We got back today from our Christmas holiday up north in the Peak District. Carol and I caught the train up last week Wednesday evening, met Haig at Derby station, and drove on through to the cottage, where we met up with Paul, Sam and Marina (and Tank) who had gotten there earlier that day.

The place we stayed at was called Throwley Cottage, which is near Ashbourne up in Derbyshire. We arrived in pretty heavy snow, which we had hoped for stay for the entire week, and actually have ourselves a white Christmas. On the Thursday, Christmas Eve, we took a walk around the farm and couldn't help but take the inflatable mattress out into the snow for some air-mattress-sledding, which proved to be lots of fun.

Christmas day was great - plenty of food, plenty of drinks and good company. Even though there wasn't a fresh fall of snow on Christmas, the entire farm was still covered in the previous day's snow, which made for my/our first white Christmas! We started off with our secret Santa gift opening, a good fry up for breakfast, then an amazing roast lamb with a ridiculous amount of roast vegetables for dinner. A good festive dinner!

The rest of the holiday was spent relaxing, eating, drinking and in general, just doing nothing. And lots of that too. On Sunday we decided to take a drive over to the town of Buxton and visit Poole's Cavern, which is a 2 million year old, natural limestone cave south of Buxton. The name derives from an outlaw, Poole, who used the cave as a lair and a base to rob travellers in the fifteenth century.

After a good relaxed away, it's back to the real world again. But really had a good Christmas, not quite the outdoor, hot Christmas I've been used to for so many years, but a white Christmas is definitely one for the record books. On another note, Keithy arrives this evening for a few days, and new years, in London town.