A year ago today...............

we moved to Taunton.

The children were farmed out to grandparents, we waved off the removal van from our old home in Gloucester, had a final good vacuum and clean round, handed over the keys to the new owners and headed off south down the M5 motorway to our new life in sunny Taunton.

We can hardly believe it's a year ago - doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself?

Today saw a busy morning - DH took DS to football (in the new boots which mercifully were absolutely fine - phew!) where they won 15-Nil !!!

I had a complete blitz on my sewing area and it's all lovely and clear to start on the baby quilt, probably tomorrow.

Later this afternoon we decided to go out for a walk, all five of us.

Up on the Blackdown Hills to the south of Taunton is a monument overlooking our neighbouring town of Wellington. It commemorates the Duke of Wellington's victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1812 (I think).

As we've visited Napoleon's monument on the hill overlooking Boulogne in France (and the battle site at Waterloo in Belgium) we thought it only fitting we should visit it's English counterpart, so we headed up there this afternoon fully expecting to be able to catch a panoramic view of the town we moved to a year ago.

The picture above shows the pinnacle but sadly as the trees on the edge of the hillside are fully grown and still in full leaf you couldn't see out across Taunton Vale. Maybe we should return in the wintertime and see if it's any better with all the leaves off. The monument is also undergoing restoration - hence the metal barracade round its base - so we couldn't climb up inside it to try and take in the view from there either :o(

Still, the walk was pleasant, up to the monument and through the woods around it.

The afternoon was warm and sunny but in the shade there was a definite nip in the air necessitating a jumper or light jacket.

Autumn is on its way, acorns and beech nuts in abundance and there were lots of different types of fungi growing on the tree stumps in the darker areas.

The brown ones in one of the pictures were some I've never seen before and looked like big flat chocolate truffles - with a sort of cocoa powdery surface - they then looked like they'd been dipped in white icing on the underneath, most unusual.

Now had we been in France we could have taken them to the local Pharmacy for identification as all French Pharmacists in addition to their dispensing role have to be trained to identify each fungus so that people can tell which ones are edible - a highly skilled job with dire consequences if you got it wrong I should think.

These might have looked like chocolate truffles but I certainly wouldn't have chanced it!

The weather forecast for tomorrow is not so good so, as I've already washed the black and burgundy fabrics in readiness, I should be able to try and make some progress on this baby quilt as time is marching on.