Carolyn

A Christmas tradition. Happy 1st December everyone ❤️🎄🎈

Getting into the festive spirit the only way I know how: by resharing this iconic photo of Lenny 🐶🎄❤️

(ad) Impressions from one perfect morning with the @landmarktrust. Excerpt from The Cowside Diaries ... Saturday 23rd November 2024 ... Wake up in a snowy fairytale. Cowside farmstead now looks like Kate Winslet’s cottage in ‘The Holiday’. Take Lenny outside for a frolic in the snow. He bounds about like a daft puppy. Breakfast by the fire is dippy eggs and soldiers and plentiful pots of hot tea. Have an hour with my book by the window, just the loveliest views. The Yorkshire Dales feel even more magical blanketed by snow. Perhaps the road out of the farmstead will be impassible and we can live here forever ... 🤍❄️

(Ad) Sketches from snowbound days in the Yorkshire Dales with the @landmarktrust. The Landmark Trust is the most wonderful charity. It rescues and restores historic buildings, then lets them out for holidays. Income from holiday lettings goes back into the charity to maintain these buildings. Buildings like this beauty, Cowside, a 17th-century farmstead tucked away in the remote Langstrothdale. There’s no wifi, no phone signal, no proper roads. You wheelbarrow your luggage up the steep hill to the farmhouse and feel you’ve gone back in time a good few hundred years. Snow fell overnight and transformed Cowside into the cottage from The Holiday movie. It’s full of gorgeous old furniture and original features. Rooms are lamp-lit, candle-lit, lit orange by the glow of the woodfires. We holed up in the cosy kitchen, the fire ripping, the whisky flowing, the games of Scrabble increasingly competitive (points for anybody who spots the typo in photo six 😅). The house’s logbook is the loveliest thing, the funniest thing. A previous visitor wrote how, hundreds of years earlier, their ancestors had lived in this house. Others kept holiday journals, drew beautiful drawings, or went off on wild flights of fancy. One lady claimed to have gone out after dark, chanting and dancing and flying with nymphs, so decided to stay here forever. Who could blame her? They really get your imagination going, these buildings rescued and restored by the Landmark trust. You feel their living history, that you are part of a long line of people, stretching back hundreds of years, who’ve sat by this fire, who’ve played games round this table, safe, and warm, and happy to be watching the snow falling prettily outside. I could’ve stayed there forever myself ❤️

We’ve had a bit of snow here over the past few days and I couldn’t resist sharing my favourite wintry Magic Window. So here’s the Magic Window magicking up a pretty snowy scene 🤍❄️🌨️ *edited with my Cosy Winter Lightroom preset Beautiful rechargeable lamp by @pookylights 💡🤍

Coffee date with Lendog ☕️🐶

Sketches of autumn 🤎🍂 (All images edited with my Cosy Winter or The Slow Traveler preset) ‌ 1. Cragside looking spooky and spellbinding, like something from a Daphne du Maurier story. ‌ 2. The dreamiest autumnal view, from my Magic Window series. ‌ 3. The beautiful old stone boathouse on Crummock Water's east shore. ‌ 4. My favourite jetty with my favourite view of Bolam Lake. ‌ 5. Moods and textures from home. St Mary’s lighthouse and nearby coastline. ‌ 6. Autumn’s golds and golden browns and brownish reds at Brinkburn Priory. ‌ 7. The road out of Brinkburn follows the River Coquet, which was running hight and fast, the loveliest sound. ‌ 8. A place I return to again and again, the blissful @middletonlodge. ‌ 9. A study in reflection, courtesy of my Magic Window. ‌ 10. A hot bath, a bottle of wine, and the most beautiful surroundings, at Middleton Lodge. ‌ 11. Autumn’s my favourite season, for the colours, and the atmospheres, as seen from this Magic Window. ‌ 12. The autumn trees and falling leaves put the prettiest frame round the road to Brinkburn Priory. ‌ 13. I’ve visited Cragside tons of times. It never looked lovelier than on this misty autumn afternoon. ‌ 14. Who can tell me the name of this flower? ‌ 15. Blatten, Switzerland. The stunning view from the window of my cosy room in the mountainside hotel. ‌ 16. Crummock Water, little waves with white caps tumble onto the shingle beach, and Lenny's off for a dip. ‌ 17. The road at the foot of Grasmoor, a mean-looking mountain, stern-faced, but beautiful. ‌ 18. Northumberland, inquisitive calfs lurking in the mist, like ghosts of themselves.

A love letter to my favourite local bookshop, @keelrowbooks 🤎📚 Images edited with my Cosy Winter and The Slow Traveler Lightroom presets 📷❤️

Favourites from an autumnal tootle round Northumberland 🤎🍂 At Brinkburn Priory it was the perfect time to see trees dressed in their best autumn colours. The grounds and gardens at Cragside looked spooky and spellbinding, like something from a Daphne du Maurier story. All the way round Bolam Lake we walked on a plush carpet of crispy leaves, while the swans strutted and fluttered, showing off their freshly preened feathers. We drove through deepest, moodiest Northumberland, and stopped say hello to an inquisitive calf lurking in the mist, like a ghost of itself 🐄

How warm and welcoming does this coffee shop look in winter light? It was a little day out with Lenny in Durham. We walked along the River Wear and through The Great High Woods and down onto the riverbank to look up at the walls and towers of Durham cathedral and castle. Then we wandered round town and stopped for a flat white outside @flatwhitedurham, where Lenny lapped up the attention of passersby, and posed for a polaroid with tourists 🖤

Our local lighthouse has been fixed up and given a good lick of paint. I took Lenny to see. He was only interested in looking hunky for the camera. Stand anywhere on our little stretch of coastline and you can see St Mary’s Island. At low tide you cross by causeway. There are keeper’s cottages. There are seals lazying about. And the lighthouse itself always fills me with a feeling of homeliness, of contentedness, especially when I’ve got my hunky, camera-loving bestie sitting beside me 🤎🌊🐶

Shades of autumn on a mini road trip round the bonniest of English countryside 🍂🚗🤎 1. The golds and golden browns and brownish reds of autumn, on the road to Brinkburn Priory and Manor House. 2. The autumnal trees and falling leaves put the prettiest frame round this thousand-year-old priory. 3. The road out of Brinkburn Priory follows a bend of the River Coquet which was running high and fast, the loveliest sound. 4. This gorgeous and very curious little white calf emerged from the mist on the road, way up in deepest, moodiest Northumberland. 5. My favourite jetty with my favourite view of Bolam Lake, where the swans were doing their swan dives, and the ducks were fussing and squabbling. 6. Lenny appears to take a leisurely stroll on the jetty. Really, he itches to get free and belly flop into the water. 7. The chief swan at Bolam lake, preening, strutting, and flourishing her tail. 8. The best road-trip weather: atmospheric, a little melancholy, and somehow all the lovelier for it. 9. At Brinkburn Priory a young couple had come to see about getting married.