Category Archives: Cheshire

Where chaos was to reign

Australia, Bungendore, NSW, Cheshire, England, Scotland, Loch Rannoch

2017’s Calendar Photos

Starting in 2008, we have inflicted, sorry given all of our families and friends a calendar of photographs taken by myself.  This year has been no different and is the 7th such calendar (2008, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016).  I have previously posted the pictures we rejected from this year’s calendar; these are the 13 pictures that made it into our calendar for 2017.

The Cover

Cover – The cover picture, for once, does not contain an image of Stuart and I.  We had nothing suitable, but we do have a juvenile delinquent on our hands who systematically tears apart the tree he is sitting in, littering the ground below with broken branch ends.  He is also known to play peekaboo with me in the morning, hanging off the roof of the sunroom and peering into the room whilst upside down.

January’s Image – Lazy Clouds on Loch Rannoch (October 2015)

January – This image was taken in October 2015 on our last visit to Liarn Farm Cottages, Kinloch Rannoch, Perthshire.  During the 2 week we were there, we were to take the decision to consider coming to Australia.  We were also really fortunate with both the weather and the Autumn colours.  This was one of those wonderful days where we started the day with dense fog and total calm which was gradually burnt off during midday.  If you went out along the loch, you would cycle (we were on our bikes/trike) out of the dense fog and into the glorious sunshine.

February’s Image – The Back Garden, Spring Creek Road (July 2016)

February – February’s image was taken in our ‘back garden’ literally back in July of this year (2016).  That was our winter and we had been in the house about a fortnight when I was fortunate enough to capture this shot.

March’s Image – Way Out East, Spring Creek Road (July 2016)

March – Titled “Way Out East”, it is our track and heads out east.  To the right you have one of the stable blocks here, behind us is everything else.  It was taken at the end of July on another glorious winter’s morning  (Yeh, I know, it’s hard getting your head around that one, we are struggling with it as well) and I just love the long shadows and contrast in the shot.

April’s Image – Autumnal Light, Loch Rannoch (October 2015)

April – April for us will be Autumn and we felt it suitable to have an Autumnal shot in.  Loch Rannoch provided a suitable shot last October with the light reflecting through a silver birch tree against the most amazingly calm loch surface.

May’s Image – Spring Colours, Whitegate Way, Cheshire (May 2016)

May – May’s picture was taken in May 2016, less than a week before we left the UK.  It was another beautiful Spring morning on my daily walk along the Whitegate Way, (Cheshire) with Dusty, the Irish Wolfhound our landlady owned, but who I walked, or more accurately was escorted by…

June’s Image – Spring has Sprung, Spring Creek Road (September 2016)

June – In contrast, taken in September 2016, this is the pump house (for our bore water) in evening Spring sunlight in our ‘garden’.  I just love the light in this shot and Spring was literally just around the corner.

July’s Image – Frozen Tracks, Rannoch (March 2013)

July – July is the middle of winter here for us, and somehow, Rannoch station in snow, just seemed apt.  It was taken on another of our cycling holidays to Loch Rannoch, back in March 2013.  March and Scotland usually mean cold weather and this holiday was no exception.  Cycling along car tyre tracks and leaving pedal imprints in the snow, we were the only people at the station.  This is looking north heading for Fort William were you to catch one of the 5 or 6 trains a day that pass through the station.

August’s Image – Ghost Trees, Spring Creek Road (July 2016)

August – We were struck by the amazingly white tree trunks of these native Eucalyptus Gum Trees when we first arrived in Canberra, but not knowing what the trees were, Stuart renamed them “Ghost Trees” and the name stuck.  Here, again in our ‘back garden’ and surrounded by native woodland, this picture was taken back in Mid-winter and somehow seems appropriate.  August after, all is still a very cold month here.

September’s Image – Silhouette & Shadows, Spring Creek Road (July 2016)

September – Another from a series taken in very cold mornings, and again in ‘our back garden’.  this time a different Gum tree, but it is still a striking tree.  We have a number of these majestic trees dotted around the place.

October’s Image – A Foggy Forest, Loch Rannoch (October 2015)

October – A week of fog and glorious Autumnal weather on Loch Rannoch and more of those fantastic reflections on our last visit to Liarn Farm Cottages.

November’s Image – In Reflection, The Road to Rannoch (October 2015)

November – The road ahead and in the reflection, the road just travelled, Loch Rannoch, last October.  Somehow it just seemed to claim the November spot by itself.

December’s Image – Twinned with… Spring Creek Road (July 2016)

December – Many moons ago, we were camping over Christmas and New Year on a campsite in Glencoe, Scotland.  Our Christmas Day walk was heralded by the most amazing hoar frost and there was one photograph in particular that we loved; a picture of two trees backlight and covered in hoar frost.  The background was split with rays of sunshine and shadows, that followed the fence line back up the mountainside… It was Christmas Day 2005 and the walk was on the Clashgour Estate, Argyll and Bute, Scotland.  Stuart fancied this updated Australian version taken in our Winter as the Christmas photo.  We are still struggling to get our heads around Christmas, the longest day of the year, and Summer all being at once.  A hot Christmas is just weird (so far!).

Cheshire, England, Manchester

3 Months On

Some times it feels like an eternity ago, other times it feels like yesterday.  I can certainly remember it like yesterday.  I still have yet to upload the photos, I think.  I will try to add these once life is not so very hectic here.  What am I talking about?  Well, yesterday was 3 months to the day since Stuart and I left the UK.  Friday will be 3 months to the day since we arrived in Australia but that is another matter.  3 months?  Where did the time go to?

Do you remember these?

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Where did the time go to?  I have no idea.  7 weeks were spent living in Braddon, Canberra.  1 week (roughly) was spent living in Sutton, NSW before we moved into here where we have been for 6-7 weeks now.  We are still not straight.  We are still not sorted.

  • I haven’t yet cleaned all of the house, let alone the studio which is an outbuilding (and ironically cleaner than most of the house here).
  • I have finished the bedroom (bar painting one of the cupboards before we use it – that is on next week’s jobs list).
  • I haven’t quite finished  the kitchen.  The tops of the cupboards still need a thorough clean and the oven still needs a good clean (it has won 2 rounds so far but it does not know what is coming!).
  • I have finished the sitting room with the exception of the huge curtain that I can’t get into the washing machine, so that is going to have to be a dry cleaning job, and I need to put a touch of fire cement around a brick I put into a hole in the fireplace where mice were coming in and out (doesn’t that sound rather familiar – Keeper’s Cottage all over again).
  • I haven’t really started on the sun room, other than a quick hoover to get it clean enough to use.
  • The chook house floor still needs finishing – it is almost there, but not quite.  Then I need to nail a piece of wood into place so there is no gap under the door.  I have the wood, so that isn’t an issue.
  • The veg plot will need fencing in.  We have rabbits in the area.  Tell an Australian that and they want to see one.  Apparently they are rare and most have not seen one!
  • And then there is the garden.
    • The 3rd pond is now cleaner and fuller and no longer stagnant.  I’m not certain what the tadpoles or the newt think of this but I hope the plant growing in it will appreciate it!  I think it is a Water Iris of some form, but until it flowers, I won’t know, but the leaves and roots certainly look like it.  It has been divided and some put into the pond with the goldfish in it.
    • The bamboo is being subdued slowly.
    • The ivy tree has been pruned (it literally is ivy that has grown over an old tree, killed it and is now a tree in its own right).
    • Various paths have been found and are in the process of being reclaimed and dig out.
    • Leaf litter is being raked up slowly
    • Hundreds of rocks are being rounded up and removed (these are the bed rock which has broken into small pieces and makes underfoot conditions interesting in places).
    • Fences are either being removed or repaired, slowly.
    • Planters (hollowed out tree trunk sections) are being hollowed out properly, lined and replanted.  Herbs are going into them.

I expect it will take most of the year to get the garden into any kind of order/shape but that’s half the fun.  It took years at Keeper’s Cottage, but at least we don’t have to worry about cutting the grass here.  We don’t really appear to have any!