Wordless Wednesday - Fun in the Park

Another Stourhead Visit

We went back to Stourhead yesterday. For anyone who doesn’t know, this is a magnificent UK National Trust estate with a grand house and a beautiful landscaped garden surrounding a large lake. While the house is closed for the winter, the gardens are open all year round.

It’s about an hour’s drive from our new house, but my son and his girlfriend still live in the locality and we went to see them and ended up there. We didn’t actually go in because we didn’t have a lot of time, certainly not enough to justify the £7.40 each they would have to pay as non-members. Hubby and I have membership cards that entitle us to free entry. We used them there a lot when we lived close by.

You can still get a good view of Stourhead garden from the road at the bottom of the hill from the car park, and we got plenty of exercise trekking back up again. Then we popped into the restaurant for coffee and a snack, so they did get some of our cash. We also visited the farm shop for some of their delicious steak, cheese and c ream so all in all, they did quite well out of us. And we had a great evening meal when we got home again.

Anyway, I thought it was time to post some more Stourhead photos.

Dona Nobis Pacem

I'm posting out of my normal schedule this week, on Thursday instead of Friday. It's just because I just had to join in this BlogBlast for Peace day.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could achieve peace in our time? And then we could spend all the money that goes into war on feeding the hungry and giving everyone a place to call home and keep warm and safe.

A Great Little Widget

I love this little widget. Move your cursor around the cat and see what it does.

You can get yours here, just like I did from The Way It Is. Many thanks to that blogger.

October Top Droppers

Once again it's time to thank my top droppers - this time for October. How those months do fly. And just as it's great to see familiar blogs on the list, it's also very nice to find I have some new followers. I'm just so grateful to all of my viewers and I hope you can reward them with clicks. They are all fantastic and unique and well worth reading.

Dropper	# of drops
The Way I See It	31
Laane on the World	31
The Cooling Stream	30
Rambling Thoughts in SMK Serian	30
AsTheCrackerheadCrumbles	30
Shalampax Speaks	30
Fact of the Day	29
Duck and Wheel With String	28
Luvem Or Leavem Relationships	28
Greetje greets You	28

Lots of EC droppers return visits. This is always how I start my own dropping. But sometimes I can't complete my drops every day and don't get a return drop from some people. If I don't manage to catch up with all the ones I've missed, they could be missed for ever.

But one of the great things about blog hopping with EC is that every so often I notice a card that is familiar. Then I find myself wondering how I could have forgotten to visit that super blog, and can easily put things right with a click.

Every so often I check through my favourites list as well, but I haven't been punctilious about keeping that up to date. If I did, it would probably take me far too long to check through anyway, since I'm finding new EC bloggers most days.

Also, I've never managed to get beyond 100 drops a day, usually it's more like 60 - just a few more than I receive - because I do like to read the new posts and make the occasional comment.

How do you keep up with your favourite blogs?

Children's Books That Stand the Test of Time

I've been writing about writing for children, and had to think of some memorable children's authors. Of course I came up with all the popular ones from my own childhood, like Enid Blyton, who is not considered politically correct nowadays.

But I also thought of the writers of some children's books that are still popular today and were written a century or so ago. Did you know that CS Lewis's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first published in 1865?

And Beatrix Potter self published The Story of Peter Rabbit in 1901. After it was then picked up by a publisher it became the first of a series that has been reprinted over and over again, complete with her wonderful illustrations.

I imagine J K Rowling's Harry Potter series is going to stand the test of time too.

What a wonderful legacy these authors leave to the world.

Stop Press - Three Day Super Sale of Hotel Room Nights

This is not a sponsored post, although it would have been if I had managed to meet the SocialSpark deadline. So I just missed out on $20 by about 5 minutes. Such is life. I also just found that the link I copied didn't work, so I've redone that. Hopefully someone will find this useful.

I once lived in Singapore for a couple of years, and I’d really love to revisit that part of the world.

Now I discover there is a Super Sale of hotel rooms in the Asia Pacific region. The Accor Hospitality 3 Day Super Sale, offering huge reductions in room prices for bookings taken in their hotels began yesterday (Oct 27th) and runs until until Thursday (Oct 29th). If you’re thinking of going to the area between 9th December and 10th April next year, it’s worth pulling out the stops to get your hotel rooms booked now. Over one million room nights will be on sale, with rates starting as low as US$30 per night.

Accor’s superior hotel groups taking part are Sofitel, Pullman, Grand Mercure, Novotel, Mercure, All Seasons and Ibis hotels. I can just imagine myself in the luxury of the hotel pictured here. I’d love to be able to take advantage of this offer and only hope it will be repeated in future years so that I might be able to do so.

Apparently this coincides with record-low air fares across the Asia Pacific region, so if I could manage to book now I’d get all-round bargain rates.

And now that I am changing this post I can refer you to Jenaisle's post about a place worth visiting in the Philippines. If I was touring the Asia Pacific, I would definitely visit those islands, and that particular location if it was at all possible.