News & Updates from Carol Dunne · Page 11
Last Sunday was quite dull and miserable so we ventured to our nearest big city which is Manchester. All around the city are large bee sculptures which school children and other local groups have painted.
You can follow the trail of over a hundred large bees and many smaller ones all around the city. These will eventually be auctioned off for charity. The photo shows three of the bees.
On a recent trip to York (England) we went inside the Treasurers House which is owned now by The National Trust.
Very interesting it was too. The cellar here has a remarkable ghost story.
A number of years ago the house was undergoing some repairs, a workman was down in the cellar and to his astonishment a troop of Roman soldiers marched through the walls, horses included.
When this was looked into the historians realised that in Roman times the road would have been at the level that the Roman soldiers had been seen.
He is not the only one to have seen them either.
We have been taking advantage of the beautiful weather here in the UK at the moment. I cant remember a summer so fantastic. A few days ago we travelled over to Yorkshire to some gardens recommended by a friend.
My husband and myself are both very keen gardeners and always delighted to find ones we have not visited before.
The gardens were called Breezy Knees and we were thrilled to find them absolutely fabulous. Just before we entered the gardens we found this beautiful wild flower meadow, there are poppies and other flowers amongst the yellow flowers but they are hard to see on the photo.
Another trip to use up some of our unexpected summer sunshine. This time we went to Alnwick Castle in Northumberland.
As far as I understand the present Duchess of Northumberland who lives at Alnwick Castle was concerned that a lot of local people had no jobs so she designed a beautiful water garden in the castle grounds.This project has been on going since 1996 (I think) .
It is difficult to take photos because many of the water features are surrounded by hedges making them a bit like amaze.
The one in the photograph is spectacular. Installing all these fountains and keeping the place running provides jobs for many local people.
If you are up that way the gardens are well worth a visit.
I must say we are having the best summer I can ever remember here in the UK. Taking advantage of that, me and my husband went travelling for a few days.
We had never been to Hadrians Wall before ( for those outside the UK - the Roman Emperor Hadrian built a wall across our country to separate England and Scotland.
This was about 2000 years ago). I knew the Romans had built gates for people to pass through the wall if they were trading and in my imagination they were just archways in the stone wall for people to pass with a centurion on guard .
What a surprise to see whats left of the encampment, remnants of barracks and villas that would hold maybe 600 soldiers.
I was very impressed yo say the least.