Sunny Trip To Olney

It's a sunny but bright morning, but it's chilly. It's supposedly the astronomical start of autumn. The autumn equinox, apparently, when the hours of light are equal with those of the hours of darkness. Or so we were told on BBC Breakfast this morning. The trees are rapidly changing colour. Carol's mum visited us last Tuesday. She also visited us the week before. The last time she came she bought Carol a present of some bulbs, I think they were hyacinths or crocuses, but not sure which. We have a large round earthenware planter in the garden which we bought at Norfolk Lavender when we visited my brother who lives in Norfolk, several years ago. It hasn't been planted so it seemed the ideal place for the bulbs. We went to Bunnings, the company which has taken over Homebase, and bought a bag of potting compost and Carol has now planted the bulbs, so that's something to look forward to for the spring.

Some mornings there is mist or fog. How do you distinguish between the two? Mist is a sort of drifting cloud, thin and elusive whilst fog is denser and all-pervading. It usually disperses once the sun comes out.

We went out this morning. Carol had been almost pain free and needed a change of scenery. We haven't been out and about as much as we would have normally done over the summer and as it was a bright and sunny day I suggested going to Olney, one of our favourite haunts, and about a 20-minute drive from Milton Keynes. On the way Carol needed a loo, and we were near  garden centre called Alban Hill. (Actually a nursery, but what's in a name? What is the difference between a garden centre and a nursery?) We've driven past on numerous occasions and seen the sign but have never visited and were surprised by the selection of plants and other items on sale. There is a café within the grounds, which we didn't visit on this occasion, but we will have to visit on a return visit. Carol wanted to buy a couple of plants to put in the pot where she put the bulbs which she managed to find and we browsed in the bird food area and then drove on towards Olney. A really great place to visit as it's got lots of antique shops and really quirky buildings with a history. We parked in the area near the Co-op and walked into the centre of this village. We have never visited the Cowper Newton museum which is situated near the centre but must return for a visit at some time in the future. Lots of places to eat, coffee shops, restaurants and a very good fish and chip shop we have patronised in the past. We returned to the car park and did some shopping in the Co-op and then drove back towards Milton Keynes. We looked for somewhere to eat our sandwiches and drove into the village of Emberton which is on the road between Olney and Milton Keynes and found a place to stop near some allotments and then drove home once we'd had our break.

Still Raining

Considering the flooding in other parts of the country at the moment, particularly along the River Thames near Chertsey and Staines and in the Somerset Levels, we shouldn't complain here in Milton Keynes about flooding. We have had very little, although there has been a considerable amount around Newport Pagnall and Olney. As I sit and write this I can see out of the window from the lounge and the rain is falling as hard and fast as ever, some running down the window. The garden is like a quagmire. Whenever the dogs go outside they come back caked in mud. Neither of them wants to stay outside for long, and who can really blame them? The fence is looking very unstable. Along the right hand side of the garden an entire section of the fence was blown over a couple of weeks ago. We managed to right it and prop it up as best we could and put some old garden chairs against it and it seemed to survive in this condition for a few weeks, but it came down only a couple of days ago with an almighty crash which I heard when I was reading. This fence-section is now in such a poor state of repair that there is really no point in attempting to right it again. The upright planking has come adrift from the cross-pieces which hold it together. It, along with the remainder of the fence, is in a very sorry state and I predict that a further strong wind will see it completely disintegrate. Alfie has been tempted on several occasions to wander through the gap in the fence whenever he goes into the garden, but I think he now knows that he must stay in the garden and not go through the gap. We have all manner of items propped up against the fence in an attempt to either shore it up or plug holes in it. Having said all that about rain, it is still relatively mild. There have been days when we've been out to the car first thing in the morning and discovered the windscreen has a layer of ice on it, but those days have been few and far between. I drove to Waitrose this morning and saw primroses had bloomed along the side of Chaffron Way. Considering we are barely halfway through February it seems very early to see signs of flowers blooming. Definitely a good deal milder than this time las year when we had a very long spell of snow and ice.

Workmen are currently working along the road from this house with a shredder into which they are putting cuttings from bushes and trees. It had got very overgrown along some of the paths around this estate so it was good to see this work being carried out. A lot of the trees along the inner ring road of the estate has been cleared and it is now much tidier and clearer. A lot of the trees along the Redways and Gridroads have been cleared and i must say it looks very neat and tidy.

Visit to Leighton Buzzard

Yesterday was yet another one of those days when the weather can't really make it's mind up. Warm one minute, with blazing sunshine, and then it clouds over and the rain starts. Or it just clouds over and it just goes really dull. We'd been shopping really early, and by late afternoon we had nothing else to do. It's really not like us to sit around indoors in the Summer. We're usually visiting somewhere or other, usually a National Trust property, which we did a few weeks ago when we went to Ickworth. We have recently renewed our membership, so we're ready for a further year of visits, and have planned to perhaps visit one more before Carol goes back to work in a little over a week's time and may visit Biddulph Grange in Staffordshire. It's not far if we go up the M1, and just past Stoke-On-Trent and wouldn't take much over 90 minutes or so.

We needed to get out of the house (our neighbour not making any sort of noise, but certainly likely to start up at any moment) so we decided to go to Leighton Buzzard, a short drive down the A5 towards Aylesbury and along the relatively-new by-pass. Not somewhere I'd immediately think of visiting, but we have a number of really interesting small market towns around Milton Keynes, such as Wolverton, Stony Stratford, Newport Pagnell and Olney, all with a lot of history and some quirky independent shops to browse in. It's one of those places you go past but there's no need to visiti as there really isn't a lot to go there for. We got to Leighton Buzzard and eventually parked near the library. I think I recall in the past doing a job working for Bedford Libraries, driving a library van, and I think we might have gone to this library. We walked into the centre of the town, and were surprised how run-down and uncared-for it looked. Particularly the branch of W.H. Smith which had tatty carpeting on the floor which was in desperate need of replacing and a really jumbled-up set of display shelves. Then into a bookshop. It was nearly 4.30 and the sun was shining, and the shopkeeper/owner was fixing posters on the windows. We have a habit of chatting to everyone we meet, if we can strike up a conversation, but she was just plain miserable and seemed far more interested in getting us out of the shop so she could shut the place up. We had intended having a coffee and went into the local branch of Costa's, but there were no free seats, so we bought cold drinks and went back to the carpark to leave for home. The place is really nice, but they could have made more effort to be more welcoming and it was really run down. A real shame and rather a disappointment, to say the least.

It took some time to get out of the town centre. Another town with a complex one-way system and poor signage didn't help us much.
We got onto the A5 heading back to Milton Keynes. It was by now really clouding over, and then the rain began, slowly at first, with a few drops, but by the time we reached the outskirts of Milton Keynes, the heavens opened and there was a deluge. Carol was driving, and she decided to pull into a layby. There was a really fast-flowing stream of water running along the side of the layby, and visability had been really poor as we drove along the road, which meant it was really hard seeing the road clearly and the windscreen wipers couldn't go fast enough to shift the falling water. After barely two minutes it stopped and we continued on our way, coming off the A5 near the football stadium. We noticed that the road was dry, which was a real surprise, considering that no more than a mile earlier it was flowing with water, so that rainstorm must have been incredibly local.