Other November Happenings

After wishing for a quieter month, it didn’t quite pan out that way.  Firstly, how did I go with my non-stitching goals?  

READ A BOOK - Fail

TRY A NEW RECIPE OR REVISIT AN OLD ONE - I thought I had failed, but then I remembered that I made a Honey Ricotta Tart for a Christmas party, which I haven’t made for quite a few years.  I forgot to take a photo, but it turned out well.  I actually made it twice, as I did a trial run first.  They were both successful.

GO AWAY IN THE CARAVAN - Yes.  We had planned two weekends away, but in the end cancelled our little trip to Braidwood for the Airing of the Quilts as the weather forecast wasn’t the best.  I’ll get to the other weekend away in a minute.

KEEP MY BLOG UP TO DATE - I started well, but then petered off.  No worries, I will do a catch up now.

As I said, we had a weekend away in the caravan.  We ventured over to Gulgong for their Swap Meet.  Our initial plan was to go over on Friday, play the tourist for the day and then set up our little stall on Saturday for Sunday.  The weather forecast was for hot weather and we would be camping off grid, so we decided to delay until Saturday.  Yes, it was hot - 35 degrees C on both days.  Thank goodness for the awning.

We enjoyed a nice morning tea at Mudgee on the way over.  Mick had Basque Burnt Cheesecake and it was delicious.  I enjoyed some fruit salad.

We had our little stall selling bits and bobs.  We did OK, but the numbers of lookers were down.  Most of the selling seemed to be between stall holders.  The hot weather wouldn’t have helped.

While we may not have sold a great deal, we did find a couple of bargains.  Mick found a basket for the roof rack on Rosie the Suzuki Sierra for next to nothing and he also found a UHF radio for her - brand new in the unopened box - at about a third of the normal price.  He was very happy. We also bought 2kg of fresh cherries.  Yum!

We headed home after lunch and the ute started to have a few issues when we were going up hills.  Yes, we were towing, it was hot and there was a head wind, but it should have handled it with no worries.  We would stop, let it rest and the warning lights would go out……until the big hill coming out of Sofala.  We limped to an area where we could get off the road.

And this is how we came home.  Very sad.  Thank goodness for NRMA membership.  The van was dropped off at home and the ute taken into the service people.  They decided that the problem was that the transmission oil had been overfilled. We never touch that, so not sure when it was done.  Anyway, the main thing is that it should hopefully be fixed and wasn’t anything more serious.  The test will be the next time we tow the van in similar conditions.

We’ve had a couple of other little outings.  

The first was to the Christmas Fair and Swap Meet at the Bathurst Showground.  We didn’t have a stall, just went as lookers and bought nothing.  There was a car show on as well, which had some tasty vehicles on display.

We also had a quick trip to Sydney last week.  As Mick has now been playing lawn bowls for the best part of a year, he felt it was time to get a decent set of bowls, rather than using his Mum’s ancient old set.  The perfect early Christmas present.

We travelled over the Bells Line of Road in rather misty conditions.  You could see the very low clouds as we were leaving Bathurst.

It was rather lovely and atmospheric.

We knew there were roadworks at Mount Tomah and had to wait a while for the escort vehicle to come along.

It was hard to get a photo of, but they are doing some major road stabilisation work near the Botanical Gardens.  This is due to bad bushfires going through the area in early 2020 and then only a year later getting repeated torrential rain, causing the road to collapse.  They are going to have huge pilons buried deep into the ground.  Not an easy fix.  Quite a few of the roads around there, including Mount Victoria and Jenolan Caves were severely impacted.

As we reached the lower Blue Mountains we started to see beautiful Jacaranda trees and some bougainvillea, both plants that don’t grow in our area.

We were ready to stretch the legs by the time we reached Windsor and had an early lunch at our favourite cafe in the mall.

There was a beautiful Christmas Tree on show.

We haven’t visited Windsor for a while and since our last time there have been a couple of murals added to walls.

You know I love some good street art.

After that it was down into the madness of Sydney, pick up the lawn bowls and head straight back home.

We’ve had quite a few visitors this month too.  As I previously mentioned, some friends from Queensland stayed a couple of days at the start of the month.

Then, we had some visitors to dinner from Victoria.  It was Susan from Granny Smith’s Quilting and her hubby.  We had a lovely evening and we may have cooked up a project to work on next year.

We then had some more visitors from Queensland stay for a few day, an old workmate of Mick’s and his wife.  It was nice to catch up with them.

Finally, more Queensland visitors, my cousin and her husband stayed for a couple of days.

Quite the revolving door, compared to usual.

I think that’s enough for this post,  I’ll share a little more soon.