late afternoon the skies had practically cleared - leaving a a near cloudless sky for the evening.
Still slippy and muddy underfoot in places.
Our next stop was the Forest Bar and Grill at the side of Kielder Water. A lovely location for our evening meal.
We ordered our food and as we waited they brought out a little amuse bouche of a sort of aerated broccoli and cream foam. Very posh and very delish..😋
We set off for the Observatory and went through the gates driving slowly into the trees in total darkness. So many stars overhead..✨
We parked and waited to be checked in then we walked up to the observatory guided by the small red lights.
No harsh lights at all - everything was bathed in a gentle red glow so that people could enjoy their experience with maximum night vision.
We were ushered in and at 8pm on the dot a very enthusiastic boffin started to talk about the lights and the science behind them. They tried to simplify things but there was still lots of physics.. yawn .. 🥱 and even though it was quite interesting and the slides were nice several of us were jolted back from our soporific semi snoozing states to a wide awake reality as we slid in slow increments off our back seat benches on our slippy cushions.. 🤣
After the lecture had finished we were split into smaller groups which went to different areas.
Our group (us and parents with a young boy) were ushered outside for a very interesting talk about the stars and constellations which were very visible across the sky.. and we looked at some of them through the telescope. Interesting but very cold!
Onwards to our next stop which was back indoors to warm up with hot chocolate.
They had a graffiti chalk board so we left a bit of Siobhan there.. 💕
And we toasted her with hot chocolate .. 😁🥰
Our last stop was a visit to the big revolving telescope.
Very interesting to see it being moved into position.
Our boffin this time was called Liam and we told him that we were all friends from school days.
Then we mentioned to him about Siobhan and Jeanette said it would be nice to find a 68 year old star - so he did just that!
After a few minutes on his phone and computer he moved the telescope into position. 'This star is named 17 Cygni' he told us.
'I think you'll find it's called Siobhan ' I said.. 😁
The 17 Cygni is the 17th star in the Cygnus constellation and was created 68.2 years ago. Perfect!.. 🥰
We let young Oliver (the little boy in our group) climb the short step ladder so he could look through the telescope. Then I took my turn.
I saw the little twinkling star in the centre of the screen - and as I looked at it a shooting star burst out diagonally above blazing from right to left. Absolutely magical!.. ✨
We thanked Liam profusely and went back to the car in the frost to find a frozen windscreen. We could have stayed a little longer but we had an hour's drive back to our accommodation so we decided not to linger.
A long, winding and dark road back to our accommodation but we all agreed that the observatory trip was a great end to a fabulous day!
Thursday 28 March
At breakfast I asked Jeanette if she'd had any luck with her photos as she'd been trying some of the techniques we'd practiced with Kate.
'Oh yes dark skies, I got dark skies' she said 'All black' and she showed me her black screen.
A few photos further on she stared at her phone in disbelief.. Whaaaat...
There it was. The elusive aurora! Faint but it was visible and there!I sent the picture to Kate our photographer from Monday and she confirmed it. She explained that light glow would show up as more of a blue hue - and this was definitely green!
Same pic after a bit of editing on Snapseed..
.. and again after being edited by the lovely Kate - thank you so much!.. 😘
Jeanette had found the aurora when she wasn't even looking for it! We were all so very happy.. 🥰
After the usual clean up and clear out everyone hugged, said their goodbyes and started on their journey home.
Sue, Trisha (for the second time) and I went for a look at the church.
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