ADVENTures Day 24
With all preparations for Christmas Day in hand and the weather looking good we decided the priority would be fresh air and exercise.
We drove to the edge of Wicken Fen and walked to the visitor centre with the intention of a snack for lunch from the café … which was closed. So we walked back to the car via a different route and then drove to our favourite fen riverside pub for a festive fish & chip lunch and a beer.
Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas!

ADVENTures Day 23
This year I nearly didn’t bother with making a Christmas Cake, then my friend Fiona, aka the Cottage Smallholder*, mentioned her ‘last minute Christmas cake recipe’ (www.cottage smallholder.com). You might have noticed the missing slice or three, we took some to share with my Mum when we visited the care home.
I decorated it when we got home, marzipan fruits and pecan nut arrangement stuck in place with icing and dusted with icing sugar. Jobs a good’un!
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ADVENTures Day 22
The Spar at SixMileBottom (highly recommended if you’re local to SW Suffolk/Cambs corner) has a great selection of fresh veg. The delivery had just arrived, the driver gave us a wooden tray and at the till we also got a free majool date each! #AdventAdventures

ADVENTures Day 21
A small van adventure on the Winter Solstice. We drove to Santon Downham and after cooking cheese and tomato toasties in the van for lunch we walked along the Little Ouse river. Quiet wintery colours reflected water. Swans feeding in the river weeds. We watched a Dabchick (Little Grebe) catch a small silvery fish.
The route is a section of the Via Beate, a pilgrimage route connecting Lowestoft with St David’s, 400 miles linking sacred sites along the way.
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ADVENTures Day 20
Today I drove to the funeral of my Mum’s cousin; my fun loving, fashionable, tennis-playing auntie
Driving there and back I listened to an audio book, a murder mystery set on the Kent coast. I can picture exactly the scenes at Dungeness and the Turner Contemporary, as we had visited both places on one of our campervan adventures earlier this year.
btw the book is Deadland by William Shaw, I think it’s book 2 in the DS Cupidi series.
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ADVENTures Day 19
Outside it’s wet and windy, the snow has gone. It’s the same temperature indoors as out! Room ready for a visitor. Laundry done. Time to add some sparkle to the house with some fairy lights and crystal vases of Bay leaves.
Will I finish the sweater or just sit down for a snuggle with the tabby studio assistant?
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ADVENTures Day 18
By this time tomorrow the forecast says it will be 11C eand raining with 48mph wind gusts. So before the big thaw I’ve had a last snowy walk around the village delivering cards to neighbours. I wonder when the village will look like this again?
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ADVENTures Day 17
The village church decorated for this evening’s Candlelit Carol Service.
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ADVENTures Day 16
The snowy sub-zero conditions continue in the SW corner if Suffolk. My sketching materials were still where they’d been left after the aborted en plein air adventure on Monday. So I too them on a mini-adventure to the end of our ‘Wild Wood’ and sketched the view across the white icy fields and the wood in the distance. The oak trees cast long blue shadows across the snow.
Pastels and watercolour.
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ADVENTures Day 15
Memories of adventures on our tree. I often buy a tree decoration as a holiday souvenir: eagle, bear and moose were from Alaska, the puffin from Nova Scotia. A Czech friend sent me the straw stars. Crafting friends made the felt heart and button decorated tree. A hen keeping friend gave me the pewter hen. The dolls in Ukrainian costume were from a charity supporting the children of Chernobyl.
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