UPDATE.

Well my 70th birthday is now almost a distant memory.....short term memory loss  being a symptom of advancing age I am told...except I can't recall who said that !!!!!!!

I had a great day anyway. We went to Llandudno on the north coast of Wales for the day. About the closest seaside to us and a round trip of 190 miles...that's the cost of living in the middle of the UK !!!!  That said my car delivered another amazing result of 51 mpg on "A" roads at an average speed of 50 mph.

We parked on the sea front to the right of the photo and walked all the way down to the pier which can be seen as a pale line at the foot of the hill which is called The Great Orme. Walked to the end of the pier, watched some fishermen for a while then back and on into town which is on the left of the photo. As can be seen, the day was perfect, blue sky, flat sea, warm and sunny which for this time of year was unusual. 

Although not quite as dramatic as Johnathon Freitag's adventures with moose, we too had a wildlife encounter. We bought ice creams in a parlour, I finished mine inside but my wife was still eating hers when we left the shop. Just outside a seagull landed on her head and tried to seize the ice cream cone from her hand. She screamed and I turned in time to see it launch back into the air. Fortunately neither my wife or the ice cream were injured in any way. My wife was more stunned by the sheer weight of the gull on her head than anything else. That it should try to grab the cone was no surprise as that sort of thing happens all the time but to land on her head was a bit extreme but has provided an interesting dinner conversation anecdote !!!!  On the way home we stopped at a favourite local gastro pub for dinner.

As it was a special birthday the "celebrations" continued on Friday. We drove to our local National Trust property for a walk around the 1,000 acre estate. We first visited the estate on my birthday in 1998 so it seemed appropriate to go on Friday. In those early days the estate attracted 20,000 visitors a year, now it has over 400,000 a year. We now tend to visit only in autumn and winter when it is not quite so busy.

This is the house, Attingham, built around 1760. The park has a large deer herd and the rut is on at present. The often means bucks are holed up in the woods but none were seen on this trip. In fact all we saw was a large group grazing far away in the distance.

Another view of the house from the deer park on the way to the woods. Although we have some fine autumn colours in our local trees the park trees are still mostly green however the leaves are falling and carpeted the path in the woods as seen below.

As we neared the river bridge a squirrel ran across the path in front of us, another wildlife encounter !!!!!

Again we had lunch in a nearby pub before heading home. Today we met friends for an "eat all you can" breakfast at a pub outside Dudley where we all used to work together. An early start but a great way to spend the morning.  Tomorrow, Sunday, we are having lunch with my daughter at yet another local pub which will be four days on the trot eating out, almost a record !!!!!  No doubt the bathroom scales will have something to say about that when next visited.

Overall a good and extended birthday which kind of makes up for being so old......well maybe not !!!!!!