I didn't really do a roundup yesterday after my post on our trip to Scotland on Saturday, not much extra to say really. Whilst we were away my Dad heard back about his car that'd got caught in the floods last week. 10 week old car and it needs a new engine plus a few other bits at £7,000! That's more than I paid for my car! Of course the insurance covers it but of course it's an annoyance. We've been pretty lucky with floods where we are, as in not having any.

Once we got back from Scotland the sun truely came out on Saturday. After a morning of catching up on websites, feeds and forums, I decided it was finally time to put our new shed together, a cheapie job from B & Q for £25. It's not massive, just 5ft high and 3.5ft wide but it means we can keep the garden tools, mower etc. in there and make the place look a bit more tider. So Dave and I set to work and spent the afternoon putting this together, arguing over what was what, what went where etc. We finally got it finished and just need to put some stuff on it to stop it from rotting, just need to wait for a day and night when it isn't going to rain.

The garden's been suffering a little with all the rain and no sun. The chilli plants are still fighting and seem to be doing okay, but a lot of the salad plants have suffered and we've lost lettuces through the weather. However, as always, there are more seedlings growing so hopefully we can get these in the ground soon and growing. We've still got some, stronger, lettuces growing and haven't actually bought lettuce from the shop now since May time which is pretty good. The tomatoes are doing well too, 5 out of the 6 plants have survived the bad weather and they'd all starting to show tomatoes, one even has a tomato turning colour already.

That's about it really. I'm intending to join up with a local gym this week, maybe shell out for a personal trainer for a while to get me back on the fitness trail and hopefully getting fit and losing weight. Plus the weather is meant to be better this week so we may finally dust the bikes off and get out and about on them. I certainly need to stretch my legs somehow!

I realised the other day that I'm never keeping up to date with my Flickr contacts and their photos. Why have contacts if you don't keep an eye on their new photos? Whilst browsing through someone's album yesterday I suddenly realised they had an RSS feed. I'd noticed this before but never checked to see what the RSS feed was of. It seems every Flickr account gets a unique RSS feed allowing you to keep up to date with the new photos of each person's album you want to subscribe to. A few minutes later I had several album feeds in my feedreader and can keep up with those who post their photos about 5 times a day – you know who you are

To subscribe to a person's Flickr RSS feed, go into their album and then in the bottom left just above the footer there is an RSS icon plus a link to open up the RSS feed or copy the link to add to the feedreader of your choice. Now all I need is it to tell me the comments on each photo too!

So we're back from Scotland. A nice few days away, pretty stress free and relaxing. If you want to read about our holiday I've posted this on my other blog.

So after 3 nights away we got back from Scotland yesterday evening. We had a good few days away and luckily the weather was far better than predicted. We still had a bit of rain but only got heavily rained on once whilst not in the safety of the car! I've updated Flickr with my favourite photos and below is a more indepth post of what we got up to.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we set off around 10am and drove up via Cumbria and the Lake District. We turned off the boring motorway at the southern end of Cumbria and headed over to Lake Windermere. Unfortunately we couldn't actually park in Windermere but found a little Bistro further up where we grabbed lunch and the first few rays of sunlight we'd seen for weeks. We then made our way back to the motorway but my choice was over the mountain So we drove up to 1500+ ft over one of the passes and had some amazing views of the hills (I'll add those photos tomorrow as I forgot today!). We then met the motorway again and spent another hour on the road before reaching Dumfries. To be fair it was around 200 miles including our detour so I'd imagine around 150 miles around which isn't too far at all.

After getting to the Travelodge and unpacking, we headed into Dumfries town centre (see photo above). We took a wander around the River Nith, taking photos of the gorgeous flowing river and then went to find somewhere for dinner. I'd already looked online for anywhere that may offer free wireless access, simply for emergencies for work. As I'd had someone email through an issue which I could fix quickly I figured I'd get it fixed if I could. I found out before we left that Wetherspoons offered a free 30 minutes of wireless for every drink or meal purchased. Fantastic, easily done! Oh and there was one in Dumfries (does help!!). So we wondered around the town and found the pub and figured we'd look at their menu, Grill Night, sounds good. However that's where the goodness stopped!

First off they'd run out of Rib Eye steak so I had to settle for Rump. Then the first person who served Dave said there was no Internet access, despite me already connecting to it and waiting for a free token. After asking again we were informed that they had run out of tokens and 'hadn't bothered to order any more'. However Dave was informed we could pay for it – £2.99 for 30 minutes! Well, unless it was urgent I wasn't about to shell out £2.99 to fix a simple issue (where the client had made the mistake in the first place). So no Internet access, the only actual reason we went in there in the first place! After dinner I fancied dessert (as always) so Dave went off to order a couple, and was then told there was no Apple Pie for him. So no Rib Eye, no Apple Pie and no Wireless tokens. Not a good time at Wetherspoons!

Wednesday

We woke up to misty rain with no sign of the gorgeous blue sky we'd had the evening before. So I dressed up in my waterproofs and we headed up to Grey Mares Tail, the highest waterfall in Scotland at 61m (see left photo). An amazing site as I've never seen a waterfall bigger, just those created in Austria in the summer by melting snow off the mountains. Even the rain didn't spoil it, besides the slippery thin pathway up to see it!

We then drove back to Dumfries and then up to the New Galloway forest. The drive again had plenty of beautiful scenery and views. We drove up to the East side of the forest, stopped for some lunch by a Loch, and then drove straight through the Southern part of the forest, stopping to take the occasional photo. Unfortunately the Red Deer were too far away for us to get decent photos of, and the Mountain Goat point had no Goats! A bit disappointing really.

By now the sun had broken out and so we drove on down to the coast and took the coastal route back to Dumfries via Rockcliffe, where I got a couple of gorgeous blue sky photos.

Thursday

Again, we woke up to rain but by the time we'd finished breakfast the blue sky was beginning to show. We headed down to the coast, east of the River Nith, to the Wildlife and Wetlands Trust. The WWT is a massive site on the coast, allowing various birds and wild fowl to live and stay for periods of the year. It was a large place and we spent about 2 hours walking from hide to tower to hide. Unfortunately not too many birds were showing their faces to us, but I still picked up a few shots. It was definitely a peaceful place to go and it was just a shame the weather wasn't better, but at least it didn't rain!

After leaving the WWT we headed to the beach at Powfoot, a little further East. The tide was pretty far away but with the sound of plenty of birds on the edge of the sea we headed over, trying to avoid the rock pools and very soft sand. Unfortunately we never made it to the tide. The rain started and came down pretty heavy and at that point we figured it'd be better to head back to the car!

We then headed along the coast to Gretna Green. The place made famous by people running away to get married, has been turned into a tourist centre. You can still get married of course, you can also do some souveneir shopping and pick up local foods and, of course, plenty of Whisky! We picked up some presents for family here and then had dinner at a nice little restaurant in Gretna. After 2 nights of naff dinners in chain restaurants (Wetherspoons and then a Brewers Fayre) this hotel restaurant – The Solway Lodge, did some great food. I had haggis for the first time ever, a little spicy and rich for my liking.

Friday

After checking out we headed back to England. The sun was out and the sky was gorgeous. The roads were pretty clear too which was great (well clear at first!). We turned off the motorway just north of Lancaster and went down to Morcambe Bay for lunch and a break. It was pretty windy which made everything that much colder so after a lunch of fish and chips (gotta have fish and chips when at the seaside), a brief walk around and winning the parking fee back in the arcades, we jumped back in the car and headed home. Unfortunately we hit major traffic a couple of exits before ours and lost about half an hour to an hour sitting on the M6. However we finally got home.

Dumfries was a nice place with plenty of scenery. It's a shame we didn't see a lot of wildlife, whether this was due to the weather or just bad luck, I don't know. However the area was definitely peaceful and would have been glorious had the weather been that little bit better, but considering how it's been, we really couldn't complain about the luck we did have with the weather. I think we'll certainly go back. I've read a bit about the mountain biking in the area and would love to go cycling there, and I know Dave wants to go back with a decent DSLR camera (which he's about to purchase) and get some real shots, those I couldn't get with my little compact.

Anyway, hope you enjoy the photos

Dave and I are off to Scotland for a short break until the end of the week so I won't be posting here for the rest of the week. So instead I figured I'd give you all some food for thought over the posts that have impressed me the most this week.nnFirst up, Mark wrote about Guest Blogging and how he felt it was a waste of time. People go to your blog to read your content. Whilst guest posts don't bother me as such, I'll admit I don't tend to read them. All the sites I read are in my Google reader so if you post, or not, my reader will tell me so. I'm not wasting my time visiting a blogger's site and discovering they've not posted for the day, afterall I'm bad for going days or a week or two without posting! However that said, the guest poster is usually someone trying to get established and so I guess using your blog platform to try and gain new readers is a nice idea, so I have no issue either way. But I don't read them nnThen Gary posted about how friendly your blog is to your visitor, looking at the content of your actual site above the fold. Being on a large res I don't tend to think about things like that, and after his comments I've moved the sidebar on the right around to ensure my site content is at the top and more viewable. I guess visitors are coming here to see my stuff and not links to other sites, so they're still there just a little lower down. However, he was also talking about post content, and also about comments and your comments on replies made by your visitors. This is something that can really bug me at times, and to be honest it will often put me off reading a blog. If I leave a comment on a post, it's nice to get a reply back from the site owner. As a site owner, if you're not replying to your visitors comments then you're being a bit impolite. Okay if you get a fair few comments (and I'm talking 20-30 whilst you're sleeping!) then I can appreciate you can't answer every single one, but at least show you're active in the commenting section as well as the posting section. If someone's taken the time to write a decent comment, possibly offer their opinion or advice to accompany your post, then that person has contributed to your post, enriched it in some way and enriched your whole site, afterall content is what the spiders love. So just reply back! Even if it's a thanks, it's acknowledgement and you've got more chance of getting further comments. If I know a comment won't be responded to then I won't usually post it, afterall if you're not going to physically acknowledge my comment then you probably ignored it altogether.nnOops sorry I went off for a rant there!nnAnd finally Jason wrote this morning (or last night!) about Traditional Blogging and how videos and podcasts are not blogging. Have to admit I agree totally there. Only one blog I subscribe to uses videos on occasion, but after mentioning that a brief summary to accompany the video would help those of us who don't watch the video, the blogger has done this and that's cool to me.nnSo those are the 3 posts that have really stood out to me this week simply because, I've been thinking the same things (guys, get out of my head!!). Comments are off, I've commented on all these posts so I recommend you read the posts and comment there if you've got anything to contribute.nnI'll be back at the weekend with Shortbread and Whisky (a suntan is doubtful though)