Thought I'd start off showing you these two pictures. The tiny bat (Pipistrelle) Gail is holding found its way down our chimney and onto our curtain. I won't bore you with everything we now know about these micro bats but I will say there is a large group of charming bat nutters in this country and one took care of our little bloke and released him two nights later when he was fed, watered and all strong again. The hedgehog is of course our King Russell and I attach the shot because we rarely see him in the backyard and had feared he was the spikey road pizza we saw on our street, thankfully not and he is now in residence preparing to hibernate in the twig and wood castle we built him. September this year has been wet but with dryish days when we wanted them as the photos below will attest.
On one not so wet day we went to see the Mouseman Furniture factory in Kilburn. http://www.robertthompsons.co.uk/ They make beautiful heirloom quality oak furniture, each piece of which has a little mouse carved somewhere on it. Really good story behind it all which is why the web page is attached. Kilburn is also where one of Englands big white horses was cut into a hillside. This one in the 1800's so not so ancient but worth a look and the local pub does superb food and ale.
Gail worked up in Scotland, in Angus, for a couple of days so we decided to go up together by car.... took us six hours, her colleague flew up and including drive from Aberdeen took under two hours door to door...lesson learned. It was great to spend the time together though and I had two days to follow the Pictish trail and walk Glenesk. The Picts, now you ask, were the original tribes of Scotland. Called Picts by the Roman invaders because of their beautiful tattoos, carvings and artwork, http://www.pictart.org/. The Picts were pagan warrior agriculturists with matriachial leadership who fought the Celts (Scots) when they invaded from Ireland wanting to occupy Pictish lands, We are talking pre-history times here but by the time the Romans came the Picts and Scots joined against the common Roman enemy and the result is that the picts were integrated into the Scots and their art and folklore lost forever. What we have now are large stones and beautiful carvings scattered around Scotland and it is a trail of some of these stones that I explored and took Gail to some of the finest examples.
Stracathro Hospital is in Glenesk (the valley of the Esk river) and my walk through the high waters is best explained by the two photos here.
We had been waiting for months to take a short break on the narrow boat "Me&My Shadow" www.shadowcruisers2.com with our neighbours David and Caroline. 
Again the photos tell more than words but I will say that our hosts Mick and Chris were lovely and ensured we were as relaxed, informed and well fed. We are now experts on all things canal boat, locks and marine plumbing. It was perhaps the last item and the compact quarters that made us delighted we had chosen three days rather than a week. That said, we relaxed and enjoyed and laughed and did all the touristy things in the towns and pubs we passed. I would recommend it to any who would enjoy but might suggest a larger vessel, wider than 7 foot anyway....
Gail and I also took ourselves off to Leeds city as there was a celebration of the Leeds town Hall, 150 years, and they were allowing folk to abseil down the front of it. I paid my ticket, stopped trying to convince Gail to join me, booked my jump off time for later that afternoon and we went to lunch in a great brasserie nearby. We returned to find the organisers running 3 hours behind schedule, they couldn't meet the demand and I was refunded and apologised to..... never mind, a good day out.
Next update will be for October and as yet not much planned, it is Autumn though so maybe a trip to see the leaves colour up. James (who we met last year in Italy) will be dropping in next weekend for a local pub crawl of fine ale sampling as we are repaying him for the tour of Liverpool he gave us in April, but as that is just one night I doubt it will warrant any blog space. Of course our great mates John and Sara (Mando) are doing their infrequent odyssey to the old blighty so we are having them stay for a few days and Gail has the time off. Some pictures are sure to result. More later, keep happy!
