what a weekend!

last friday saw me heading down to ilkley to meet angela who had worked so hard and brought so many feltmakers together to participate in the ilkley felt trail. this was arranged as part of the united nations international day of felt and saw about fifteen shops around ilkley display felt we had made to the colour theme of yellow through red. it was such a great project to be involved with and when i ever get some more spare time, i'll post pics of the items i made. it was lovely to get to meet angela, her hubby and some of their many cats and i was made to feel so welcome. in fact it was hard to drag myself away from all of the felt chat but i needed to get back in time to see m before he headed out to work.

not long after we surfaced on the saturday, we got a call from one of m's friends to say that a few folk had gathered at the bothy and would we like to join them for some stargazing. although i was a little apprehensive at the thought of staying in something no more than a hut with no facilities or utilities in the middle of nowhere i was intrigued by the stargazing, especially as one of the chaps is an astrophysicist and had an astronimical telescope!

well, i was pleasantly surprised - the bothy had running (cold) water, a gas stove, gas lamps, two rooms, a sleeping platform, a chemical toilet and even more importantly ... a wood burning stove! with one comfy chair which i promptly claimed, as i was the only girlie i thought it only right the chaps allow me this luxury. it was so lovely!!!


it was walk in of a few kilometres but we were lucky to have dry, mild weather. the landscape was glorious in all of it's autumn finery and we heard grouse and deer on the way in. i even got a chance to have my first river crossing, which is quite tricky when you're both carrying rucksacks nearly as tall and as heavy as yourself but we made it safely across with nothing more than soggy socks.

we saw the summer triangle, the banding on jupiter, along with some of her moons, a shooting star, even a passing satellite but the thing that most blew me away was seeing the andromeda galaxy. s was having a little trouble getting a good view in the scope as we were starting to get a little cloud in the way so i joked he could just line it up on some cloud, tell me i was seeing a galaxy and i would be none the wiser!

it was amazing to be in such a great place, there was no light pollution, no man made noise, no other buildings to be seen, just the hills, and the chorus of the deer.