Bug Hotel

I have always wanted to make a bug hotel ever since I saw the all singing, all dancing one at my Montessori nursery. It was made from old pallets and even had a felted sloping roof - very high spec!

They had even had a lovely sign made that read Bug Hotel!

  Not too dissimilar to this!

Now my children are no longer little I didn't really see the point of something elaborate and huge for them to ooh and aah over because, believe you and me, it took enough bribes this morning to get the girls outside to even help me, so I don't think it'll be a thing of great interest to them. With the realisation that it's only going to serve its purpose, I figured that it should be bug sized really and the pallets we're accumulating with the build, would be better served in the chicken run enabling the chooks to get off the ground when it's particularly muddy!

A quick visit to our local reclaim yard and a rummage in the skip currently sitting in the drive, I found suitable 'rooms' for our clientele.

An hour later and 'ta da'! Critter Chalet available for rent!!!

It is only small and fits into the wilder part of the garden perfectly. It cost a grand total of £10 to make (well, if you rule out the hot chocolates it cost me to bribe the girls to go to the park to gather some nuts and conkers!!) I think we still need to add some more bamboo canes which I'll do once I find the saw (goddam this build!) and the hedgehog house to the right in the picture also needs more doing to it as I feel it could be open to unwanted visitors (ie foxes) if I leave the entrance quite so exposed.

Oh and, as promised, our new fencing that now surrounds the bees and gives us better access to our allotment. Now I just have to convince Mr Beehive that when we re do the fencing beside the new garage, that this is 'totally' the look we're after!!

Five children and IT!

Well, that's it! The clocks have gone back and we're officially into the darker nights again.

I think this is always my indicator to pick up the knitting again, or rather a sharp hefty kick up the bum to finish off all those WIPs in order for my actual 'children' to benefit from wearing them rather than my 'grandchildren' one day!

Tiny Tea Leaves cardi by Madeline Tosh

It's half term this week and I've become mother to five for the first part of this week as my sister and her husband have taken a trip to Marrakech (not envious really!)

We're very lucky that the cousins get on so well and, aside from a few teething problems initially when we realise that five IS actually an odd number, they tend to disappear only to reappear when they're hungry (which, with five mouths, one of whom is a teen, two further of whom are growing boys and the third and fourth...well they suffer from FOMO*, I seem to see them constantly or, am made aware of their presence with a rustling of one or other in a cupboard or the drone of 'I'm hunnnnggggreeee'!)

Of course, there is one slight problem now they are five and that is we downsized the car last time so I am unable to fit all five in these days. This, on the otherhand, works out in the teen's favour as he gets to stay home with the WiFi whilst I take the rest out to burn energy and get much needed fresh air tomorrow! Then we're taking them to our local for the two for one burger night...with the threat hanging over that five is STILL an odd number, so if they don't behave...lol! It's incredible how well they're doing so far...rooms are immaculate!

The garage, on the otherhand is a little less immaculate, but it's still beginning to come together.

My sis is also having work done on her house at the moment and, whilst she is such an organiser, it will come as a shock to you that I am very good at finding a big pile of sand in which to bury my head (and believe me, there is an enormous pile to cater to my ostrich like abilities on my drive at the moment!)
She has notebooks with drawings and costings and catalogue page numbers for showers and taps. I seem to be suffering from cannaebearsedness at the moment because the catalogues are making my head hurt!

I have managed to buy a woodburning stove to go in the new room, nice eh?

So if we have nothing else, we'll be warm, oh and I did extend my forward planning to a toilet roll holder. I have my priorities right at least! I do need to start thinking about flooring and wall covering/colours, kitchen cupboards, sinks...sand...sand...sand.

Maybe as those dark nights draw in further still, I'll finish this cardigan and turn my attention to some of those catalogues...I can hear them yelling at me from inside the drawers they've been stuffed in!


*FOMO: Fear of Missing Out

A birthday celebration

Today we have returned from celebrations with my mum, dad and sister and her children as my mum turned 70 years young earlier this week.

We had a lovely day just the 11 of us and I think she felt suitably spoilt

 We had clubbed together to buy her a new camera and we also bought her a lovely alpaca shawl from the alpacas in the village...well, every 70 year old needs a nice shawl to keep them warm in the draughty evenings right?

Our garage/studio is going up quite fast now that the brickwork has started, however I'm not sure that the weather is going to be on our side this week, it's looking pretty grim. The weather has always been something of a fascination to Mr Beehive, but he has become close to obsessed these days with plenty of 'shhhh' and 'hang on a mo, it's the weather' taking precedent in case it stops play the following day. I am also becoming an avid weather watcher in order to know exactly how much newspaper I will need to put down on the floor each morning to attempt to prevent paw shaped footprints, children shaped shoe prints and adult shaped boot prints decorating the kitchen floor. I will be happy once the build is done (I'm sure I've said that already).

We also had a beautiful cleftwood fence put in on Friday. We have been needing to put something a little securer than a plastic 5 inch high fence that we currently had, around the bees. I found a local company who use local wood and it's created by using an axe rather than sawing, so you end up with a far more natural look. I haven't yet taken a photo of it, but it looks similar to this:

I absolutely love it. We were given permission to replace the old broken gate through to the allotment, so we now have our own entrance/exit through to our piece of extended land ;-) This is obviously good fortune as today I discovered that we had 3 butternut, 4 pattypan and 2 acorn squashes to bring back as well as two HUGE pumpkins that we're going to need to take the wheelbarrow round to bring back, lucky we now have a little secret garden gate to cut the 'long' journey down a bit!

Turkish Delight

One month in and I'm still here and still smiling, most days.

Of course, things are hotting up in many fronts: Harvest at home, harvest at school, Christmas to plan for (at school...not at home yet).

Mr Beehive and I had a glorious 72 hours in Istanbul only 2 weekends ago. I can't believe really that on Monday morning we were drinking turkish coffee in the bazaar in Istanbul, 24 hours later I was in front of the class as if nothing had happened.

We were a little down on our luck with the weather, sadly having two out of the three days with rain. But, not to completely wash us out, the final day was beautiful.

We walked for miles over the course of the weekend, drank far more coffee than we normally would, travelled by tram with our faces in other people's ampits (if you think the tube is bad in rush hour...welcome to Istanbul, probably one of the most crowded cities in the world!) developed a taste for 'proper' turkish delight and sat on the edge of the Bosphorus in the glow of the bridges lit up, for dinner. We both agreed that a weekend is simply not enough time to explore Istanbul and we hope to come back here again someday.

Then of course we were back to normality.










The barn is now down...the mess is still there and there is a very small amount of brick work that is now up. Sod's law has had us with a beautiful September and October, of course, the minute we have arrived at brick laying, the rain descends and stops play. We are desperately hoping to have it into some kind of liveable space by Christmas, but I think we're going to have to see what life brings.

We have lit our first fire of the season too. Master Beehive the elder brought a supply of logs in to fill the two baskets last weekend and both Sunday and Monday we resorted to lighting the fire. Sometimes it's not necessarily that it's too cold, it can just be that it's too dreary and grey and there is nothing better than watching the flames lick at the inside of the stove door to warm both mind and soul.

One, Two, Three - JUMP!!!

I am a swan, I am a swan, I am a swan

We've returned to term by hitting the ground running this year. Most of it, I'm okay with, some of it I'm a bit like a rabbit in the headlights, less wondering which way to run, but more thinking I could do with a lift!

I've started a new job. Only part time, well, that was the plan.

But there was another job, but only part time too.

Oh and then a few new pupils dropped by...

And, there's the planning which, if you're part time, does have a sneaking tendency to eat into your 'officially not working' days.

Job number 1 is a 'start from scratch' kind of job. There is no scheme, there are no resources, there's little money, there was a room, then there wasn't, there was a desk, but this soon became just a table, there is no swingy chair with wheels...and the coffee is instant!! But, it's fun to be 'in charge' of my own little department...which, truly is probably just a dept ;-) Ofsted are looming around the corner, you can see the shadows out of the corner of your eye, but I'm sure it'll be okay, if it's not, I will laminate them...I'm good at that at the moment!

The eldest has started his GCSE's. Which translates as him needing to carry around more weight in files than an EasyJet baggage allowance on a daily basis and there being 'no possible way' he can carry less or leave it in his locker, therefore I'm now putting part of my part time work salary into an ongoing physiotherapy fund for his later years! Why do kids insist on this???

Number two son has decided he wants to become an army cadet after scouts. Hmmm, okaaaaay I whine, it'll be okay. He loves being outdoors, he loves making things and pretending any garden cane or piece of wood is a samuri sword. He'll be fine with a gun in his hand. No really, he will be fine with that. I may not be. However, there is the lure that 'within the first couple of weeks' his bedroom will be ship shape and his clothes all hung up, so I'm happy to pay the subs just for that part of the deal!

The littlest is working through some post viral shit at the moment, which is proving quite hard and I am not going to put much of that on here, suffice to say, prognosis is good, but slow and we're on an exhausting steep learning curve.

And then there is the mess! Oh hell yeah, the mess.

The barn has gone! Quite literally today. I left for work and it was nearly all still there...minus the roof. I came home and it had been bulldozed and there is a vast, empty, intimidating SPACE!

My clematis is very grey from the dust. My fence, to keep in my stupid and incredibly over amorous labrador, is made from orange plastic and very wobbly and very dusty. There is glass in the driveway and I don't know how I will turn the car around tomorrow without needing to remove half a ton of gravel beforehand or risking a puncture. There is a very large hole in the patio and an even bigger one out on the drive.  My aforementioned stupid labrador keeps coming indoors with a piece of drainpipe in her mouth to play fetch with and likes to leave that and other much smaller pieces of plastic and metal on the floor for me to step on. My language turns the air blue ...this is NOTHING to lego, I laugh in the FACE of lego!

The other dog is trying hard to resemble a womble these days. The steroids have made her slightly rotund and her hair likes to grow...a lot. I spend many occasions covered in dog hair whilst she lies on the floor with her legs akimbo letting me attack her with a less than useless dog trimmer. I resort to a pair of children's scissors because, despite owning hairdressing scissors and sewing scissors and paper scissors and kitchen scissors and some regular cut anything you like scissors, there are NONE to be found. I resort to a pair of semi blunt kids scissors and hack. She's not going to look any crazier than she did before, only she'll be a lot cooler (in the temperature sense of the word rather than the 'down wiv da spaniels' sense of the word!) and able to see. So now my patio is covered with a perpetual layer of dog fluff.

There is metal...a lot of metal...and dust, I'm sure I mentioned the dust. I have strange men coming to my door at 7am in the morning asking if they can take away the steel RSJ in his small white van. I am yelling for children to get out of the shower, brandishing a butter knife as I make sandwiches, I am make-up-less and wearing that early morning shadow and hair (mostly my own, but there could still be some womble in there!)... I laugh...perhaps a little hysterically, and suggest he might like to re-think the size of his vehicle and the weight of the RSJ. He looks at me oddly and retreats. I still own the RSJ and his van still has all four wheels on the floor!

The one saving grace is that I'm out in the morning before the noise of the pneumatic starts...luckily the relationship with 'most' of our neighbours is positive (for now!)

Swim, swim,  for fuck's sake, keep paddling!

Harvest time inventions

Harvest time, I both love and loathe it in equal measures.

On the one hand there is the gratitude and happiness to see ripened crops, to pick baskets of beans or beets, to be able to share and swap with neighbours.

On the other hand there are the failures or the excess of one particular prolific crop.

Last year for us, that was the courgettes, this year it's the beets and beans.

This year I'm trialling beetroot and gooseberry chutney which, if it works, I will try to share the recipe.

Much as I love making pickles, jams, blanching to freeze until my hands are dry and raw, there does come the day when I scream out "what the heck can I do with yet MORE beetroot" to enable my family to not pull a face as I add jar number 67 of pickled beets to the shelves to add to our meat dishes this winter!
I have plans to make a couple of beetroot and chocolate cakes to freeze and one to give away tomorrow as we have a friend coming over to help us with the honey harvest.

I'm not massively keen on bottling, something that I find a lot of US websites recommend. Canning and bottling at home aren't something that the UK seems to be as fond of, hence the best equipment for this is from the US.

I therefore also try to get a bit more inventive and fill the freezer with slightly more trial and error foods, some of which really do. not. work!!


But, my big question today is:

How does this sound to you?

Rhubarb and chilli jam?  Is it more a pickle or a jam? Savoury or sweet?

My chilli plant has put out rather suddenly and I don't like using dried chillies, so am debating making some indian pastes up to freeze as I make a lot of curries and using some with the last of the rhubarb that I've just picked.

I suppose we just have to see eh?

Thankful Thursday.

So, I am following along with a few of my blogging pals out there to start a Thankful Thursday post. I am going to 'try' and it will be odd weeks when I forget, to post things I am thankful for on a Thursday evening.

So this week I am going to start with:

• 1. Our bees capping 10 frames for us so that we can, with kind and willing friends to help, extract our honey for the first time on Sunday
• 2. The earth providing not only nutrition for us but also lots and lots of giggles. Do you like my baby mandrake...he's having a hug!
• 3. My planning papers are now looking less threatening and all these colours makes me grateful for having been able to take most of today to plan and get on top of next year.
• 4. The new bed. She LOVES it. See my grateful post number 3. It is because of this that I was able to plan. Today she has read and read and read and read and, when you're that high up, you can do anything...change the world from on high !!
• 5. My stool. I know, it's a little materialistic, but I'm so pleased with it. Good old Ebay! Now I can park my sore pelvis when my friends are here without being in pain all the while.
• 6. It's Friday tomorrow: That means Mr Beehive the younger will be home from camp. I have missed him.
• 7. Not just one job, but two for September and ones I can truly get my claws into (see gratitude number 3 again!!)
• 8. The enjoyment of preparing and eating tonight's dinner without a single person saying 'ugh' or 'yuk' or 'I don't like x' to any of it!
• 9. I won the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, carrot cake and lemon drizzle cake at the local village flower and produce show...I am Jill Archer!
• 10. Being able to make time to run twice this week and go to the gym twice thanks to a willing babysitter!

You can read about Polly's 52 weeks of gratitude here: http://thisenchantedpixie.org/2014/08/28/52-weeks-gratitude-week-seventeen/

You can leave your link in the comments below x

The Village Bank Holiday Weekend...

It's quiet around here.

Curtains are still drawn.

For days now, the conversation has become hushed when the presence of another approaches.

Sideways glances are given.

Pale and ashen faces scurry along the street, head down, a slight nod of acknowledgement but the weather and time remain unremarked upon.

The knowing nod and a stealthy passing of implements in the night.

A stillness has befallen.

The village pub lies still.

Eerie sounds come from behind the closed blinds.

The sound of crunching metal.

Splattering of wet substances splash against solid.

The continual drone of electricity.

The sharpening of knives.

Occasional cussings may cut through the silence.

This is a place no one in their right mind wants to disturb right now.

The eve of the village food and flower show has arrived...BAKE OFFFFFFF!!!

Solving the puzzle!

Little Miss Beehive's bedroom has always been something that hasn't sat easily in my sense of order and neatness. It is the smallest room in the house and, whilst small isn't always a problem, the layout of the room has always given us conundrums. As a Montessorian, it's also given me headaches when trying to create somewhere that nurtured her developing needs, such as a quiet place to read, somewhere to draw or create, organised storage with homes for all her things and a 'calming' sleep area.

It is a room that has been 'made up' using some space over the stairs when the two cottages became one and this has created some quirks that have, at times, had me spitting feathers. To the left of the room as you walk in the door there is a raised bit of flooring, presumably to give sufficient head room up the stairs, which reduces the height in the room, but added to this, the ceiling also slants and there is an odd piece of horizontal low ceiling randomly running the width of the room about a third of the way across ! To the right of the room the ceiling continues to slant and there is a window on one wall and a radiator on the other leaving us only one usable wall.
When we first moved in and I realised there was no room for a wardrobe I found a local chap who fitted a great wardrobe and bookcase for us over the stairs side of the room. It has sliding doors and cupboards and is absolutely perfect, giving her a lot of storage space. He fitted it with two rails at different heights that meant she's always been able to reach and choose her clothing and there was plenty of space for storing her crafts and her toys.

Great, but cluttered and no floorspace

Her bed, however, was a different conundrum altogether. To begin with she had her regular bed. It's not a full size single, but not a toddler bed, so we knew it'd work in the space. There was, however, no further room for anything else and when she became an avid writer/artist and wanted somewhere to draw and create we dismantled the bed when my mum offered an old cabin bed that my sister had had as a child and was stored in her roof. This seemed like the perfect solution as it had a desk underneath and more storage.

This seemed a great solution for a while, and as you can see, she had a lovely space to write and draw in. However, there was no floor space to speak of. This wasn't an issue at age 6 and 7, but recently she's wanted her best friend to come over and sleep occasionally and her cousin often shares her room when she stays and when this happens, the door wouldn't open with a second mattress in the room...agggghhhh!

We moved back to the single bed we started with and put a futon mattress underneath. The bed went against the window this time to try to increase space.

It's just 'ALL' bed!

This worked for a while, but the addition of a much needed and loved desk for her birthday two years ago meant that we were playing tangrams once again and just a few books on the floor made the place look cluttered and chaotic.

Space underneath to play/hang out / read

So we bit the bullet and decided to find a craftsman who could create for her the perfect bedroom/bed that would not only give her a proper bed, but also space for her desk and space for her friends and maintain maximum floor space. Not an easy accomplishment. We also wanted something that would last her through her teenage years through minor adaptions and accommodate all her 'collections' of things and Oh My!!! The result has far exceeded our dreams. Our craftsman totally understood not only our practical requirements, but our aesthetic ones too!

Queen of her castle, a calmer area for sleeping

 So, so pleased with it all. He has used the space to its maximum benefit, fought with our demonic walls (all funny angles, lumps and bumps) and created a lifetime piece of furniture that will be serviceable to her until she no longer lives with us. Crudely, this beautifully finished, tactile piece of chunky furniture cost us no more than a good quality bed despite all the personal love and attention to detail and time that he put into it. Oh to be as skilled as he is!!

Her 'sleepover' bed will go in the space against the wall when required and live under ours for the rest of the time, and we will just shift her desk slightly and I will get her a bean bag and possibly a rug, but I'm looking for 'the right one' and don't want something fussy or that causes the room to look chaotic.

I love cottages and old houses, but this room has caused the most hiccups over the three years we've been here, now we've finally solved the puzzle!

Summertime...and the livin' is getting easier!

It's that time again. The school bell has finally rung for the final time on this year and they're out for the summer!

Hooray!

No, honestly, hooray!

Whilst I love what they get from school, I have always fought myself as to whether or not we should have continued to home educate; whether school for 6/7 hours a day is/was the best choice; whether life would be less rushed and more present if we didn't have to hurry to school each morning and then sit and do homework for hours afterwards; or whether where they are is best and they are happier that way.  I'd like a pensieve or crystal ball to see our parallel universe...did they turn out okay this way or better that way...but then, wouldn't everyone !

Still, at least we get six weeks now to kick back and relax. The mornings are lazier, the evenings longer and more chilled, there's no homework, there is the music practice, but then there isn't the haranguing to get it done in the only spare 10 minutes of the day.

And then there's the adventures...who doesn't love a warm summer for adventures? The eldest Beehive has just returned from his first lone venture abroad without us. No, of course this mama wasn't nervous or worried or missing him...of course she was chilled and relaxed...ahem...(well I think I did well for my first time!) He has just had a wonderful 10 days with his district of the explorer scouts at a jamboree in Iceland. Yes! Iceland! I know! The best I got in the guides was digging a moat around our waterlogged tent in Exning. How times change!
It has been a wonderful few days by all accounts, so much so that he's actually only surfaced for around five hours today, I think he's making the most of having a proper bed and some darkness to catch up on his sleep!

 Then there is the allotment and the joy in cancelling the veg box for a few months whilst we 'try' to live off the produce and see if we can really do this.  I'm using the word 'try' in the loosest sense here as we've had a mixed set of results this year on our first attempt on the allotment. The carrots have been a disaster what with trying to grow them in a rock bed to start with, then them having eel worm in them, they have, however, helped the compost along! Beetroot has been fantastic, so pickles, roasted, grated in salads...we're beeting all the way here. Beans are starting, corn is coming, broad beans have been amazing and some are frozen for later in the year. Potatoes despite being disheartening from the surface, have actually given a good yield, cabbage was a waste of time...dinner for slugs and caterpillars only (despite covering!), pumpkins are on their way, leeks seem happy, onions are doing well, raspberries and cucumbers were/are fantastic, courgettes are, oddly, slow this year and all the tomatoes will ripen when we're away!

The honey is well underway with us having added a second set of supers to our hives. I hope we'll be extracting in the early autumn.

 Birthdays! Who doesn't enjoy a sunny summer birthday? This not-so-little man turned 12 recently and, as befalls him every year, having a birthday towards the end of term means that his birthday  tends to be broken into parts: the early part with those remaining school pals who haven't already gone away, the 'on the day' part with us and then, this year the 'celebrate with the cousin' part in France in a week or so's time...three birthdays, three cakes...I think that's a win-win situation!!

A trip to see 'Wicked' after spending a night in hospital with a nasty stomach virus and dehydration...that wasn't the intended plan for the start of summer, but the trip to the theatre (a Christmas present finally used!) certainly compensated for the poorly girl earlier in the week.

 Walks in the park whilst my owner tries to figure out how to do a dog/mama selfie and fails miserably!

Plays in the park at the super cool woodland rope course!

And then scrabble. No summer is ever complete without copious games of scrabble in the fresh air (not to mention the sulks and arguments that go hand in hand!)




Soon we're off to France for a couple of weeks. It's always a bit more of a hassle to go away now we have the homestead set up here. I have to rely heavily on friends housesitting and/or neighbours popping round to feed the chickens and ducks or water the crops. However, we have booked a farmhouse with my sister, her family and my folks so we can basically do nothing for a fortnight except swim, canoe, relax in the sun, read some books, drink some wine, explore some mountains, eat some cheese, dream about living there permanently and hang out together (hopefully without too many arguments or falling outs - yes, did I mention the downside to the summer holidays and siblings in close quarters for too long?) so I raise a glass (or two!) to my wonderful friends and neighbours who will hold the fort for us until we return.

Bonnes vacances mes amis xx

Sunday musings

Lots going on here as we move into the summer months:

I was lucky enough to steward on the Beekeeping association stand at Gardener's World Live a few weeks back. This gave me a free ticket. So I took my neighbour and we indulged in a day of bees and beautiful flowers. 

My gorgeous baby sister turns forty and we went to her party last weekend. I think a great time was had by all. 

The end of term approaches and that's changes for all concerned: Master Beehive the elder waves goodbye to Keystage three as he moves into his first year of GCSE exams! Scary to think he is that old already!

I'm leaving my current job at the end of term. I'm hoping something will come up before September, but I really want to get back into working with older children and sadly, where I am, is not going to give me that opportunity.

I'm also hoping to find more time to create... 

The elder Beehive is off to Belgium on curriculum enrichment week next week and the middle one is doing a variety of things including a day at Harry Potter world! Then, they're done! Eight weeks of summer. Eight weeks of no clubs, no early mornings, no crazy rushing...I'm sure I'm not the only mother in the world who is relishing this prospect and the thought of long sunny, lazy days.

Cider bottling has been going on here, we are quite a production site!

And finally our new queen is laying. We had the first small taster of honey last weekend. Some excess comb taken off and chewed... yum. 

I'm a jogging runner, get over it!

It's been a while...again...sorry...but haven't you heard, I have a hobby...well, if you're pals with me on facebook you're probably tired of hearing (sorry about that, but you can always ignore!).

Since January, since I started on my desire to lose at least a stone of weight from my 'edging towards later life' body, you know, the time when most stuff begins to head south in search of your feet and things are not quite as elastically pingy as they used to be...well, since then I've been at the gym. But then a good friend of mine drew me over to the dark side of life, the side where upon I get up at silly times of the day and haul my frequently tired and lead laden legs around a field several times, or I choose to stand in the cold making life changing decision about my attire on a Sunday morning, debating should I run in a base layer or not.
This is 'running'!
Although, it is debated as to whether what I actually do can be classified as actual 'running' and not more of a slightly speeded up form of jogging. Either way, I'm not sure I really mind.
I know that the purists may argue this with me and I can indeed see their point, after all, if you wear padded lycra shorts and muddy fox attire, swing your leg over what is these days called a 'road bike' (yup, what happened to the good old fashioned Raleigh racers...I now own a 'road bike' and it's more like a tightrope on wheels!) are you no less a cyclist if your speed takes you under a certain distance per minute?
If you strap your canoe to the roof of your car on a bank holiday Monday and head off on the M40 to a local boating lake or one of the many local canals, but you prefer to cruise leisurely through the waterways rather than bombing around as if you're doing slalom, are you no less a canoeist?
How about all those bloody slow lane swimmers? Maybe they're really drowning, but doing it in style, therefore we should think of a name for them too?

Anyway, I really don't care if you call me a runner or a jogger, this new found hobby/sport is keeping my busy and happy and fit. Whereas four years ago when I first ran 10K in Edinburgh it was a HUGE thing, my regular weekend race is now a 10K race and I'm working up to challenge myself to the Brighton half marathon in February. One of the things I love about doing this is the mental hurdles that it causes me to overcome. The voice inside my head who visits me about halfway in telling me to stop, give up, walk, go home...the fact I can beat that voice and make my body do what I want it to do (within age-realistic reason, I am over 40, that isn't going to go away!) rather than accepting that my body is taking over me. Personality wise I have a tendency not to stick at things that take longer than I want to achieve results, or I can take forever to finish a project or if I think I'm not going to be fantastic at it, I quit. The brilliance of running is that the only person you're in competition with is yourself. You 'have' to finish what you've started, particularly in a race, the drive, the crowd, the ...er...bling...(not superficial at all), the calorie loss, the muscle tone, it's a win-win.

So, I apologise if you are bored listening to me prattle on on facebook about personal bests or running conditions. I apologise profusely if you're Mo Farrah (the actual RUNNER!) reading this (he pops in here a lot you know!). I also apologise if I answer the door these days in some rather awkwardly placed padded lycra or you pass me lolloping down the road when you're in your car with my rather heavy over pronounced gait that makes me look like an absorbalof being consumed by the pavement (no, seriously...running/lolloping photos are NEVER attractive!). You can call me a jogger, I won't mind, you can ask me why I bother to run and I'll tell you all the above, you can tell me that my sport can only possibly be a hobby because I'm hardly an athelete and I'll tell you I'm happy I have a hobby/sport after many years of wondering why these nutters did this kind of stuff...I'm happy to be a nutter with them all (if not a slightly slower jogging/lolloping/pootling/healthier one!!)

Climb every mountain...

Well, 'tis done!

12 hours and 20 minutes of it.

We're back after, what I can only describe as, a pretty gruelling charity challenge doing the 5 peaks in the Lakes.

We all met on Friday evening, that is Mr Beehive, myself, the guides and the rest of our comrades for the duration, at a local campsite in the Langdale Pike region. We intially set up the campsite and began team building by preparing a meal for 20 on four burners with two vegetarians and a vegan amongst us and limited pots.

A cold night followed with little sleep of any worth or decency. Temperatures fell below freezing and despite wearing all our base layers under all our clothes, using season 3/4 sleeping bags, we were still kept awake through cold and Mr Beehive's pillow had frozen to the tent by the next morning!

An early rise with a 6am wake up call, some seriously 'hearty' (read that as lentil knitting) style museli, a cold wash and then layering up for the day ahead.

We parked the cars up at a farm at the bottom of Dungeon Ghyll and began our marathon (well, half really) efforts up Crinkle Crags, Bow Fell, Esk Pike, Great End and then the Capitain (sic) of all...Scarfell Pike, the highest peak in England.

I could spend hours giving you blow by blow accounts, but really, you'd be bored to tears.

It was far from easy. It certainly pushed me close to my limits of both physical and mental endurance. The ups were hard and tiring, the downs, wearing on the knees. The distances challenged my ability to stay calm and some of the ridges pushed me to my boundaries if not out of my comfort zone. The tireder we got, the harder it became.

The final summit, Scarfell, all 900+ metres of it was a mixed joy. Sheer thrill of achievement was tinged with the fear of the 4 hour descent we'd yet to master.

If truth be told, this was probably the hardest part of the day. We'd already walked up and down summits for over 8 hours. Every bone was aching and I had nerves that were occasionally shooting electric sparks of pain up to my hip from a slip earlier in the week in a particular supermarket that would catch my unawares, particularly as I moved from one rock to another. Each step just seemed further and further away and the path we were aiming at, despite seeming not far, appeared as a distant mirage on the horizon.

Incredibly, 12 hours and 20 minutes after we'd parked our cars early that morning, we were passing back through the farmer's gate and returning to our cars...perhaps a little unsure of our ability to physically operate the clutch!

I am so proud of  Mr Beehive and myself

It was an outstanding day. The weather was kind to us and the sun shone. Our noses burned and WE. DID. IT !!!! 13.6 miles (or more!) of seriously tricky terrain, rocks, boulders, scree and little grass. 13.6 miles of ascent followed by descent followed by further ascent.

The bump to the right of the picture was our starting point!!

The scenery was beautiful, the views at the tops, breathtaking, in fact one of the guides from the Lakes themselves, said that our view from Scarfell was probably one of the best he'd ever seen in all his years up and down the mountain!

To top it all off, we have managed to raise over £3000 for the National Eczema Society. We've been blown away by the generosity of family, friends and colleagues (HUGE THANK YOU to all of you!!!!) and there's still time to donate by using the link on the side of my blog.

Will we do it again? Er, perhaps not next week, but will we do something as challenging again, something to push us to our limitations? Indeed we will. We might push ourselves to do the 100Km Thames Path walk next year and maybe I will enter that ballot for the VLM for 2016 ...just maybe...so you'd best start saving your pennies for another charitable cause next year.