Dan and Amy

The wedding venue

Having booked the wedding venue on line, it seemed like a good idea to verify that we had not made a terrible (and expensive) misstake by visiting Oulton Hall near Leeds, and catching up with our wedding co-ordinator at the hotel Helen.

We were blown away by how lovely the venue was and by all the attention to detail from the wedding planner (e.g. wedding planner: 'so when you come into the reception room, how would you like to be announced, Mr and Mrs Treble?' Me: (snigger) Mrs Treble that seems really weird!)

For those coming to the wedding there are other alternatives available for accommodation an Express by Holiday Inn only 5 mins down the road- click here for latest pricing.

More from Cumbria

The Lake District is full of market towns and shops like this, very old and quaint and hiding some fabulous treasures inside. We spent a few hours wondering around these shops and enjoying tea in between!

Lovely olde tea shoppe in Kendal.

At the cottage, as well as the brilliant red squirrel we managed to encounter, we were treated to some beautiful British birds (including many types of tits, and even a Woodpecker!) Unfortunately they were all a bit too quick for us to take photos of most of the time...here is a coal tit enjoying some peanuts on bird table.

One morning we took a short drive out to one of the largest stone circles in Northern England, Long Meg and her Daughters. The legend is true, all four of us counted the stones and no one agreed on how many there were!

Louise and Mal at Long Meg and her daughters

Dan and I next to Long Meg

In the afternoon, we drove a little further to see one of the highest waterfalls in the UK, High Force. We also saw a couple of smaller (though no less impressive) falls to complete a fantastic day.

High Force falls, County Durham

Before the drive home on the Wednesday, we looked in on Dan's Grandma Unsworth. She's lived in Grange-over-Sands for over 20 years and has a lot of great friends there to keep her company. It was lovely to take her out for lunch at The Cavendish Arms in Cartmel and catch up on the family happenings.

Australian Open 10

This is our second year of making the trip down to Melbourne for the Australian Open. We had tickets for the Saturday evening and Sunday day (round 4) matches. Megan (federer's #1 fan, she'd happily bump off his missus), was most disappointed that he was playing the Saturday day time, so we agreed to go down on the (really minuscule) off chance that there were some tickets still available for the Saturday day matches. We approached the ticket booth and low and behold, three tickets (must have been refunds just given) were available in some pretty decent seats. here's how happy Megan was to see Fed (and other tennis matches that followed)....

Show us your guns Rafa

Murray

Venus & Federer

We took Steve and Cari to the Saturday night match, expecting some big action as Baghdatis was playing Hewitt (the last match they played on Rod Laver was the 5 hour match, that finished at 4am a couple of years back!). Unfortunately (or perhaps this was because they were just making up for the extra long match last time), it only lasted 35 mins - Baghdatis retiring with injury.

Oh well, we enjoyed some beers and Greek with Steve and Cari to make up for it (lamb souvlakis from Stalactites, mmm).

Melbourne laneways

More tennis at Federation Sq.

Fairy penguins at St Kilda pier

Dufton

A small update from England, we're travelling like crazy, trying to catch up with everyone this week and next; but we managed to squeeze in a couple of days of relaxation at a lovely cottage in Dufton, Cumbria. It was beautiful, had some great pub lunches, saw some beautiful wildlife (including the rare little red squirrel above!) and we even had a dusting of snow too.

Kickboxing : Blue Singlet Level!

4 months of kickboxing at the end of last year culminated in grading night. After many scrapes and losing lots of skin off my feet it was time to get something for my efforts! Grading was 4 x 2 minute rounds sparing. The first round I was unlucky and got the one of the trainers, he didn't go easy, he made me work for that blue singlet! Fortunately the other rounds went much better.

I wore the singlet to work the next day with a pair of shorts, Scott commented "That's the most unprofessional I've ever seen you dressed Dan"!

Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to get back into it this year, but I will.

Bird i'th hand

The lorikeets have been coming for what feels like years now, we've fed them from containers before, but never from our hands. Thanks to a tipoff from Clo, we now have them eating out of our hands! (The tip was to avoid leaving the sunflower seeds, the equivalent of lorikeet crack, around and only give them from our hands!)

Sometimes their claws hurt a bit though (yes, that expression is a mix of pain and excitement, that just ended up in an open jaw!)