Winter is Coming...
Posted: 01/03/18 (17:36pm)"Winter is coming" may well be the family motto of the fictional House Stark but up here in the Scottish Borders it's a chilly fact. To be more accurate, winter is here! In spades! And the spades are out, so are the snow ploughs. Not that it's doing much good because the snow is relentless. We have drifts of over 100cm and even in sheltered areas the snow lies over 30cm deep and it keeps on coming.
To be honest though, I am rather enjoying it. For starters, Sue is home (the village is pretty much cut off so no one is going anywhere) so I have company and we have been for a couple of great walks. Yesterday we walked in the woods and today we walked down to the River Tweed. I was amazed that such a fast flowing and wide river was almost frozen over. Just the middle was still flowing and that was full of mini ice bergs.
The woods look beautiful (they always do) in their white covering.
Thankfully I spent last weekend buying new stock and after over 1000 miles on the road, got home on Sunday night before the snow.
I started my road trip by hiring a van (I knew I was going to need it) on Friday morning then headed south to a village near York for the first of my stops. On Friday afternoon I headed west to Halifax for my next appointment before continuing south. I stopped for the night in Cambridgeshire then continued early Saturday to Kings Lynn in Norfolk. On Sunday I drove to Northamptonshire where I bought two cannons - hence the need for a van and then back up the A1 to Scotland.
It was a long weekend but fun and hopefully profitable. Sue came too - which was a bonus. Usually I have to do my stock buying road trips alone as most of the time they occur mid week while she is working.
I have just listed a few of the items I bought over the weekend. The Honourable East India Company Sapper's and Miner's bayonet was a really special find. They are incredibly rare. As can be seen from the photos in the listing, this one is in great condition too.
It will take me a while to get round to cleaning up the cannons as they had been stored in a barn for many years and need some TLC. I will probably have to get the barrels media blasted and re-painted as one in particular is quite rusty. They are not quite a matched pair although they are a similar size and both have naval trucks. I will wait until their restoration is complete before putting up any photos - I want you to see them at their best.
