I saw the first bumble bee of this spring in the churchyard yesterday early evening.

A long awaited trip to Falkirk to the wheel. A bit of a hike made all the longer on the way up due to my (somewhat rare) hangover and several service stops – but a well worthwhile trip up to Falkirk to take a good look at, and have a go in, the extremely clever Falkirk Wheel. An amazing structure. I’ve always had a thing about canals and their boats.
Now for the techy bit…!
The Millennium Link was an ambitious £84.5m project with the objective of restoring navigability across Scotland on the historic Forth & Clyde Canal and the Union Canal, providing a corridor of regenerative activity through central Scotland.
The various parts of The Falkirk Wheel were actually constructed and assembled, like one giant Meccano set, at Butterley Engineering’s Steelworks in Derbyshire. A team there carefully assembled the 1,200 tonnes of steel, painstakingly fitting the pieces together to an accuracy of just 10 mm to ensure a perfect final fit.
The Falkirk Wheel lies at the end of a reinforced concrete aqueduct that connects, via the Roughcastle tunnel and a double staircase lock, to the Union Canal. Boats entering the Wheel’s upper gondola are lowered, along with the water that they float in, to the basin below. At the same time, an equal weight rises up, lifted in the other gondola. This works on the Archimedes principle of displacement. That is, the mass of the boat sailing into the gondola will displace an exactly proportional volume of water so that the final combination of ‘boat plus water’ balances the original total mass.

Tootsie is getting bigger by the day and if you touch her tummy you can feel the kittens moving around – sometimes you can even see her tummy move. We don’t think it will be long now….

Early Easter this year and the first proper, though late, snowfalls.
Giacomo was very unsure and stepped somewhat gingerly (gingerly! get it?) into the outdoors where he quickly hid like a scaredy cat under a garden seat.

Later we went to Lancaster so I could visit the butterfly house at Williamson Park there. It was a real treat.

Well, we’re pretty sure now that she is. So, we’re tying to figure out when the deed was done and when the kitties will arrive. Some preparations are in progress – as I write this Hector is in the garage customising a wooden chest trunk to act as a maternity unit. I’ve sourced a supplier of heat bulbs for a lamp to keep them all warm. My best guess for a due date is around April 1st (perhaps the deed was done when she went missing for two days in late January)

Got a suspicion that Tootsie is pregnant. She shows some signs….It’ll be a whole new experience for all of us and a lot of internet research for guidance if she is.
Crikey – how did THAT happen?

When we got up this morning and looked out of the window we saw a group of people in the field outside the house doing, what we presume was, water diving. VERY interesting. I’d love to learn more. Before I could get dressed to go and have a nosey they had all gone.

I took loads of pics at Long Meg at the weekend when we went just to blow away some cobwebs. I thought the Long Meg stone herself looked kind of alone and outside her circle of daughters, so I used some jiggery pokery to colour her blue in a photo.

Another, I cropped and desaturated…

Saw a field full of sheep and turnips on my way back from town and they looked so interesting that I got my camera from home and went back to photograph them.

Storms have hit the South and along the coast in Dorset where we holidayed last May. These pics were on the internet and are of exact locations where we were in a VERY different climate!

Its apparently heading here tonight. Its a bit eerie waiting, especially when it has been so calm.

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philipa Gregory is one of my favourite books so I was keen to see the new film. It was pretty true to the atmosphere of the book and well played by the cast, the sense of betrayal and deceit at court were tangible. The filming, scenery and direction were wonderful though I found it almost embarrassing by the end after seeing SO many characters sweeping purposefully and be-costumed down stone corridors.

I’ve been having a lot of fun looking around Flickr at other peoples photos and sharing some of mine. In fact I’m becoming a bit of a bore about it. I find myself falling ‘in love’ with some photos I’ve found. Thats not healthy. I’m only writing this coz I’m waiting for some new photos of mine to upload!
And another thing…… its been a long weekend. He has been away a lot again and I can’t wait for the weekend. Think I need a bit of a break.
and…when will it be spring!

Deb called on Friday afternoon and said she’d had a bad couple of weeks at work so she and James had booked a couple of nights at a B&B at Ullswater. We arranged to go out to the Drove for dinner with them. It was great to see them and Deb is looking very well in the first flush of marriage and early weeks of pregnancy. A really nice evening!