WordPress workshop, Business Northumberland

Another great session this week in a Business Northumberland workshop on wordpress with John Allan. These fully funded workshops are invaluable in helping small businesses develop their range of skills in many areas asuch as digital marketing. As a relative newcomer to this topic, I now realise how much there is to learn but I hope the benefits will be added to this website in the months ahead. Meanwhile, it’s worth taking a look at https://www.businessnorthumberland.co.uk/ if you want to receive expert advice and tuition for your business development. And they also provide great lunches!

Autumn colours, Northumberland National Park

The lovely autumn colours of 2018 are beginning to fade, as the leaves continue to fall. This is one of my favourite times of the year. The last week of October and the first week of November see the climax of the autumn in Northumberland before the days become ever shorter and the landscape changes into the more subdued colours of winter. This view looks across the North Tyne valley near Bellingham, towards Callerhues Crags, with the Hesleyside woods in the foreground, and is in the 2019 Seasons of Northumberland calendar. I’ve heard rumours of a cold winter ahead and am looking forward to some fine frosty days after this very mild autumn. This weekend I’ll be at the Christmas Fair at The Sill on Hadrian’s Wall, the National Landscape Discovery Centre – hope to see you there!

Hedgehope Hill seen from The Cheviot in winter.

Last winter, just after Christmas, the weather was very clear and cold and so I set off very early for an ascent of The Cheviot on the England-Scotland border. The conditions were truly arctic, with a very cold wind, deep snow drifts, sastrugi (wind sculpted ridges and troughs in the snow, and rime ice all over the fence posts. There was a really magnificent viw of Hedgehope Hill from the summit plateau of Cheviot, which was wreathed in thin, freezing mist. We did not stay long on the summit descended back to the Harthope valley near Langleeford, before the long midwinter night arrived. Thius image is now available as a pack of Christmas cards in the Northumberland Winter series, and is also in the Seasons of Northumberland calendar 2019.

 

 

 

 

Light on the Sea

A new range of greeting cards has just been published, with images from Wset Penwith in Cornwall, Harris in the Outer Hebrides, and the Summer Isles in Ross-shire (north west highlands, Scotland).
They depict the moods of the sea, from gentle waves, to crashing surf, granite cliffs, and light glistening on a calm sea. The locations include spectacular Cornish beaches at Pednvounder and Portchapel, and beautiful Hebridean beaches such as Luskentyre. The cards are 160mm square, blank inside,and are available to order from this website.

In the deep midwinter……….

Just after Christmas I went up The Cheviot with one of my daughters on a very fine winter day. Having seen the snow covered Cheviots from Hadrian’s Wall the day before, and with a very good forecast, we set off early and took about two hours to reach the top from Langleeford in the Harthope valley near Wooler. The conditions were arctic – a strong westerly wind with drifting snow and beautiful wind blown ridges and furrows in the snow, known as sastrugi, commonly seen in cold, polar environments.  The snow was more than thigh deep in places where it had drifted, so quite slow going. The views were spectacular in all directions, looking north into Scotland, eastwards to the coast, and southwards across Northumberland National Park.

Furry Christmas

And now for something completely different….

Every year, our daughters Bronwen and Awena have been making an advent calendar for us, and each year as they progressed through school, the calendars grew more sophisticated as their artistic skills developed. Each year, before they cut the windows for the advent calendar, the design was scanned and then made into  Christmas cards to send to friends. This year, we decided to try them out as published cards, and they have just arrived this week from the printers. In the girls’ own words: “The design of this card is derived from advent calendars which we created every year for our family, depicting the many pets we grew up with over the years, and the wildlife around our home in the heart of Northumberland National Park. Any resemblance to real places is entirely intentional!”