EH - Essex > Hebrides...the next step of the adventure?

enthusiasticsaver

Pictures of Cornwall look great.  We have a break booked in Coverack next Spring.  We did Mullion Cove in July of this year. I love the Lizard and hoping my DH will be able to walk a decent amount by then after his open heart surgery a few weeks ago.  Well done on doing the Eden project with clubcard vouchers.  It is normally very expensive but we have a locals pass.

beanielou

Enjoy Edinburgh 

savingholmes

Enjoy your trip out. You are practically going from one end of Britain to the other in a very short time period. Enjoy your catch up with friends

EssexHebridean

enthusiasticsaver said:

Pictures of Cornwall look great.  We have a break booked in Coverack next Spring.  We did Mullion Cove in July of this year. I love the Lizard and hoping my DH will be able to walk a decent amount by then after his open heart surgery a few weeks ago.  Well done on doing the Eden project with clubcard vouchers.  It is normally very expensive but we have a locals pass.

I've absolutely fallen for Coverack after our two visits this year ES - such a fab little place, and glorious walking all around too - fingers crossed your DH is back to fighting fitness by that stage so you can make the most of it! 

SH - the "end to end" nature of the last couple of weeks didn't escape us - the friends we were with in Cornwall were in Kent the weekend prior to Cornwall, and had a family do up in the North East on saturday - they elected to travel back yesterday by heading straight across to Cumbria so as to complete the four corners of England! 

Beanie thank you lovely - it was a lovely few days! 


Lovely but yes, inevitably fairly spendy I guess. The hotel was pretty reasonable at £126 for the two nights - that was also central enough that we chose to simply walk everywhere we wanted to go on Friday. There was meant to be parking provided, but it turned out that the parking was just 5 spaces, and I suspect that at least three of those are routinely taken up by staff - thankfully I'd checked in advance to ensure that we were able to find some reasonably close by on-street parking instead. Friday's lunch was from a rather brilliant place which simply does hog-roast rolls - not massively cheap but absolutely stuffed full and actually really good value, and incredibly tasty too. Friday evening we were caught by there being relatively few places to choose from in our location, so we ended up with a pub meal which was delicious - £33 including drinks - we then headed on to  meet pals for the evening and did a couple of additional pubs - great beer and lots of good chat. Saturday lunch was from our favourite chip shop on the Royal Mile - a haggis supper each and I twigged that if you ordered online you got a 20% discount on your first order so that brought that down a bit - and it wasn't expensive in the first place - then the evening food was at the party we'd gone up for in the first place. We came back yesterday via the A1 route and meandered across to Seahouses as we were passing - a nice walk and an ice cream each - winner! Got home at 10pm so feeling a bit sleepy today! We opted to get buses in and out of the city centre on Saturday but that was pretty reasonable,and the only other real cost was two breakfasts and a cold drink in a Wethersp00ns on Saturday morning in return for which we extracted the use of one of their tables for three hours while we took part in an online beer-festival meeting - that seemed a fair exchange!

The main job for this week is to get the arrangements in place for our New Year trip up to the islands - I made a start this morning by booking accommodation for Boxing night as we won't be able to get the ferry across until the 27th - found a nice sounding hotel on Skye which I was able to redeem a Hotelsdotcom reward night on too - meaning we have a room plus breakfast for a cash spend of £15.85. Also to book are the ferries, a budget hotel for Christmas night so we have a head start on the drive on the 26th, and accommodation for an overnight on the way home too - either Portree or possibly Fort William - that latter would get us a couple of hours towards home and break up what could be the trickiest driving if the weather is challenging which might be welcome. 

Food this week will be mostly from the freezer - we stopped on the way back yesterday and bought fruit and yogurts for the week but I will need to nip in and buy milk yet, plus also want some mushrooms and a bunch of coriander. Might actually suggest to MrEH that we swing into Aldi as we go home tonight. I have got a tub of bolognese sauce out of the freezer for tonight, and tomorrow will be couscous salad - I need to plan beyond that point though with the aid of a bit of freezer diving. Liver and onions one night probably as it's getting to that time of year! 

Turns out that the transfers from the new account weren't set up *quite* so seamlessly as I hoped as we had a couple of transfers to the nationwide savings bounce back on Friday. I've set mine up again, but need to remind MrEH that he still has to do his, plus both of the two bouncing ones need cancelling - I have to go into online banking for that though I think, which means I need to find my log-in details... I'll also need to go through all the other transfers and see which ones will need amending too. 

Today will not be a NSD, and tomorrow won't either as I want to reactivate my hussle gym pass. Hoping for the rest of the week though... 

savingholmes

How annoying on the bouncing payments

Sounds like you had an enjoyable and MSE time. Result

capuchin

Your dream is so similar to mine! I'm in love with a little town called Mallaig up there, and almost bought a cottage there a couple of years ago. Once I'm done with some debts I'm definitely treating myself to a solo North Coast 500 trip to see what other wonders may be lurking. The islands are really beautiful.

Ps. Are some of those drone photos? They look lovely.

beanielou

Hog roast roll sounds lush 

EssexHebridean

Morning all!

SH - well probably not technically all that MSE but could have been worse!   
Capuchin - thanks for dropping by! Mallaig is gorgeous, even though we more often see little more of it than the ferry terminal and the rather nice little cafe across the road...! (lovely lemon drizzle cake!)  I'd LOVE to do the NC500 - I've done bits of it, but never the whole thing in one go. The stretch of road across the top of Scotland is absolutely incredible though!  And no - no drone shots - the Coverack one (the first one) was from the balcony of the house we stayed in, and the Eden project one was from one of the viewpoints around the top of the "pit" that the whole thing is set in. I love a good high vantage point!
beanie it was really very tasty - should you find yourself in the vicinity at any point the place is called "Oink" and they have several branches across Edinburgh now I think. 

Ended up going via T's last night as it occurred to me I may as well get the bits of stock-up shopping I wanted at the same time rather than just the odds and ends. We are now well supplied for pasta, rice, halloumi, and various other bits. Also remembered the veg stockpots, and managed to get some sardines in oil, although the shelves were still bare of the ones in tommy sauce. Honestly - what a ridiculous shortage! The only other empty shelf we noticed was crisps,  which was annoying as we needed some! Got a small pack of Mr T's own brand to tide MrEH over this week anyway.  I'll probably try to increase levels of dry goods a bit more ahead of winter I think - allowing that the levels of Covid are expected to go up, and the lorry-driver issue is still proving problematic, it would be reassuring to know we have decent stocks in.

This morning's little personal admin job has been to check my experian report as the MsE Credit Club sent me the usual email - I have now run off a letter  asking Barclaycard to close the old 0% card that is still showing open - I've love to think that will be showing closed by next month but I rather doubt it as last time I closed an account with them it took flipping ages! Other than that all good though. 

Tea tonight will be couscous with roasted butternut squash & courgette, plus chickpeas, halloumi and lots of chopped coriander leaf. Also need to freezer-dive for tomorrow which needs to be a relatively quick option as we're both in our respective offices so won't be home until best part of 7pm. Having said that I'll probably be later than that tonight as still plan to go to the gym after work. 

MrEH is going to try to find my Santander log in details today so hopefully I'll be able to get into the online banking before too long. 

Only other thing from an MSE perspective is that we now have our Lakeland vouchers so will be looking into options for the replacement bread machine. The existing one has started leaking from the bottom of the bread pan again and it's really too ancient to be able to justify buying another new pan we think. I have the usual 20% off purchases over a certain level from Lakeland, plus an additional voucher for £10 off their own brand bread makers too - but to be honest we're leaning towards the Panasonic as we've heard pretty much nothing but good stuff about those. Pricey but the reviews do suggest it's worth the cost. The money to cover it is saved in any event. Also need to remember to order a new 2lb loaf tin and some stay-fresh bags at the same time. 

Sunshine_girl2

Glad to read you have your Lakeland vouchers , I will be in the Windermere premises over the weekend . 

EssexHebridean

Ooh SG I'm quite jealous - only been there once and it had ALLLLL the shiny things! On the other hand, it's probably a good thing it's not closer...

My Prolific is sitting at £19.77 - my personal policy is to not cash out until I reach £20, but that level of close-ness is really bugging!  Also checked power of Opinions this morning - still need 373 points to cash out and as I seem to get screened out of everything now that will take a while no doubt. OnePoll is at 1610 points - 2500 needed but that can mount fairly fast when you remember to log in daily as I recall. (And indeed I have just proved this by increasing the total to 1720 in a mater of minutes!) I've just taken the decision to unsubscribe from Populus - their stuff seems to either require sound or be incredibly long & unwieldy. YouGov will be miles away but at least their surveys are shorter than they used to be.