I must apologise for being so slack in keeping you up to date.
We have been quite busy since Christmas. We spent xmas day at a little hotel secreted deep in the dales in a place called Arncliffe.
This place made its reputation because of its food and we weren’t disappointed. The 6 course lunch was spectacular. We went for a long walk across the dales afterwards hoping to make room for dinner, but it didn’t work. Large platters full of lobster went begging. In future I’ll have a stash of plastic bags in my handbag.
We went to Wetherby races for Gregs birthday on the 27th. The racecourse is apparently one of the better ones and is famous for jumping, not flat racing.
New years eve, was held at home. We invited the neighbours and let off fire works and ate and drank until the wee hours of the morning. On New years day we left for a few days in the lakes district. Very pretty. It would get unbearably crowded in the summer. It didn’t get over 3 degrees while we were there and we still had trouble getting into a restaurant on a Tuesday night.
Shrove Tuesday
isn’t a particularly special day for most people but there is a little town in Derbyshire that has an 800 year old tradition. Shrovetide football has been played in Ashbourne for centuries. The ball is twice the size of a soccer ball. There are 150 men per side and the goal posts are 3 miles apart, and in the river. The whole town turns up to see the ball tossed to start the game, often this is done by someone famous. Prince of Wales did it one year ages ago and now they call it the “Royal” Ashbourne game. The game starts at 2pm and finishes at 10pm the next day, unless there is a goal scored. There are only a few rules, you are not allowed to drive the ball anywhere in or on a vehicle and you’re not allowed to hide it for anymore than an hour. 
All the shops in town are boarded up to protect their windows and every pub is overflowing. It was quite an interesting experience.
I don’t imagine that you would have heard of “forced” rhubarb, I certainly hadn’t, but the town of Wakefield is famous for it. Wakefield is just south of Leeds and holds a rhubarb festival every year. 
We went on a tour of a rhubarb farm where they force the rhubarb to grow over a 5 day period in these completely dark sheds that have warm air blown through them. Because of the dark the leaves are very small and all the energy is put into growing the stems tall in search of light. This type of rhubarb is sweeter and more tender than the traditional way and it isn’t stringy. We followed this with lunch at a local pub that had a special rhubarb menu. We had brie with rhubarb dipping sauce, rhubarb soup, pork and rhubarb sausages and crumble and parfait for dessert. All surprisingly delicious.
The building works are still continuing. I won’t bore you with the ever increasing list of mistakes and incompetence’s. Needless to say they are being penalised financially for every week they go over the completion date (15/2/08). If they keep working at the same pace we may not have to pay what’s owing. The bathroom is the only room in the entire house which has escaped having something done to it. But the end is in sight. The place is looking less like a construction site every day. The kitchen is in and we have hot running water but as yet no dishwasher. The walls and ceilings have been plastered but we have no lights and no finishes but we can finally visualize the final product. The weather has been quite interesting so far this year. We had a little dusting of snow in January, another 2 days worth in February, 
but the heaviest I’ve seen it was down in Manchester just yesterday (3/3/08). I was driving home and the windscreen wipers were so heavy with snow they could hardly do their job. Most exciting. We had some more flooding in February. This time all the playing fields beside the river were completely under water. It was quite windy so we had white caps on our newly aquired ocean view. The only thing missing was a couple of windsurfers. The water has subsided now and the river is back to normal size. 
We will be losing this view soon as the trees start to get there new growth.
We have had a few frosty days lately. Not hard to live with, just a bit inconvenient first thing in the morning. It was -4 one morning last month when I was scraping ice off my windows before work all gloved and beenied. By the time I got to work 90 minutes later, it was -9. I sat in my car a good 10minutes trying to convince myself to get out. 
What finally convinced me was the view out of the window. The sun was just starting to come up and field in front of me was white with frost. All the trees had ice on their branches and it was caked onto the new shoots at the tips. The air was so cold it looked misty. It was a truly beautiful site. Of cause you can’t capture that sort of this on camera. Speaking of visible air. We have had some thick fog. The fog seams to last all day here. The day of a foggy morning is normally beautiful and sunny just like it is in Oz, but the sun isn’t strong enough to burn it off. It just hangs around all day keeping visibility to about 20metres. If for any reason a foggy day remains really cold, you get this phenomenon called “freezing fog”. The fog seems to become snap frozen and it suddenly just falls out of the sky. One minute you’re in a pea souper, the next there is this hard icy sort of snow and then suddenly the sky is crystal clear.
We have had our first earthquake. Apparently they have quite a few here but they are mostly down Manchester way. This one was 5.7 on the scale and its epicenter was in Hull. It woke Greg up but I slept like a log. Fortunately the reno was not effected. The house is built on solid Yorkshire stone bedrock so it is quite stable.
Well that’s about got you up to date with ours lives.
So until the next update, keep well and happy
Love Gail and Greg
