Border Adventures!

With the kids still off school I took a couple of annual leave days this week and decided to meet up with spinningfishwife and her family. They were supposed to be going to Wales but unfortunately things didn't work out for them and they went camping in Peebles in the Scottish Borders instead.

We met up at Crossburn Camp Site on Edinburgh Road in Peebles, about a 40 minute drive from home. Spinningfishwife and her family were staying in their Conway trailer Tent (on the left) and we had borrowed their Vango Oregon 600 tent (blue one on the right). Ronan and Duncan, my oldest son and Spinningfishwives son stayed in the pup tent in the middle!
We arrived on Tuesday morning and soon had the tent up and organised. We "slobbed" about on the campsite most of the afternoon coz it was rainy at times and the kids were having fun exploring the campsite and meeting lots of new kids.

After very little sleep on my part we went to Jedburgh on Wednesday.

Jedburgh Abbey is owned by Historic Scotland and as both families are members we get in for free! There was dressing up stuff for the kids and they could wear it as we went round the Abbey. We opted for an audio tour which was great, even the kids enjoyed listening to all the history of the Abbey and hearing stories about the people who lived and worked there.



Here you see Ronan and Robert as "White" Monks, Duncan as a "Brown" Monk and Mairi (Spinningfishwives daughter) as a mediaeval Princess! They are standing in the main entrance in to the Abbey.





Once we had seen all there was to see here we all piled back into the cars and headed off to Kelso to see the Abbey ruins there. Unfortunately it was closed due to a Health and Safety issue so we were unable to get in. However just across the road from the Abbey Spinningfishwife and I spied a sign for "Woolly Ewe", this we HAD to investigate! So we packed the kids of with Spinningfishwives DH to find an ice-cream shop so we could go have a look and sure enough tucked away in a corner of a row of cottages was this very quaint wool shop!

Here is the "Woolly Ewe".

Unfortunately it doesn't have a web site, but they hope to have one up and running soon. The woman in the shop was very friendly, so we chatted as we perused the yummy yarns that she stocked! They had Rowan, Colinette, Patons, Opal sock yarn, a superb range of patterns and books, Handmade Injabulo buttons, tapestry and cross stitch kits, various childrens craft kits, beads and jewellery trimmings.

OK........What did I buy, coz it goes without saying that I would buy something!!!! Well I did have that £10 my Secret Pal sent me "burning a huge hole in my pocket"!!!!

I bought 4 balls of Rowan Tapestry, one of their new yarns for the autumn. I bought 2 balls of shade 176 "whirlpool" and 2 of shade 171 "Rainbow". It is 70% wool and 30% soybean protein fibre, 120m/131yards per 50g. 22stitches x 30 rows = 10cm/4in and knits up on 4mm/UK8/US6 needles and hand wash at 30 degrees. It is really soft and I can't wait to knit a scarf with it....Part of my xmas gifts I think.

I also bought an Opal yarn pattern for knitting scarves with self patterning sock yarn....Should be interesting!

Once we had seen the yarn shop we met up with the kids and Spinningfishwives DH and headed back to the camp site for fish and chips from the local chip shop...Which was yummy btw! However it took longer to get back to the camp site than I anticipated coz I got lost!

After a much better sleep, we awoke to sunshine on the Thursday morning...Great....The tent came down dry, so no need to dry it off when we got home! Once that was done spinningfishwife and I went for a walk round the shops in Peebles, where I managed to find some birthday pressies for friends and family.

I also spied this at the local market!..........................

....I just had to take a pic of the biggest pair of knickers I had ever seen! What made it even funnier was the 3 elderly gents discussing them, and when a 4th appeared and said he knew someone they would fit, at this point they all started to laugh....Well I thought it was amusing....Maybe it was one of these "You needed to be there moments"?

We then went back to the campsite, where I loaded the kids into the car and made our way home as we had the Tag Rugby end of summer BBQ to attend.

A great time was had by all, even if we were really tired....Boy did I sleep like a baby on Thursday night.....Wonder if it had something to do with the few beers I had at the Rugby club?