Thursday 10 October
We all arrived in Retford - some of us staying in an Airbnb on Queen Street very near the site of our former high school.
It was advertised as 'work colleagues welcome' which had echoes of the contractor accommodation we'd used in Manchester for a crafting weekend - and which had not been a good experience! (see July 22 post for more details). Luckily it was clean and tidy, if a little* dilapidated, so that was a great relief!
(* by the end of our stay 'little' would be replaced by 'extremely'!)
The house has previously been separated as two flats so there were two kitchens and bathrooms with the larger dining kitchen upstairs so we used that one.
We unpacked and had a quick catch up before getting ready for our meal at the Boat Inn in Hayton.
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Great concentration for the stand up bingo..
Bingo caller - not my forte.. 🤣
Apps on my phone said that the possibility of seeing aurora in the area was very high so when we got back I walked to the corner of the street to take a trial pic - and there it was.. faint but there.
I wanted to go out (and if Siobhan had been here she would have been just as excited as me and we'd have been off in the car to search for dark skies somewhere.. 🤣🥰) so Janice and Chris said that they'd walk over to the cemetery with me - we were right on the corner near Babworth Road. Off we went, trying to remember what our photography expert Kate had taught us when we were up near Kielder Forest.
The cemetery gates were locked and there was still a lot of light pollution but we got some shots.
Janice took a lovely shot although when we asked her which direction she couldn't remember.. 🤣
.. well we thought that this had been the end of our excitement for the evening but we were all just deciding that we needed to go to bed at about midnight when we heard a massive bang and then the sound of glass tinkling.
We thought that it sounded like a car crash so Janice and I went to investigate with Linda following us.
It was indeed a car crash. A van had crashed into the side of a car totalling it completely.
The young girl driving the car had jumped out and was effing and blinding loudly towards the van driver who seemed to be standing in an area by his van in darkness where he had ended up away from the street light whilst another man talked to him. He said nothing.
After we ascertained that noone was hurt we thought that the girl seemed to have things under control and that someone from her car had walked over to the man and van so we went back inside.
About 15 minutes later Janice decided to go and have a proper look at her car (they'd only had it a day!) as she realised that the van had ended up near it and we hadn't actually walked up to it. She went out with Chris and they found the poor girl standing on her own frantically trying to contact people on her phone and shivering with cold and shock.
Janice ran in to get a blanket to warm her and I put the kettle on to make her a drink.
Long story short, the police came a few minutes later and took names, addresses etc from the three of us even though we hadn't actually seen the accident. 'I only came out to bring a cup of tea' I said. 'That poor girl said she only came out to buy jam' said Janice and Chris. That decision cost her her car - hope she was ok.
So eventually we got to bed. These pics were taken through my bedroom window at about 2.30am - with loads of light pollution around.
Bridget's pic in Wales.
We held Siobhan 100% responsible for the whole aurora shebang.. 😁🥰
Friday 11 October
Everyone slept in a bit after their late night. As usual I was awake first and stayed settled and warm in bed with my phone and a cup of coffee.
Linda popped in first and we had a chat, then Jeanette appeared followed a few minutes later by Sue.
So funny watching from my bed.. 🤣🤣🤣
Linda looked on not quite sure what to make of it all.. 🤣🤔
.. then decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em..
Sue said 'You need a stair step for the next exercise'. 'But I live in a bungalow' said Jeanette plaintively.. 🤣🤣🤣
Sally arrived for breakfast - the others had dispersed but were using the bathrooms so I was still in bed - so after all that I was nearly the last one up!
Then Barbara, Trisha and Angela arrived so we had time for a good catch up natter before some people had to start making their way homewards and the rest of us had to get ready for our walk at Clumber Park.
We got there and all eventually managed to meet up. We set off to look at the bridge which had been deliberately damaged some years previously.
Nice little walk in the sunshine.
Lots of chatter.
Some went into the walled garden.
Sue and I were just about to set off to walk down to the lake to meet Sally and Carol when they appeared. So it was back to the cafe with them, Dawn and Trisha.
Before we'd gone out we'd had to phone the Airbnb hosts to say the boiler light had gone off and we had no hot water. When we got back we found it fixed and some 'grovelling apology' presents of wine and chocolates which we were happy to accept (no pics didn't remember until after we'd eaten/drunk them 🙄) This was shortly before we had to phone again to say the radiators weren't working 🙄 Luckily they seemed to live very close so they popped round and sorted that for us.
The house really didn't seem suitable as an Airbnb but it was clean and warm so we tried to ignore the rest of the dilapidated state - quite hard though as more things kept coming to light.
Our absolute worst accommodation had been for our Manchester crafting week so we had a benchmark and it definitely didn't go that low (plus there were forks and glasses!) but it now stands a close second.
There were more alerts on my phone to say high possibility of seeing the northern lights again in the evening but these seemed to taper off so we didn't go out in the end.
Around midday I'd received a text from Kate who had shown us how to use our cameras in Kielder - she was asking if we'd managed to capture the Northern Lights the previous evening.
What a bizarre coincidence! I explained that the day before had been Siobhan's birthday and that a group of schoolies were together for a few days to celebrate our dear friend and raise money for her charity.
I sent her a couple of our pictures and she was thrilled that we'd captured it - and said she was glad our 'lovely bunch of ladies' were out and about together and that she must have sensed it to send the message.. 😁
She sent some of her aurora pics taken at Ashness Jetty in Keswick..
Amazing pics!.. 😍 what a great photographer.. 😁
Saturday 12 October
We were soon joined by Janice then Sue and Linda and then Chris and we all sat there having a good natter. No exercise class today.
The weather wasn't good we had rain. Lots of rain but we thought we'd go for a walk anyway.
Off we went past the site of our old school which was literally round the corner from where we were staying. We tried to work out if the old house at the side of the newer estate was our old sixth form common room. It certainly had a large bay window which looked like the one we used to climb out from to skive into town or to nip off strawberry picking 😁🍓🤣
Down over the canal..
.. and into the park..
.. the park which a lot of us walked through on our way to and from school..
.. and which was the scene of many of our encounters with the Grammar school boys.. 🤣🙄🤫
We went for a coffee then made our way back to prepare for the afternoon of sea glass crafting. The biggest space we had was upstairs so we moved everything around.
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They all turned out fantastic work. Here is Angela's.
Chris
Linda
Sue
So many different ideas - all of them totally fabulous they should all be very proud.
Late in the afternoon Janice left for home and then Stuart came to pick up Chris. Just Sue, Jeanette, Linda and I left so we had an evening of telly and chat - we never run out of things to talk about.. 🤣🤣🤣
Sunday 13 October
The usual early(ish) last morning up get with time for a quick breakfast before sorting out the food and bottles from the fridges.
We bustled around stripping the beds and having a bit of a tidy up before filling out cars and locking the keys back in the key safe.
We agreed that this place had not been the best but it had been fine for not worrying if we made a mess!.. 🤣
And, as always it was more about the company.. which had been fabulous. Once again we'd had a great weekend with the schoolies, managed to raise more money for Siobhan's charity (big thanks to Siobhan's sister Jenny for her donation too 💕) - and smashed our £1k target.
Well done everyone!.. 👍
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