Waterfalls and bathrooms

While the rest of the knitting world was in a certain park in north London, yours truly was up in Teesdale enjoying a weekend of walking, waterfalls and wonderful sculpture. But although I was shunning one of the UK's biggest yarn experiences (I might add this was not deliberate, it was accidental!) there was still a woolly theme to the weekend.

The house that I stayed in was a former weaver's cottage, it was in a row of old buildings, most of which were former weavers' abodes, and it was next to an old woollen mill.

There was knitting on the train (three hours each way, yay! Made great progress on the first of the christmas gifts I am making, more about that later in the week); and there were some lovely stone sheep dotted around the route of our walk, much of which turned out to belong to the Earl of Strathmore, who apparently is quite royal.

The best bits were:


High Force on the River Tees;


Teesdale itself; glorious views, varied scenery, delectably unspoiled;


..and the stone sheep of course. The walk did have its moments - having to take off shoes and socks to wade through knee-deep streams was one of them. It was our only choice when the supposed stepping stones seemed to have been washed away!

We stayed here, which comes highly recommended - cosy, comfy and very convenient for the lovely little town. Made it worth missing the yarnfest, and I did manage to pick up a ball of Trekking sock yarn from a great stall in Darlington's indoor market, so all was not lost!


The other major news; the Polish builders are here!

Let me explain. The one drawback of our little maisonette has always been the lack of a bath (for me at least - The Curse doesn't care tuppence). Before we bought it, I DID measure the bathroom to ensure that there was room for a bath, but in almost four years hadn't got round to doing anything about it.

Luckily one of the knobs on the shower broke off a couple of months ago, and although the shower was still usable, it provided the motivation required for me to organise things for a bathroom refit at last.

On the recommendation of a friend, I tried the 'my builder' website; you put up the information about what you want doing, and where you are located, and local builders can quote for your work, or ask to come round and view it.

After about six viewings and 15 quotes, I found the person I thought would be most reliable, and whose quote I thought was the most realistic. This morning, his team arrived and within half an hour they had demolished the bathroom with great efficiency.

Naturally I returned home this evening rather nervously - to find the bath in place and the walls half rebuilt already! Not only that, there was very little sign that they had been in the house, apart from the bathroom - no dust or dirt or anything broken, it seemed they had even cleaned the place before they left!

There WILL be pics, but I'm going to wait till all it looks a bit more like a bathroom before I share it with you. And hopefully, at the weekend, I'll be having my first celebratory soak! Might even take the knitting in with me....