More of the snow in April

The fields next to Ben & Corinne's house, Hunningham church.

Ewe with her lambs in the snow:

Weekend In Warwickshire

We went to the British SJ Championships at the NEC in Birmingham. It was fun for me but a bit boring for Downy. We also saw indoor polo, cross country and scurry racing.

Indoor Polo -

We stayed with Ben & Corinne in Hunningham, Warwickshire, which is a gorgeous little village. They live in a converted barn on a farm - has to be the best locum accommodation in the UK. On Sunday morning we woke up to snow everywhere, more than a sprinkling, everything was totally covered and so pretty. So freezing temps and snow in April, the weather has gone mad.

Sheep in the field near their house, little black lamb in the middle:

Bruges

During our stay in Belgium we went to Bruges for the day. Bruges (or Brugge) is an ancient medieval town 1hr from Brussels, towards the French border. It Bruges they speak Flemish (Dutch) whereas in Brussels most people speak French. It was a rainy day but we still enjoyed strolling around the streets and canals.

The main square

We did a canal boat tour which was great, from the canals you can see all the gorgeous old buildings on the water. Our tour guide sounded like he had learnt English from a computer!

We climbed the 360 steps to the top of the Belfry where a man was playing the bells by hand, it was really interesting and they play familiar tunes and have concerts of bell playing!

Brussels

Last weekend we had a 3 day break in Belgium. We stayed in Brussels for 3 nights and saw most of Brussels and Bruges. We indulged in lots of local food including waffles (below), mussels, Flemish stew and Belgian beers.

St Michael's Cathedral, the only sunny day we have enjoyed for about a month

Below is part of one of the main buildings in the Grand Place - a huge square in the centre of Brussels. There are shops and restaurants around the edge and would be great in summer. We went to a restaurant here which was in a 17th century cellar and we both had Flemish stew!

New York

Pictures L-R: view from the Empire State Building at night, Sculpture from the WTC foyer now burnt and damaged, Statue of Liberty, M&Ms world, Central Park, missing person tiles placed after 9/11, Wicked on Broadway,

New York

The last stop for the trip was New York where we spent 4 days. It is a really interesting city and I really enjoyed it. We did a hop on-hop off bus tour, went to the Statue of Liberty, up the Empire State building and looked in some of New York's famous shops. We went to a Broadway show called ''Wicked'' which was fantastic.

One highight was an audio tour of the World Trade Centre site (below). It was really sad and I felt I had never appreciated the size of the tragedy until I saw the site and New York City.

Central Park

Walking towards Times Square

Statue of Liberty

"The Cottage"

Our last stop in Canada was to visit Jeff, Lauren and baby Joe (friends from uni) at their cottage in Ottawa. The cottage is right on a lake which was frozen and had an ice skating rink made on it! We spent hours preparing the rink for a big day of skating and fun but it rained, snowed 1-2 foot and then semi melted! Jeff took us to a couple of local dairy farms where we saw cows in a tie up barn and cows out in the snow. Overall it was a great experience of living in the snow - where we had to dig out cars and build fires on frozen lakes!
Pictures L to R: Joe, cows, Joe asleep in his snow sled, Corinne, Matt, more cows, Kay, cows and Ben at the farm.