New Years Eve

We started the day with bacon butties and the guys playing on Waynes Christmas present from Lois - a play station!

We had a roast lunch of lamb seasoned with rosemary followed by rubarb crumble and then mid evening went to the Grouse for a few drinks.........

before heading up the fellside to set off fireworks and drink champagne to welcome in the New Year

New Years Eve - Past And Present

Australia 2003

Party at The Station 2004 & Fireworks, Bowness Pier 2005
Fireworks Birch Vale 2006

Pre New Years Eve

Wayne and Lois arrived in the Peaks today for the New Year celebrations. I cooked Chicken breasts for tea stuffed with feta cheese and sundried tomatoes, marinated and cooked in white wine and served with beans, mangetout, carrots and mashed potatoes, we had apple crumble and cream for pudding.

Christmas Celebrations: Christmas Dinner, Birch Vale

Ann and Cliff came over tonight for our family Christmas Dinner - we started with salmon and dill soup and then had roast beef marinated and cooked in red wine, garlic and cinnamon with a bottle of champagne. Pudding was mixed berry crumble and cream followed by coffee and chocolates.

Christmas Celebrations: The Sun, Crook

After a walk at High Carley Woods followed by lunch on the Glebe, Bowness and a walk along Millarground we went to the Drunken Duck Inn for a drink before heading off for Denise's and then an evening out with Billy, Brian and Daddy Brian at The Sun, Crook with excellent food as always.

Boxing Day

Bacon Butties for brekkie this morning followed by a walk round Braunestone Park. Lunch was a very lazy affair with mulled wine, gammon, turkey and snacks in front of a film before we reluctantly packed up the car to go back to the Peaks.

Christmas Day - Champagne Breakfast and Presents

After opening our presents Christmas Day started with the traditional Leicestershire breakfast of pork pie (this one topped with cranberries) and pickle with toast, bucks fizz and champagne.

Christmas Day - Old John, Bradgate Park

We put the Turkey in the oven to cook and went off for a walk in Bradgate Park and up to the top of Old John before coming in for Christmas Dinner.

Christmas Day - Dinner

We started with a glass of baileys to go with our prawn cocktails and then had champagne with our turkey, swede, carrots and roast potatoes. This was followed by a glass of port before setting fire to the Christmas pudding and eating it with lots of cream.

With that and coffee and more mulled wine it was an excellent day and an excellent meal thanks to our chef Lois.

Christmas Day - Past And Present

Christmas Australia 2003

Christmas Day 2004 - Langdale & Christmas Day 2005 - Grasmere

Christmas Day 2006 - Leicester & Melbourne

Christmas Eve

We started the day with Kedgeree for breakfast and then walked it off by taking the dogs around Braunestone Park, we put up the Christmas Tree in the afternoon, wrapped up presents and drank mulled wine before going to the Hobby Horse for a drink and coming back to a late tea of gammon and chips – of course we stayed up til midnight to open one present before going to bed and awaiting Santa.

Pre Christmas Eve

We set off today for Wayne and Lois' in Leicester for Christmas. I cooked tea tonight which was haggis, neeps and tatties followed by cartmel sticky toffee pudding and cream.

Christmas Celebrations: Birch Vale

The beginning of the festive holiday is upon us. We spent a plesant evening at Birch Vale with the dogs opening their Christmas presents from Claire which was doggy choc drops, chocolate bones and pigs ears.

Winter Series - 4th Race

It was a bright sunny day with snow capped mountains and no wind when Santa and his crew of Reindeer set off for a yacht race. 39 boats then drifted around the lake in search for an elusive wind for about an hour before the race course was set.

We got off to a bad start on Mojo because Pelagos tacked whilst between us and Larento causing her stern to swing towards us and her bow towards Larento - Larento couldn't tack out of her way and we had to bare off fast to avoid collision.

Pelagos completed her penalty turns and continued to race whilst we set off hard on Lady Grey's tail all the way down to the first marker bouy - we rounded the bouy and hoisted the spinnaker - I was flying the spinnaker so didn't see the moment we passed Lady Grey I only noticed her spinnaker flying out about 100 yards behind us as we whizzed up to Huzar and over took her just before rounding the second marker bouy.

We lowered the Spinnaker - hardened up the sails and continued onto the next marker where the wind dropped dead! We slowly rounded the bouy and drifted off in the direction of the next beginning lap 2 of the course.

Lady Grey drifted off round the bouy about 5 mins behind us and then picked up the wind first and shot off down the lake in an attempt to overtake us but the wind caught us up and as we whizzed past Lady Greys bows they pinched up into the wind trying and succeeding to cause us to tack away from them so they could get infront of us.

Luck was still with us, we got a good tack line and a good breeze and sailed past not only Lady Grey but High and Dry, Spin Off and a good part of the fleet.

Then as we continued on our tack line Lady Grey and Spin Off took a different tack to the finish line and with not a lot of wind as we all neared we all slowly drifted towards the finish, Mojo crossed the finish line first with Lady Grey about 45 seconds behind us and Spin Off shortly after that.

Lady Grey did protest us claiming that we hadn't left them enough room to tack round the finish mark and we'd delayed their finish by a few seconds - we claimed in our defense that we had left enough room.

We couldn't really see why they were grumbling when their handicap would put them infront of us and the winner of our class regardless of us finishing a few seconds ahead. Lady Grey just didn't like the thought of Mojo beating them because they are supposedly the faster boat!

Out of the 39 boats that started only 24 completed the course in the 90 minutes race time.

It was a good race and as usual a trip to the Spinnaker Club at the Marina afterwards for the results was a must!

Results:-
MoJo - 28th overall - 1st in class - 21st on water
Lady Grey - 21st overall - 2nd in class - 23rd on water
Pelagos - timed out

Three Bags Full - 17th overall - 2nd in class - 15th on water
Celtic Challenger - did not race

Christmas Celebrations: Crossways Inn, Gretna

Denise and I left for Gretna this morning to meet Jo and Audrey for lunch in the Crossways Inn at Gretna - the mountains were snow capped and the sun was out - it wasnt even very cold!

After lunch we spent the afternoon shopping around Gretna Outlet Village and finishing up with coffee in Costas where we met up with Jo's Hubby Alisdair and their kids David and Iona.

We also bought Haggis to take back with us - you know those little furry creatures that run round the hill clockwise because they have two legs shorter than the other and a variation of the species has only three legs!

Christmas Celebrations: Lowood

After Denise and I got back from Gretna we met up with Ian and went to Denise's house for roast chicken, potatoes, Turnip (thats Swede to the English) and carrots served with Crackers (the popping kind with hats) and followed by Sticky Toffee Pudding from the local shop in Cartmel.

Christmas Celebrations: The Sun

Ian and I met Howard, Barbara and Collin for a meal in The Sun Inn at Crook tonight.

Howard and I had Morcambe Bay Shrimps for starters and I had Game Casserole for the main course.

Christams Trees 2003 - 2006

Australia 2003 & Iluka 2004 (we only had an outside Christmas Tree)

Iluka 2005 & Birch Vale 2006

Christmas Celebrations: The Rectory, Stockport

Tonight we went out with Debbie and AJ to The Old Rectory in Stockport for a Christmas meal and a few glass of wine - or in the case of the guys - guiness!!!

Ian and I had a sharded combi starter of breaded crab, onion rings, muchrooms, prawns, potatoe wedges and chicken served with salad and dips and then I had Italian Chicken for the main course and Ian had Red Thai currey.

Of Mulled Wine, Tinsel and Christmas Trees

Ian came home today with a rather large Christmas tree which we put up in the lounge opposite the fire place and then we spent the evening decorating the tree whilst drinking mulled wine and covering the dogs in tinsel!

Winter Series - 3rd Race

Last night was a night of 100 mile/hour gales, fallen trees, over turned lorries and floods.

Today we took one look at the south lake and thought - force 6-8 - if we are racing it will be in the north lake - which didn't look much calmer.

The crew today were just Tom, Gerry, Ian and myself.

We swapped the large genoa for the smaller one with the self tacker and put 2 reefs in the main sail and were preparing to go out and race with Huzar (already out) and Pelagos, Jack of Hearts and Wizard (about to follow on behind us) when the Race Committee called off the race due to the high winds.

So we decided to go out with Pelagos and Huzar anyway.

Ian was on foredeck, Tom on jib, Gerry on helm and I was on main. We sailed into the north lake in a force 6 gusting 9 with Huzar ahead of us and Pelagos behind.

After reaching a record 8 knots of speed - the fastest the boat has ever got to - we turned, on Tom's suggestion, and headed into the south lake to see what we could get her up to down there in a real blast.

Blowing a steady force 9 in the south Tom took over main sail as it was getting to heavy for me to pull the sail in quick enough before we had to dump it again and I took over the jib.

Gerry started to whopp with joy when we hit 8 knots, then 8.1, 8.2 and finally a record speed of 8.3!!!!

The rain then came down and we decided it was time for a return to the jetty, the crew of Pelagos (who had remained sailing in the north lake) helped us into our berth, which was hard due to the winds, and then after a hot coffee complete with a tot of whisky we retired to The Ship for lunch where we were joined by John, Steve and Geoff for a debate over whether the race should have been cancelled or not.

Technically the race should have gone ahead because at least 5 of the bigger boats were willing to go out and race and they thought that if it had gone ahead 10-15 boats would have raced.

All I can say is that it was a good blast out, a thrillingly exciting sail and most certainly not for the faint hearted!

Craken Edge

Ian, Siula, Storm and I went for a cold walk up to Craken Edge this afternoon and came down just as it was getting dark.