A White Christmas at Holyoke House

After deciding that we were going to do more fishing than a sea fishing addict over the Christmas break the weather turned a little cold and we had snow laying on the ground for days here in lowland Lancashire. The last time I remember this happening I was still at School, and that was some time ago.

As I work in Bolton I ended up doing a lot of my website builds via the internet from home as the roads were just too dangerous. In fact the only bit of driving I did was to pick up my younger brother up from Manchester and give him a lift up to Longridge, where there was a serious amount of snow but with a bit of careful driving it was manageable.

We spend a very relaxing couple of days at my parents where the snow made the house look like a scene straight from a postcard, and appart from that just chilled (pardon the pun) out while hoping for the weather to warm a little.

I know, I know, winter fishing is all about getting cold, but as I get older I like to fish where I can at least feel my fingers. Last weekend BLAS had a match up at Fleetwood and the signs looked good for a quick trip but sod law, I picked up a shirvery cold type bug so I ended up watching TV instead :(

As for the weather? Well, I went to work yesterday and everything was fine then my boss rang me this morning telling me not to go in as Bolton was under 6 inches of snow with lorries and cars abandoned everywhere – it didn’t look that bad here but by lunchtime it was, once again, covered in snow.

And just when we thought the snow had cleared!!!

I just hope it clears soon because although I can work from home I prefer to work from the office where there are less distractions and more resources.

As per usual, this year we plan to go sea fishing more, walking more, birding watching more, you get the idea… just generally being outside – more. I’m also intending in taking a lot more photographs and maybe entering a few competitions but only if I think the photo’s are worthy, and after working in an independent camera shop my standards of ‘what is a good photo’ are probably far to high…

Not been a whole lot going on sea fishing or walking wise up here in Lancashire for the past few weeks as work has been a bit hectic for both of us and we seem to have spent weekends just lazing about and resting. We have added a couple of new trees to the garden though, 2 small apple trees; Cox and Katy which are able to pollinate each other so hopefully we’ll get some apples next year. A few [... read rest of post]

Not much to report regarding sea fishing or walking for the past few weeks as we’ve been tidying the garage – read as “throwing 12 years of junk out”. We went to Southport Flower Show a couple of weekends ago where we spent a very pleasant morning gathering ideas for the back garden, didn’t spend much and managed to get out before the crowds turned up. I took a few photos but I’ve not got round to processing any yet [... read rest of post]