ASHTON HALL

First of all apologies for the rant yesterday but my anxiety levels are very high and my head is spinning with worry.  Trying to practice what Mrs Gladders has taught me!!!

Both a good and a bit of a frustrating day today.

I  had decided I needed to get out so thought we could go up to Keswick to the Lingholm Estate.  However the weather and timing put that out of the window.  I have been visit to Ashton Hall Garden Centre for some time now and with my Mum and sister having visited just yesterday I thought today way the day for that.

We left home with it just cloudy and grey but on going down the hill into Grange it started to rain and didn't stop all the way down the M6 - Junctions 36 to 33.  However when we got to the garden centre (which takes a bit of finding) the sun came out.

We had a lovely coffee and teacake.  Actually Hubby and I had ordered crumpets but the waitress came and said sadly they'd run out she asked if we wanted tea cakes instead.  So we did.  However only one came.  No problems, I just said we'd ordered two and she went off to get us another one, but then I thought - actually that was a bit cheap so I checked my receipt and she'd only charged me for one crumpet so I went up to the till to explain I needed to pay for another one but the young man there then said No it was our mistake, so the second is on us.  Now isn't that good.  They were excellent tea-cakes.

We then wandered  around the Garden Centre.  Somewhat depleted after Christmas but still pleasant to look around.  

The photo is actually of Ashton Hall itself, the Garden Centre is separate and this side o that wall.  Ashton Hall is a  large venue centre now.

It was still sunny, but as we rejoined the M6 the showers started again.  We decided we would head back home but top off at The 'Wheatsheaf in Beetham for lunch.   We arrived at the Wheatsheaf to discover they were closed for redecorating until 17th January.  So we popped across the road to Beetham Garden Centre for food.  The queue was so long and not good standing waiting in the rain so we abandoned that idea.  No point in to going to Levens Kitchen as that would be heaving too so we headed towards home when we suddenly remembered the Hare & Hounds at Levens Village and went there instead.

Boy was there an awful lot of water around, it's like a new Mini Lake District has opened up In North Lancs and South Cumbria.

On arriving home there was a magnificent rainbow right by our home and at one angle it looked like it was right on our place. 

I'm having laptop troubles at the moment because the Norton antivirus service that I use is taking up far too much space and I'm now told that I have to close files down before I can use any more.  Now this has been happening for a while now, fright from when I signed up for the trial of Norton's Ultimate service.  As I was still on a trial basis I cancelled that for free but it apparently it's going to take about 3 weeks to completely disappear from the system, even thought I've been in and deleted it!!!  I've also deleted many photograph files as RAW files take up a lot of space.  I have saved them all on two separate hard drives first of course

On checking checking my storage that tells me that the only thing taking up loads of space is Norton - aaarrrgh..   We had no problem when it was Bullguard but Norton took them over.  

Anyway I've spoken to CNL in Kendal and will take the laptop in there tomorrow and they will look up what they can do to restore some space and/or add extra storage if need be.

So I guess I will have to miss Tai Chi tomorrow to go into Kendal early to get it sorted out *sigh*.

That's all from me for today.  Sorry it's so long.  Do take care and stay safe and I will see you all tomorrow.