Friday's Fave Five - 15/8/25

Susanne reminds us each week to look back on our week and find the blessings and the things we're grateful for.  We join up here to share them.

1)  I'm thankful that whilst I am close enough to my daughter and her family to be able to help out with their children, our two sons also have good in-laws who do the same for them.  This week our eldest son and DIL celebrated their wedding anniversary and his in-laws took their two boys out for what looked like a fun day.

2)  Talking of helping my daughter out my DIL has her hands full during the summer holidays.  Grandchildren Nathan and Ella have a bit of a love/hate relationship at times so it's good to be able to take one of them for an hour or so to give her a break, which we did today - having Nathan here all day.  Particularly needed now because:

he has fractured a bone in his foot.  As you can imagine he is not happy about having to wear the boot!

3)  We had a short break away this week - staying in Marlow which is on the river Thames.

Our room - we were upgraded!

The bath was lovely - but we didn't use it

There was a very adequate shower in the bathroom!

Boats going through Marlow lock.

This is the Compleat Angler - just across the river from where we stayed and where we ate on our second night.

The bridge across the Thames

Marlow Church

The War Memorial - just in front of our hotel.

We stayed at The George & Dragon which is a Heartswood Inn which is the same chain as the Royal Forest near us which we've been to a few times.  The menu was quite similar but I'd say the food was slightly better nearer home.  The service was excellent though and the room was very comfortable with air conditioning.

4)  We were really glad of the air conditioning as it has been very hot this week so we didn't do as much sight seeing as we would have liked, it was just too hot.  Although of course we did browse the charity shops along the high street and I couldn't resist these:

The Crossword jigsaw is brand new - it will be a challenge though - it's double sided and both crosswords can actually be completed! (well hopefully lol)

I managed to load all my TBR books onto Goodreads today so that I won't end up buying books I've already got waiting to be read.  I used the scanning feature which made it quite quick.

5)  On our way home on Wednesday we visited Cliveden House, a National Trust property.  The House is actually leased out to a hotel group so tours are limited but the grounds and woodlands are lovely.  We took a long walk through the woods and down to the river (Thames) and then up to the House and gardens.  We stopped for refreshments in the cafe and then intended taking the easier route back to our car.  Somehow we got lost and ended up back down by the river.  Which necessitated another climb back up - it's a steep incline with lots of steps.  Thankfully my knees held out!

The views were lovely and it was reasonably shady through the woodland areas.

It was a lovely break and thankfully we made it home without being impacted by this:

Picture taken from the BBC website.

This was the scene on the M25 yesterday afternoon - a lorry caught fire and it was full of tyres, hence the black smoke.  Fortunately no one was hurt but the motorway was shut for 17 hours - resurfacing was required.  The M25 is London's orbital motorway and it's always very busy and closures like this cause chaos.  Fortunately we were able to leave it a junction earlier than planned and made an alternative route home without any problems.

Have a good weekend all.