Corfe Castle & Swanage

Below are some photos too enjoy, taken by my stepdad over the weekend.

Corfe Castle

My husband being his usual funny self!

Swanage

Weekend in Swanage

My mom and Jürgen came to visit this weekend and we decided to drive down to the coast and spend a night there. We left home on Saturday morning after breakfast and drove to Swanage, stopping at Corfe Castle on the way for a walk around the castle ruins and lunch at the pub. I wrote about Corfe Castle here before if you're interested in some interesting info about it.

show your finger at the camera and you end up with multiple
noses!

I bet Andre took better pictures with his camera but I haven't downloaded his yet. Will perhaps post some of his later.

After lunch we drove on to Swanage. We were lucky with the weather being dry and so decided to make the best of the daylight still left and go for a quick walk along the pier, in case the following day won't be as dry. You never know over here!

We stayed the night in a B&B called A Great Escape. It received very good reviews on tripadvisor, even voted the number one out of 36 B&B's in Swanage. It was lovely and I couldn't fault it, except the next morning when there wasn't any hot water! Besides that we had a lovely time there.  We had the only two rooms right on the top floor next to each other and visited in each other's rooms for coffee before and after dinner. 

Dinner: our first three choices of restaurants which the B&B owner recommended  were either fully booked or closed so we ended up going to a pub again. We ate something light as we all had a good lunch earlier on and then managed to share desserts. We ended dinner off with a game of chess!

It stormed throughout the night but luckily was all over by the next morning and we actually had sun all Sunday! We bundled up against the cold, put on our wellies, and went for a stroll to Durlston castle and light house. A walk Andre and I did when we spent a long weekend in Swanage before. The walk takes you all along the coast on top of the cliffs.

After our walk we started heading home via The New Forest with a stop in Lyndhurst for cream tea. I was a little disappointed that we didn't spot any horses this time. The scones made up for it though!

A fantastic weekend! Thanks Ma & Jürgen for the visit! It felt like a little bit of holiday to us too, getting away for a bit!

New Years Eve

A little late, but I just realised going through my photos that I never posted this, and some others which will come later.

We went to Peppone's for dinner. A really good dinner with lots and lots of food! Peppone even spoilt us with an extra plate of food not on the menu for the night -calamari! Yum! Besides that there were canapés when we arrived, soup, risotto, sorbet, beef wellington, and an amazing dessert. A very full 6 course menu!

As always, Peppe is a great host and also a talented DJ and played great music. We danced until midnight when we went outside for fireworks and each had a sparkler too. Then back inside for coffee and more dancing.

Here's the fireworks show in London.

Snow! -the video

Here's a video of our walk in the forest area by our house yesterday.

(If you have good internet where you are, so perhaps not if you're in SA... you can then click on the link rather, click on HD to make sure HD is on and watch it full screen by clicking button bottom right when you're in the vimeo screen)

Snow! from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

Some more snow photos

Andre and I just got back from a walk through the snowy forest here by our house. It hasn't snowed much more today but it's still very white outside and the temperature has stayed between 0 and -1C all day.

Here are some photos that he took. I took the gopro with me and am busy making a little video for you to come on a snowy walk with us.

Is there life after snow?

If we didn't spend a year living in Switzerland I would have probably seriously doubted it, the way things go here when it starts to snow!

It is our third winter, but last winter it didn't snow much and the one before I wasn't working yet so didn't need to drive much.

This is work- The nursery from the front
when I left today.

And the back garden

People here have gotten me into a right panic this morning over having to drive in the snow, made even worse by the radio station warning everyone and so many schools being closed even before I left home this morning. I drove in the snow in CH without even thinking twice about it. We drove in quite heavy snow fall all the way to Germany one weekend too. I never realised there would be places in the world where roads would not be cleared of snow! A little spoilt after CH I suppose!

My car, parked all the way at the top of the lane. The cars in
the background is where I sat for 50min.

The 260m that took 50 minutes.

Our little street, very very white.

It did in the end take me 50 minutes to drive 260m to get to the main road. The rest of the drive home was fine. Slushy but moving. And took 1hr30 instead of the usual 20min from work to home. 

Our back garden from the second floor window. Can you
spot the black cat?

I saw a snow plough on the M4 this morning. One lonely one. I hope he was meeting up with another one somewhere to actually be able to make a difference! (The M4 is like the N1 in SA)

There was even a snow plough in our village!

We took the children outside to play in the snow first thing this morning at work and managed to build a tiny little snowman after they kept asking for one. At 9.30 there weren't that much but it hasn't stopped snowing and was at 12cm when I checked at 3pm this afternoon.

I went on a quick walk through the forest when I got home just because I can't stop taking pictures of the snow. It is pretty. Have a look!

*By the way, remember you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.

The road out of our village.

Just to prove I'm not making it all up!

The little pond down the road in the forest.

Forest walk.

A little bit of color with the road leading into our village
in the background.

And here's our snowy back garden.

Poor rain meter must be wondering what's going on!

The cat's been by.