A Weekend in Warwick

Isn't this the best sight to be greeted with in the morning?  Yup, delicious baked goodies for breakfast come as standard when you're staying with baking supremo Sarah.  Char, Sarah, Rosie, Gemma and I descended upon her last weekend for a whole heap of nattering, cake eating, castle visiting and picnicking. It was awesome.

Roisin joined us on the Saturday and we set off for a jolly summer day out at Warwick Castle.

Warwick Castle


And Warwick Sandcastle!

I haven't been there for a long, long time so it was much fun to go a-wandering. It was hot and heaving with people but we managed to find some cool spots.

I love this photo. Pretty Sarah, pretty Gemma, and my face is hiding. Yay!

Also I feel that I should point out I'm not a sunglasses wanker. I'd left my specs in the car and it was either wear these indoors or be blind.

I don't have a group photo to rival the Norbury Manor gif, in fact I don't really have a group photo at all. We were too busy mooching around the grounds of the castle, raiding Sarah's collection of unwanted dresses and shoes (her blog name is truly descriptive!) enjoying ourselves at the Proms concert and then working our way through a rather enormous picnic.

Hark at me trying to be healthy with my picnic and then ruining it all by eating my own bodyweight in cocktail sausages.

Photos aren't the be all and end all of a good weekend though. You know what I liked best? Sitting round Sarah's kitchen table chatting away to everyone about blogging, cake, dresses and suchlike. Hardly any of my close friends live near me now and it's a rare occasion when I get to do the girly things. Emails and Twitter, much as I love them, aren't the same as giggling together in person over coffee and cake. All six of my weekend buddies are truly lovely people. The only bad thing about them is their insistence on living so far away. Rude!

Last two pics courtesy of Gem. Thank you for being organised enough to take a(n almost) group photo!

Picnics, Tents & Horses

Catton Hall (in the top photo) is rather beautiful, isn't it? We were volunteering at the British Eventing competition there this weekend and the owners, being the super nice people that they are, let us camp in the grounds. Such a treat!



I fecking love camping. The tent held up exceedingly well to Friday night's heavy rain and Saturday night's wind and we were v. cosy inside.


Horsey bag by Cath Kidston, Bambi washbag by H&M, camp blanket by me.







Saturday saw us in a woodland clearing at the top of a massive hill. Alas, there was no real opportunity to take photos as I was too busy doing the normal fence judgey things as well as operating a video camera thingy for someone else. Still have no idea how it worked but I had to hit the big pink square on the iPhone when a horse was coming and it spoke to the video camera and did the rest itself. Very clever!


This is my fence judging face.

I am shit hot with a radio, whistle, stopwatch, clipboard and red flag. Read this post if you want to know more about why you need all those things for a day of fence judging but carry on with this one for epic picnic photos. And grey horses.

Our Sunday fence was also in the woods (a different part - Catton is very woody), where the midges promptly attacked me. I now have a HUGE insect bite on my arm which is all red and revolting. Wish I wasn't so attractive to the stupid things.  Other than that, it was lovely! Hurrah for being able to sit and watch fantastic sport all day, especially whilst eating a giant picnic. I'm all about the picnics.


We did have proper food too. It didn't consist entirely of gluten and dairy free millionaire's shortbread and sweets. Honest.


Look, I made g/f d/f scones too!


And we had mini wine. Mainly cos the bottle made me go "HAHAHA" in the middle of Morrisons but it does taste quite nice.

As we weren't needed for the final couple of classes on the Sunday, we ambled down to the water jump on our way home and I took a few splashy photos.  I'm still saving up for a better lens for sports photography but I'm pleased with how this one turned out.



One day we'll get to fence judge a water jump. The wellies remain in the car on the off chance...

My Weekend

Life is busy, busy, busy at the moment. Whereas February was hectic because of work, March and April are hectic because of FUN. Hurrah! I have all sorts of trips and excursions and very exciting things planned and I'm sure you'll get to hear about most of them on here.

Let's kick off with last weekend though.  Saturday saw me spending a lot of time on trains to and from Leeds, along with people who thought it was ok to eat BBQ chicken legs at 10am. Why do people do this?! It is not ok.  It is revolting.

Anyway, train snacks aside, I had an awesome day.  I was going to Leeds to see the Northern Ballet perform The Great Gatsby (click through that link for a little video excerpt - alas it's not of the cast I saw).  Oh my goodness. It was astonishing.  Costumes, music, dancing: all utter perfection. Go and see them. I can't recommend them highly enough.

They're so good that they end up having a completely contrary effect on me. Or maybe I'm just a contrary soul. Who knows?  Anyway, I spent most of this performance thinking "Noooooo Daisy, stay with Tom!" because John Hull was just mesmerising to watch. When I saw them do Beauty and the Beast last year, I didn't want the Beast to turn back into a prince, just because Ashley Dixon was so bloody good.

Photo courtesy of the Northern Ballet and Bill Cooper

The other aim of the day was to catch up with my amazing pal Lee, drink hot voddys and eat delicious food. I haven't seen him for an age, so we talked and talked and talked all flipping day long, including the entire train journey back to Liverpool.  Yeah, apologies if you were on our carriage and were scandalised by our conversation. He's a bad influence on me.

I was muchly please to have the opportunity to wear some new shoes. Yay new shoes!  Even if they are decidedly sensible...

The weather was dreadful at the weekend oop North but with the amount of walking I had to do, wellies were not an option. Sadly, with my oddly-wide calves, boots aren't really an option either. These Clarks beauties (c/o Spartoo) are the absolute perfect pair of brogues - super comfy, proper leather and no breaking in required.

When I arrived back in Liverpool it was mid-evening and time for a meal with my girls.  It's a rare occasion now when the four of us are all together again but it's always fab.  I just wish we didn't all live so far away from each other.



As for Sunday, snow stopped play.  The mothership and I were to meant to be out fence judging at a British Eventing competition in Cheshire but we got there to find it had been cancelled. Damn it! We promptly drove back to Liverpool and had a very lazy, sofa based Mothering Sunday instead.  I'd made a picnic for our day out so we just had a living room picnic instead. Not quite the day we'd originally planned but it was equally fun!






Admittedly not the most epic picnic ever, but she's gluten and dairy free and thus tricky to cater for. There was an amazing cake as well but we kinda ate that for breakfast...

What ho, chaps!

A half wooden car!  Exciting eh? 

I went to a vintage fair at the weekend.  Extreme lack of fundage meant that I didn't buy anything but it was the most glorious sunny day, so this didn't matter so much.  It wasn't about the shopping anyway. 

It was about having a picnic:

Alas, no ginger beer, but corned beef sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper are quite retro, non?  Best ignore the sneaky packet of mini Party Rings...

And lying on the picnic blanket reading and taking random (bad) pictures of the back of my head:

And trying on silly hats: 

WHY IS MY HEAD SO BIG?!

And deciding which of the cars we'd most like to be driven around in.  Ffion favoured this Alvis:

Modelling her lovely Cath Kidston frock

And looking admiringly at the lovely things:

 

Who needs money?

What I Did On Saturday

I ticked one of the things off my "Want to do in 2012" list and went to Somerford Park for a thoroughly horsey day out. We were volunteering at a British Eventing competition for the very first time and to say I was nervous was putting it mildly, despite having been on a great training course in February. I haven't really ridden since uni and even back then I never had the competitive spirit for this level. We do spectate a fair amount and it's always a fab day out, but this was a different task altogether. Everyone was lovely though. Anywhere where you're greeted with a big smile and a tray of bacon butties is officially in my good books.

View from one side of the car

View from the other side

So basically, when you fence judge you arm yourself with all the above equipment. If it's cold, you sit in the car. If it's sunny (which it wasn't) you sit outside and get a tan. Every time a horse comes past you blow the whistle to alert spectators, click the stopwatch to get a time, fill in the scoresheet to say if it's gone clear or had any penalties, radio through to Control to let them know and then breathe and watch for the next one. They were coming every 90 seconds or so at one stage so it was a busy old day! Excellent fun though and absolutely no chance to get bored.

Obviously, a picnic is a must. Homemade leek and potato soup from a flask, nom. We would have been splendidly fed by the organisers had it not been for all our various allergies. Honestly, we're a pain to feed - it's much easier to bring our own!

Most importantly, no-one fell off at our fences. Hurrah! We had some refusals but practically everyone went clear so it was a jolly nice introduction to the volunteering role. Here's a cheeky photo of someone jumping the house rather beautifully.

It's also an excellent opportunity to play "Horse I'd Most Like To Take Home". My winner was an incredibly sweet little pony called Mocha (not the one in the photo above, although that was pretty nice too). So, so cute!


Apologies gang, but I only took this one photo featuring me (there were competitors out walking the course and I got very bashful) and my face looks the most monumentally grim it has ever looked. EVER. No idea why - I was having a great day! Anyway, admire my wellies and posh coat, for they both rock.