Rudders at Home

We’ve recently added quite a bit to our kilt collection here.  The project has moved on since the last time I posted about it., and hopefully I will catch you all up on it soon. Today, though, I’m highlighting Paul’s belt buckle.

Belt buckles for kilts have all sorts of designs on them, from celtic knots to Scottish saltires, to the rampant lion or a clan crest. We picked a nice Scottish thistle design for Paul’s belt buckle.  I really like the thistles on it and think compared to a lot of the design’s I’ve seen, it’s quite unique. You can’t see it here, but the belt also has a Scottish thistle design, and Paul’s sgian dubh also has the shape of a thistle on the hilt.

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Along with the foxes, there seem to be pheasants everywhere in this country. When Paul and I first got our car and drove around every weekend like it was going out of style, it was nice to see the birds everywhere, but also sad to see how many ended up as roadkill. Seriously, they were everywhere. Ever since, I’ve been trying to get a nice shot of one – with my camera, guys, the camera! – but haven’t had any luck. With as prolific as they are you would think this would be an easy task, but they’ve eluded me so far.  I think I’m just a bit too obvious about how I go about it. I never could walk quietly in the woods!

Well, I finally got a shot at one – with the camera!!

And here’s my pheasant:

I was finally able to get a lovely picture while I was visiting friends near Leeds. We made a trip to Harewood House while we were there, and that’s where we found this old boy just hanging out along a path.

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Paul and I recently went to Tunisia for some fun in the sun, North African style. We spent 10 days there, and enjoyed it immensely, despite the last three days in which I was dreadfully ill. (Yes, I needed the drama of “dreadful” ) But I’m over that now. We went mainly for a relaxing beach holiday, and Tunisia being on the Med promised that. But it also promised a bit more.

We enjoyed the Med and the pool, spending the majority of the holiday there. Here’s a pic from the casbah in Hammamet.

But we also enjoyed the desert. While we were in Tunisia, we spent two days of trip exploring the country. I believe I’ve seen 75% of that country now. We even spent a night in the desert, under the stars in tents! Pretty nice, I think.

The trip took in El Djem, a well preserved coliseum, and then went on to show us some cave dwellings and places which were Star Wars. We also took in a camel trip, which Paul and I opted out of, but Paul did get some nice Camels for me.

The best part was seeing the sun rise on the Sahara. Yes, yours truly was up at 4:30 am in order to see the sunrise at 10 past five in the morning. And it was worth it. Check it out:

Isn’t that beautiful?

Our trip in the desert ended that day, seeing a beautiful oasis featured in The English Patient.

It was a good trip overall, lovely weather and much more to see than anticipated. There are even more photos in the gallery, if you’d like to gawk a bit more.

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Here’s a recent picture of the Angel of the North. Our sojourns with Flat Stanley finally allowed me to take some photos.

The Angel of the North is a large piece of sculpture that is just off the A1.  We’ve driven by this piece of art a couple times, when we go up to Scotland on the route that takes us past Newcastle. We don’t normally go this route, so I’ve only been by once or twice. The weather has never been particularly good, or we’ve been in the frame of mind “must get to Dundee,” so photographing it has never been foremost in our minds. This time, however, we made a special stop to capture Flat Stanley in front of this artwork, and a quick pic for my blog. So, here you go!

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One sheep, two sheep, red sheep, blue sheep! I mentioned that there were numerous instances of sheep over our bank holiday weekend. I thought I would give you a sample of some of the pictures I got of said sheep. Notice most of the time they’re walking away from me. For some reason, they didn’t seem to want to pose for the camera. Go figure.

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