Glorious North Yorkshire!

We are at home this weekend so decided to do some homely stuff.
I finally made chutney with the bag of apples we got from the charity shop (fill a bag for a £1, great idea to give your spare apples to charity)

I made spiced apple chutney ready for our legendary boxing day ham.

Then today we went on one of my favourite family days out – a gorgeous circular walk (hate retracing my steps) including a river, some fabulous countryside and a great pub. Mabel has an ear infection in both ears (sent home from nursery this week) so when she wouldn’t keep her hood up we had to improvise with a scarf...

For lunch we had thick cut ham sandwiches with plenty of real butter, home made piccalilli and chunky chips, washed down with a pint of local ale. All in front of a roaring fire in a gorgeously quaint beamed room.

Appletreewick, near Skipton, was a lovely little village with an even better name and a campsite right on the river which we hope to visit at some point and we also passed Bolton Abbey on the way home, a future visit required there too!

On the way back to the car we passed a field of sheep and I decided to impart a little animal knowledge on Mabel and G Kisby. About half the field of sheep had green dye on their behinds. I explained that dye is put onto the ram in an appropriate place so the farmer can see which of the ladies has been ‘fertilised’.

“Really?” he replied, half bemused, half doubtful (fair enough, I famously once told Alfie when about 3 years old that the large mammal we saw at the safari park was a buffoon).

“Yeah seriously. You can’t tell if a ewe is preggers until about 6 weeks before giving birth so this way they know” (o.k I admit I had to google this last bit because I only knew the first part)

I was sounding seriously credible until we walked out the other side of the field and G Kisby drew my attention to this:

Ah man. Really glad I didn't have to try and explain what might have gone on here!!!