Still in the virus phase, walking old haunts

Well, unsurprisingly we've now been restricted to having a maximum of 6 people from 2 households in our houses. Just to make it different from England, where children do count in this calculation, children aren't included in this 6 here. Wouldn't do to have all Britain the same, would it? Too simple. Wales and Northern Ireland are also slightly different, I think. (Edited to add: as Relatively Retiring pointed out, I got this wrong the first time, claiming that children do count here but don't in England. I rest my confused case.)

We went out for lunch today with the Edinburgh family to celebrate Daughter 1's birthday and afterwards took a walk up the River Esk. We passed the house where Mr L spent his teenage years. There's his father at the back window. Mr L and his parents lived in the lower part of the house, which was absolutely beautiful, and huge (and also cold in winter - no central heating). His father worked for the Coal Board and the Coal Board owned the house. 

Here are his mother (the little one standing on the step) and his Great-Aunt Chris (standing on the ground). Auntie Chris - Mr L's father's aunt - was very tall for a woman of her generation, as were her sisters. Tall genes, which I married into because my ancestors were all on the short side. (There were other reasons, too, why I went for him.) Look at the immaculate garden.

However, as we knew, the house was bought by a developer a few years ago and this is what's there now. The front garden has been built over. Only the gateposts and parts of the garden walls (but not the fence) remain. It's very sad and also very, very disorientating. 

This is where the back garden was. 

At least the river looks much the same. 

 

And we had a nice walk, just where we used to walk 50+ years ago holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes. 

Beautiful - but pernicious - Himalayan balsam. It grows by rivers, and the seeds float down and spread on to the banks downstream. There's a lot of it here. 

And the lovely reflections in the river in the middle of this photo are of Japanese knotweed, another awful pest which was imported, planted in gardens and has now spread widely. 

Still, these willows are lovely. We walked three and a half miles. Let's assume that this cancelled out our lunch intake. 

Daughter 2 and her husband put Littlest Granddaughter in her big girl's bed tonight for the first time. As you can see, she found this very exciting. She got to sleep eventually. 

I've posted this using the new, easy, whizzy, non-blurry system of Google photo-using worked out yesterday by SIL 1. He's a treasure, that lad.