Hoverfly

We went to Quarry Bank Mill today (near Wilmslow) - to make use of our National Trust Membership - now that we are all grown up!

There was a certain degree of smugness and self satisfaction in the car when we didn't have to pay for entry to the carpark, or parking, or for entry to the property - in fact so much so, we were giggling to ourselves for a short while. Sad, I know, but made us happy nonetheless!

We wandered around the mill - in which you are not allowed to take photographs (but who's to tell when there's only you in a room - couple of shots from the hip with the compact fuji - good camera, can be very sneaky with it!) (Sneaky shots on the link above!). It was lovely and quiet, most times only Corin and I in the room together. We were treated to a personal demonstration of how the Spinning Jenny and some of the Cottage based manual weaving equipment was used - pretty clever - I love stuff like that.

There was a piece of printing equipment there that was made at my Dad's foundry, over a hundred years ago, when it was Mather Ltd, before becoming Mather and Platt (now its Weir Pumps I think)

The water wheel is fully functional and powers a lot of the old mules, looms and other gadgetry of old - its pretty impressive to see - although its encased in glass so its difficult to capture the full glory of it on camera.

After being fully immersed in the history for a couple of hours inside the building, a cup of tea, slice of cake (and a bowl of Leek and Potato soup for Corin) refreshed us enough to go outside and take whatever the weather decided to throw our way. Fortunately it stayed dry (very overcast, but no rain! Yippee)

We then went for a wander through the gardens which are beautiful and I reverted to type and started snapping happy with the flowers. Just so happened, this wee fella decided to hang around long enough for me to catch him

250 shots later (across 2 cameras) and about 2 hours of sorting and editing he has become "The Chosen ONe" - there's some nice ones of the mill and gardens on the link.

Must go, have got a home made Rogan Josh bubbling on the stove.....

hmmmmmm