Round up

I'm blogging over at http://lindsaysromantics.blogspot.com/ today. If you don't know the blog, it's worth a visit. I added my piece on Historical Belles and Beaus
on the 22nd but forgot to mention it here!


Last week dh and I took a picnic over to Corbridge and walked up to the place I gave my heroine Alina as home - Aydon Castle. It looked pretty good in the blazing sunshine and I couldn't resist a few pictures.


In places so old there have been so many changes down the centuries that it is hard to be sure exactly what the place would have been like in Alina's day. The lovely blocked up window might have been part of the guest quarters, yet from the other side of the wall, you receive a different impression.
The door on the left steps straight in to the cow byre below the kitchen. The door into the sunlight leads to a narrow path above the ravine that caused Harry such trouble. I spend hours contemplating the old stones and how they are arranged and it never fails to give me ideas about stories, what might have taken places there so long ago.

But life calls today. There's a bit of necessary food shopping to do, compost* to buy for houseplant change overs, garden rubbish to take to the waste recycling and then a session in the gym.
(*Is compost the word I want? If it isn't, I can't think of the correct one!) None of the tasks will take us far from home, then it will be back for lunch and and afternoon in front of the tv for Wimbledon. Federer and Nadal in one day! Phew!