Fancy something a little different? Llama trekking - highly recommended!

On a beautiful, cold but clear, Yorkshire morning, the GF and I jumps in the brand new Clio she’s purchased and zooms (kinda – it IS a brand spanking new NEW car!) off to the distant climes of Nidderdale.

Going for a walk with a difference - Llama trekking!

We arrived at the site (Nidderdale Llamas) and were greeted by the proprietor and chief Llama woman, Suzanne.
After a brief change of footware ~ it was a glorious day, but there had been an over night blanket of snow ~ we were introduced to the Llamas.

Jack and Bertie were clothed in suitable apparel for a stroll around the locale and farm lands, were equipped with panniers to carry our tea (very kind of them), and we were ready for the off.

A brief introduction to the do’s and do not’s of llama trekking and we were away.

The experience was amazingly good ~ being a hard nosed techie usually makes you immune to the ‘joys’ of  the outside world, we like our interiors gadget encrusted after all. In this case I actually enjoyed wandering about in the winter wonderland leading a llama about.

Trust me when I say this really did surprise me!
It was the GFs idea after all ~ she’s a sucker for the furry animal types. If it happens to have sleepy camel type eyes, it’s just the more appealing…

The llamas themselves both seemed to have a personality; Jack being the lead llama took every lapse of concentration as an excuse to misbehave and tuck into some of the choice bits of local flora; Bertie was a relative newcomer to the trekking experience and as such was a little nervous, but still great fun.

Overall, if you imagine walking a very large, extremely placid, slightly cheeky dog, you’ll not go far wrong. They have some extremely comical expressions too!

Give Suzanne a call and get out for a bit of fresh air!
One of the more enjoyable things to do in the snow…

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Maybe that should read - INcompatible with Windows 7

Well the Christmas lunacy is over ~ all bar the Shopping silliness that is…
Personally I had a great Christmas. Going away for a few days is HIGHLY recommended!

Nice to see the Snow back again. I had only two Christmas events to attend ~ one pre Christmas, the other post Christmas ~ BOTH of these happened to be on the evenings of the two days the snow started.
Both were cancelled
I HATE SNOW!!!!
Very pretty but causes too much hassle.

Maybe I should move to a warmer place…

Over the Christmas  break I took the plunge into the world of Windows 7: the post Vista operating system from the good old boys at Micro$oft.
It was an emotional story of blood, sweat and tears, with some kind of happyish ending…

On the ‘+’ side, my PC now positively zooms! Internet Explorer 8 64 bit actually works quicker than Google Chrome on this little beastie ~ something that seriously shocked me
It’s not just a little faster either. My page loads are now almost instantaneous!
STUNNING!
The bench marks are all up too – fabulous!!

There are however several ‘-’ points. Mainly that several of the programs I use on a daily basis are not ‘Incompatible’ with this version of Windows.
This is a major P.I.T.A. (If I said the first ‘P’ was for pain, you should be able to work out the rest ).
It’s such an irritation I have to run a Windows XP machine just to use some of these programs.

It’s ALMOST a step forward…

Having said all that, the general feeling is of a working system ~ the best way I would describe it [Windows 7] is as Vista as it should have been. It looks and behaves similarly to it’s predecessor, just in a working form!

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Leeds to Liverpool and back in several inches of snow WITHOUT going on the M62 - madness!!!

Yesterday a friend of mine was ‘installed’ as a lay Cannon at Liverpool Cathedral – a ceremony we (my GF and I) were invited to attend.
Needless to say the local weather had other plans and deposited an amount of snow anyone over the age of 30 will remember from their childhood.

This initially had the effect of destroying my night out with some girlie friends of mine and possibly of the Liverpudlian odyssey.

Come the morn of Sunday – bright and early – we braved the roads of Yorkshire in a valiant attempt to venture in to the unholy lands, west of ‘t Pennines.
Oddly, at some ungodly hour on Sunday (about 9:00 am! ) the traffic was light and we made good time – much fun being had when trying to overtake old people doing 30 mph on major roads – the outside lane was simply a river of ice.

Arrived at the Cathedral in good time and watched my friend being bedecked in an amusingly ecclesiastical cloak (she’s quite short and looked kinda like a Hobbit in a duvet! ). Got fed the second turkey dinner of the festive period. Said hellos to friends long unseen and chatted for a while. Once again braved the roads.

This time things were different…

The old Sat Nav, decided that the traffic on the M62 was going to give us a boring and mundane, slow trip home and rerouted us through Oldham and on to the non-motorway route home. This being over the Pennines through some little known villages.
“Oh what fun it is to ride in an Audi with very little directional control, up and down a bloomin’ big hill, with poor visibility, IN FRONT of a snow plough, with great drops down the side of the car on one side or the other”. (fit that one into the ‘Jingle Bells’ tune if you can )
Oddly enough we actually made it home, in one piece, not missing bits due to frostbite!

Ironically, I watched a nutter in a 4×4 slide off the road into a snow drift today!
Oh how I laughed…

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