A weekend away.

At the weekend John and I went to East Sussex, to be more precise to Rye. Rye has a large nature reserve and we wanted to find out more. I had a couple of things to do before we could set off. The first was to collect my machine from its extended spa treatment. Both Brother and the engineer who worked on it insisted that the foot pedal I had been using since 2017, was the wrong pedal for the machine. The manual tells me that there are two pedals available, one for everyday sewing which was the one that came with the machine when I bought it from Brother and an all singing all dancing pedal made for free motion quilting. This pedal, I am reliably informed has much better control over the speed of the machine. I'll let you know when I have time next weekend to get to some quilting. 

My second appointment was a visit to the podiatrist to have my feet pampered  and cared for. Walking out of the surgery I felt like I was walking on air and it meant my feet enjoyed all the walking we did over the weekend. On Friday afternoon we visited Rye harbour. I always love seeing the boats in a harbour. The harbour itself is on the River Rother. We had a look around the area, and popped into the pub for a drink, with John enjoying a beer whilst I sipped a coca cola, since I was driving.

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We then headed towards the nature reserve. The visitor centre was just closing but you can follow the trails very easily.  Walking down to the beach we passed this cute hut. Not sure what its purpose was but it made a good picture.

As the light was fading we didn't walk very far but got a feel of the place. Saturday was to be our bird watching day. Dinner at our hotel was delicious and I spent a little time knitting the collar of my jumper.

On Saturday we set off early and spent the whole day on the reserve. We got a good walk and saw lots of different species of birds. None of them were particularly easy to get a photo of and in the end I gave up trying and just enjoyed spending time with nature. We looked across the river to Camber Sands.

Across the river is a beautiful expanse of sand whilst the beech on the reserve side was pebbles mainly with a limited amount of sand. The light was very interesting and i managed to get a reasonable photo shooting straight into the sun.

In total we saw nearly 40 different bird species, walked nearly seven miles and had some interesting conversations with other bird watchers. By the time we needed to leave I was very tired but it had been a good day. After dinner our evening was very quiet as John was reading and I carried on with my knitting.

On Sunday there was a warning for strong winds and rain so we decided to cut our weekend short. I was very pleased we did as the weather deteriorated as we headed home.

Today, after work I finally finished knitting the collar for my jumper and now I can get it finished before the end of the month. That will be the first finish of the year.  I've still got a lot of the sewing up to do. The collar has to be folded lengthwise and stitched to the neck opening.

Tomorrow I am hoping to get some sewing time as I haven't done very much on my January challenge. I do have a sewing weekend to look forward to.

Take care

Lyndsey