Bishop Auckland Park

A couple weekends ago we hired a car for the weekend and decided to head south for a little countryside exploring. We meandered around parts of County Durham and eventually came to Bishop Auckland, where we spent some time strolling through the Bishop's park.

County Durham suffered horribly under the Iron Lady and is still quite a depressed place. This town was no exception. It's a bit eye-opening to see how these old mining towns live on. But the park was really beautiful. We caught it as the trees were starting to turn. These are a couple of my favourite shots from our walk.

 

 

 

As the name implies, Bishop Auckland is home to a Bishop - the Bishop of Durham. Ironic such a powerful, wealthy post should be based in such a poor mining town.

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Winding Down

We're well and truly in the autumn season now. Rosie is feeling the chill so attempts to wedge herself wherever is warmest, at every possible opportunity.

 

 

The summer growing season is officially over. Ok, you can argue if it ever really was here, but we managed to eek out a few bits from our plants. Here's the last of the harvest. I used the green tomatoes & chillies in a chicken & polenta bake - delicious!

 

I had hopes for sunflowers, but alas only 3 took, and it was really pathetic at that. I suspect they need to be planted in the earth and not in small planter boxes. Lesson learned.

 

Balloon Success!

The chimney balloon is working! Witness the temp, taken in front of the fireplace on an otherwise cold, damp day (with no heating on).

 

It's positively tropical in here.

September Meanwhiles

I started this post a couple weeks ago and obviously forgot to actually post it. It's just a collection of a few walks and whatnot from September.

We went exploring one particularly nice Sunday morning, heading north to Gosforth.

 

 

Our original destination was Gosforth Wood, but we turned off too soon and ended up walking along the golf course.

 

 

It was a gorgeous day - super sunny and quite mild. The trees were just starting to tun as well, which makes things picturesque.

 

 

 

We also went to Edinburgh for the day. We took the early train, which meant catching the gorgeous sunrise over the Tyne.

 

 

 

 

Chimney Balloon

Today, we took a step towards a warmer future: we installed a chimney balloon in the, er, chimney. We just heard about them this weekend from some friends who have a HUGE Victorian house (anybody interested?) and who have had similar issues with drafty fireplaces.

Anybody who's stayed in our front/guest room will testify - the room's bloody cold, no matter the season, if heating is full blast or whatever.

Here's the balloon - quite straight forward.

 

There's a mouthpiece which you use to blow it up part of the way.

 

Then you place it under the hood and up into the chimney. The idea is it fills the drafty cavity.

 

We had to take the hood off (rather, it fell off) in order to get it situated correctly. Also hoovered up about a century's worth of debris.

 

Once it's in place, you continue to inflate it until max. Thankfully, we have (somehow we have 2 of them!) a little air generator thingie, so that did the trick!

 

Now, it's all snug and secure in the chimney and hopefully blocking out all drafts. Only time and guests will tell!

 

Our lovely but useless fireplace.

 

There are beautiful original tiles on the surround, some of which depict pastoral scenes.