Family – Page 17 – Richard & Caroline's Blog

September 28, 2015October 2, 2015

Solar Panels

I get a few people tell me there is no point in having Solar Panels in this country, too wet, cold and cloudy.

It’s true in the winter I’ll not be generating much but in the Summer I consistently top 0.5 mega watt hours a month.

So this Monday morning at dawn, I was quite supposed to see in the low light and thick Autumn fog the system was producing 60 watt hours which was more then enough to power our lights if not the kettle for morning coffee.

As the light levels climbed we nearly got to a kilowatt hour in the morning fog which I was very impressed with.

Every little helps.

September 15, 2015September 15, 2015

Apple Pay Comes to a few more UK Banks

I see that HSBC Halifax Group cards are now working with ApplePay. We are now less then a day away from the release of OS 9 so the banks have taken a year before the majority of UK customers can use Apple Pay and we still have some of the big players like Barclays holding out.

September 10, 2015September 10, 2015

A flurry of posts after nothing for a while

If you only check my blog every couple of weeks then you will not have noticed but if your one of my more regular readers who checks every few days then you will have noticed theres been a bit of a gap with no posts and now a huge flurry of catchup posts.

Well basically, after getting back from Orkney I started to feel a little under the weather, then after the weekend it hit me like a tonne of bricks, and I have spend fours days in bed with a blanket over my head not wanted to have anything to do with the world.

The fever, chills, constant headaches have now passed to the point where I can face a computer screen for at least a few minutes in every hour so I have been posting a few updates.

September 7, 2015April 12, 2020

The End room starts to get furnished

Just to quick snaps of the end room, now with three large book cases at one end. This means we can finally unbox our books that have been in storage or blocking up the wing hallway for the last two years.

Not only that but I have unboxed my hi fi so we now have music in there. Currently only two sources set up, CD and a wired input from my iPhone. I am thinking about moving the main Apple Wireless Extreme from the living room into hear and getting a newer model for the living room.

September 3, 2015September 10, 2015

Well its Home coming Thursday

Well thats it.The holiday is over and we are back home and back to the routine of work. While I took my wildlife kit I did not manage to get any great shots this time unlike my week on the Shetlands in 2013 but it was a great holiday nevertheless with some fantastic live archaeology being done in front of our very eyes and new discoveries being made.

August 28, 2015September 2, 2015

Holiday Highlights – Ness of Brodgar

If your into archaeology, wildlife or even scuba diving, the Islands of Orkney are one of the best places in the world to visit.

For this this visit we concentrated on the archaeology and while we visited and entered the tombs of Maeshowe which was as spectacular as we remembered once I had managed to climb inside, and also the site of Skara Brae were the stone age (neolithic) homes are remarkably preserved.

But for us the highlight of the trip was the Ness of Brodgar, this site was discovered just after our last visit ten years ago when the local land owner went to plough this field for the first time. Immediately he hit stone and after the geo-physics had been done it was revealed that the whole site was covered with the remains of stone buildings.

For the last then years for the the eight weeks of summer they did at this site and discover more, its one of the great finds of prehistory in the world, a temple complex over five thousand years old.

August 27, 2015August 28, 2015

Orkney – Land of Rugged Coastlines & Neolithic Tombs

Orkney is a fantastic place to explore, if your into walking, wildlife, arts or crafts and especially history then there is something to see.

The coastal scenery is just stunning, this shot is just a quick snapshot from my iPhone as we walked around one of the tiny uninhabited islands to visit an old viking settlement.

Everywhere you have everything from stunning beaches to stark cliff’s, while we did not see any puffins this time there were plenty of cormorants and other sea birds.

In the first few days we visited the main towns and then went off and found the famous tombs of pre-history that Orkney is famous for.

Some of them like the Tomb of the Eagles had a entrance only three feet high, lucky there a trolley which you could lie on and a rope to pull yourself along.

These early trips gave me lots of ideas for photographs and i’ll be revisiting them later on in the holiday with something a little better then an iPhone to photograph them better.

August 25, 2015August 27, 2015

Travelling to the Orkney Islands

Every two to three years we visit some of the smaller islands that make up the British Isles. The term Great Britain is just the name used for the largest of the islands that make up the British Isles, but all the habitable islands and some of the uninhabited islands are well worth a visit.

We took a couple of days to get up here but finally arrived at the top northern coast of Scotland. From here we took the car ferry to the main and largest Orkney Island. Its here where we will be stopping for about a week, using it as a base to visit three or four of the other main islands including at least one uninhabited island.

As you can see from my snapshots the dogs and people had a good crossing over to the islands and so far the weather has been unusually fine for the Orkneys.

August 10, 2015August 14, 2015

Finally a weekend in the Garden

Its been pretty busy the last few weeks again but this weekend we got some time on our own which we spent in the garden

We harvested all the remaining potatoes and also picked some salad for lunch.

It was great to have a lunch consisting of local food. The bread was from our village artisan baker only a few hundred yards away, we also have a local butcher down the road so a lovely pork pie and a Lincolnshire delicacy, a roasted haslet, which tasted fantastic. The salad, potatoes and herbs all came from the garden with the eggs from our chickens.We have also had a bumper onion harvest this year, so in the afternoon we used one of them with some of our eggs and some local cheese to make a lovely quiche for tea.

July 30, 2015July 31, 2015

Apple Pay

When Apple Pay was announced there was a lot to like about it. The security model is the key feature with your debit/credit card number never needing to leave your device plus biometric security.

As of now, few UK banks accept it and those that do only to the £20 contact payment limit. Come on banks get with it. I am in the process of changing bank accounts due to my current provider ending interest payments. Thanks, i’ll just change banks thank you very much.

There are a couple of banks currently offering over four percent and its one of those that will likely get my business but which to choose, well it might be the one that offers Apple Pay first.