Suffolk

A Postcard from July 2026

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Southwold Beach Huts

Blimey just looking back at my photos reminds me of just how busy July was in my world. I had 3 trips – not my normal kind of month at all! We made our annual trip to Norfolk and Suffolk to visit family, I headed off down South to Carry on Crafting AND our family went to London at the end of the month to celebrate the graduation of Eldest from university.

Trip to East Anglia

Sunset on the River Yare, Norfolk

At the start of the month, we made our annual pilgrimage down to Norfolk and Suffolk to visit family. We were blessed with lovely weather and were able to get out and about to enjoy it.

We had a lovely evening walk along the side of the River Yare in Gorleston (the opposite side of the river from Great Yarmouth). We stopped for an evening drink outside the Pier Hotel – which for film fans was the location for the ending of the Danny Boyle film Yesterday. 

Image shows view from Southwold pier

We also made our regular visit to Southwold. We have so many happy family holiday memories of this place – when we lived in Gibraltar, we would often stay in Southwold and use it as our base for a week while we visited family nearby. It’s such a lovely spot, although it does get busy on a sunny summer’s day, but if you are lucky enough to stay there overnight, you find that once the crowds of day trippers leave around teatime, you feel like you have the place to yourself.

There are so many Instagramable corners and alleyways, the little fishermen’s cottages are so well looked after and painted lovely colours, there is often an abundance of hollyhocks growing in the tiny front gardens adding to the pastel-coloured palette of the place. I do so love it there!

You can’t go to Southwold and not get a portion of chips to sit on a bench and eat – we did that – I also managed a bit of seaside crochet too for old time’s sake.

Seaside chips
Seaside crochet

Carry on Crafting

Well, what can I say about Carry on Crafting – it was epic!

I don’t really know what I expected, but it was brilliant in every way – Justine managed to arrange beautifully dry, sunny weather for us and even arranged for England to win in their World Cup match while we were there! (Sadly it didn’t last).

Carry on Crafting 2026
With Eleonora from Coastal Crochet

It was a truly lovely weekend. I arrived on Friday and met up with my glamping buddy for the weekend, Nicky from A Heart Shaped Cherry. Nicky was there as a stall holder and she had a space in her bell-tent for one more (me!). It was a long old trip down there by train from Manchester to London, across London with heavy bags and camping chair on the Underground, then an overland train to Haywards Heath and a bus to the show ground – but my word it was worth it!

On the Friday I helped Nicky pitch her gazebo and get ready for the visitors coming the following morning. We had some dinner, a nighttime herbal tea and then collapsed onto our camp beds!

Nicky on her Heart Shaped Cherry stall
With Kitey aka The Yarn Whisperer

Morning brought with it more sunshine and lots of opportunities to wander, potter, chat to people, meet new friends, see old friends and generally have fun. I joined a wired crochet workship with Kitey from The Yarn Whisperer. It was such a treat to get to meet him IRL after being a customer for quite a few years AND speaking to him for the Making Stitches Podcast back in 2022**. The workshop was very addictive – we were creating feathers or petals by crocheting around wire using Kitey’s hand dyed yarn specially created for the weekend – called Carry on Crafting 2026. 

It was so lovely to chat with Kerry Lord from Toft in person too after speaking to her for the podcast a few years back. I was able to see quite a bit of Eleonora from Coastal Crochet too on her own home turf! We have met in person a couple of times before up north at Yarndale, but this was the first time at her local festival.

Lovely to meet Carol from @nanaseamakes
Thank you Justine!

Can we just have a moment of appreciation for Justine and her amazing team of volunteers who bring the festival to life. It’s no mean feat. It’s a huge undertaking. You are talking about campers, toilet/shower facilities, food, traders, craft and vintage vendors, craft workshops, publicity, electricity, football and movie screenings and that’s probably not even half of the things that need to be looked after to put on an event of this kind.

Thank you Justine for the most amazing weekend. I loved every minute of it. I’m just sorry I had to leave on Sunday morning in order to get back in time for Sunday dinner time and getting everything ready for school and work again for the following week. 

Footnote: Thank you also to my brilliant little brother and his lovely wife who were ‘present’ in the house while I was away and for the amazing job they did dismantling my back garden decking!

If you would like to get a flavour of what happened at Carry on Crafting this year, you can listen to the latest episode of Making Stitches Podcast – I took my microphone with me and recorded my favourite episode of this year so far. You can listen to it on all good podcast apps and on YouTube too, or here.

Graduation Trip to London

Celebratory mini me for Eldest


We hit a milestone in our family towards the end of July when Eldest graduated from University. I can’t put into words how proud I am of him for what he has achieved. He’s a clever lad but he worked so very hard to get the grades he got.

We had a family trip en masse down to London to celebrate with him. Only two of us were able to be with him when he got his degree conferred on him, but the rest of the gang were able to watch on a livestream while it happened. We then all got together to spend the rest of the day with each other, and he got the chance to give Grandma and Grandad a tour of the campus.

Such a brilliant day. Here’s to the future for all the fabulous young people who have been celebrating their graduations this summer – the future is bright for us all.

Podcast News

As well as sharing the episode on Carry on Crafting in July, I also shared a fun episode with a film maker who explored the journey of yarn from sheep to finished products.

I published a chat I had with a film maker called Paul Wyatt, who made a film called Sheep, Actually exploring the story of wool. Paul visits city farms in London to see where sheep live with the capital city, he also speaks to crafts people (including Kitey from The Yarn Whisperer) who use wool in their crafts from yarn dying in Kitey’s case, weaving, knitting and other crafts and the project to collect the fleeces from all of London’s city farms, wash and process it and turn it into wool. It’s a lovely film, and one you can apply to screen at your own local venue. You can listen to Sheep, Actually here.

Summer Craft Challenge

My 10th annual Summer Craft Challenge is well underway and it’s brought me a lot of pleasure already. You know what it’s like when you get stuck in a rut with things? I was seriously getting worried about losing my crojo in the recent weeks and months. I had to consciously decide to pick up my hook and wasn’t always too happy with the results.

Despite that, the prospect of doing something creative every day during my sons’ school summer holidays as has become a tradition for me, filled me with such joy thinking about what interesting places I would be able to take my projects with me to, and encouraging me to dig to the bottom of my wip pile and get busy finishing some things off at last.

As in previous years, I have been joined by a merry band of creative folk who have joined in and shared photos of what they’re working on as part of their own Summer Craft Challenge. So far we have had knitting, crochet, cross stitch embroidery, weaving and flower arranging  photos shared, I wonder what else we’ll see before the summer is out?

If you fancy joining in too, please do – just take a photo of what you are working on in your moment(s) of creativing and share it on Instagram with the hashtag #SummerCraftChallenge2026

And that just about brings this Postcard from July to a close. Thank you for stopping by and for reading my ramblings! It’s been lovely to have your company.

Until next time, take care!

Lindsay x

Farewell old friend….

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The Rock of Gibraltar painted by me at one of my watercolour lessons

Way back in the summer of 2015, I set off on a blogging adventure. Inspired by the likes of Lucy at Attic24 and several other craft bloggers, I decided that I would have a go at sharing a few snap shots of my life on the Rock. At the time, I had a the unique selling point that I was based in Gibraltar, and at that time, there were no other craft bloggers active on the Rock. I thought that even if no one was interested in what I was making, at least I could share beautiful photos of my sunny surroundings way down in the south of Europe.

The Upper Rock Nature Reserve

I felt compelled to share some of the quirks and beauty of where I was living at the time – a much misunderstood place from the outside. There is so much more to Gibraltar than the day trips from cruise ships and bus tours from along the Costa would have you believe. There’s much more than red phone boxes and fish & chips, British bobbies and Marks and Spencer in the sun. It’s home to a diverse group of people with origins from far and wide, the fortunate byproduct of it’s geographical location at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsular and just a short distance across the Strait of Gibraltar from Morocco and the African continent beyond.

The Europa Point lighthouse with the Strait of Gibraltar beyond

Soon I began sharing a series of blog posts called ‘A stroll around Gibraltar’ as I took my camera and later my phone along on walks around the narrow streets and back alleys of Upper Town and into the Nature Reserve of the Upper Rock – in fact my post about the ‘facts and figures of the Med Steps’ remains my most read post to date. I posted more than 200 Sunday Sevens posts and hosted a Friday Photo Challenge on Instagram one year as well.

The view northwards from part way up the Med Steps

I also used Postcard from Gibraltar to share what I was making, from the dressmaking and watercolour classes which I was able to attend once all three Little Postcards (my three sons) were old enough to all go to school, as well as a number of community crochet projects I joined in with from Yarndale worldwide appeals for crocheted bunting and mandalas to Eleonora from Coastal Crochet‘s Seaside Stashbusting blanket and Changing Tides blanket crochet-alongs.

My Seaside Stashbusting blanket inspired by Sandy Bay in Gibraltar

As our family went on trips around the place I would blog about our travels in my ‘A Postcard from…’ posts which included Rome, The Algarve, Carcassonne, and skiing in the Dolomites, as well as UK destinations like Manchester, Cheshire, and Suffolk.

A few photos from one of our holidays in Suffolk as I worked on an Eleonora Tully design from Little Box of Crochet for that year’s Summer Craft Challenge

Postcard from Gibraltar also opened doors for me and I began writing for an online parenting magazine in Gibraltar which now no longer exists sadly, I also got articles published in print for the Calentita! Gibraltarian food festival magazine. In short, Postcard from Gibraltar gave me the confidence to venture back out of my domestic set-up after many years being a stay-at-home Mum.

My Attic24 cosy stripe blanket at Europa Point

In 2020, along with everything else which was happening in the world, close to home for us, change was afoot. We found ourselves moving back to the UK after 11 very happy years in Gibraltar. It was a big adjustment, which wasn’t made any easier by the pandemic, but we survived! At the time, I wondered whether I should continue with Postcard from Gibraltar as it would no longer be ‘from Gibraltar’. I had begun my new podcast project ‘Making Stitches Podcast’ by then, and whilst it brought me very welcome creative distraction – especially during lockdown, I felt I would miss Postcard too much if I just finished it, so I kept it going in a slightly less regular, less sunny and blue skies kind of a way!

I may be in the north of England now but we do still get occasional blue skies!
(Photo taken at Dunham Massey this week)

More than 2 years on from our move though, I think the time is right to say goodbye to Postcard from Gibraltar. I won’t be saying goodbye to it completely though. This blog and all of the previous posts will still be available to read and if you should search for Postcard from Gibraltar online, it will still lead you here. Postcard from Gibraltar is evolving, just as I have, and from now on, will be known as Making Stitches.

It felt right to adapt what I’m already doing to compliment what I have been working on with Making Stitches Podcast. In the last two years, that has gone from strength to strength and is now in it’s 6th Series with more than 50 episodes featuring interviews with creative people from many different disciplines including crochet and knitting (including my old friend Eleonora Tully from Coastal Crochet), dressmaking, embroidery, textile art, weaving, yarn dying and more. In addition to this, I have made a foray into crochet design myself with the launch of my amigurumi crochet patterns. My life has changed quite a bit from what I was doing back in Gibraltar and it’s time this blog caught up with me.

Looking south towards the Rock – photo taken on Alcaidesa beach

I will still post my monthly Postcards (because I would miss writing them too much) although I can’t guarantee I’ll be any more prompt with posting them (!) and I’m pretty sure I will have another go at a Summer Craft Challenge again next year, so in a way nothing has changed, just the name.

View of Gibraltar from La Linea

Thank you to everyone who has read my posts, liked them or commented through the years and a special thank you to those of you who have become friends through this medium too. Your support, although virtual, has been very much appreciated over the years and it’s that which has kept me going. Who knows what lies ahead?

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Lindsay x

Postcard from Gibraltar Review of 2018

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Well here we are at the end of another year, it’s been a year of crafty and photo challenges, and on the whole a good one for the Postcard clan. It’s only now I’ve taken a look back at what we’ve done that I realised that we’ve packed a lot in! Here are some of my highlights from 2018…

January

I started the year off with a lovely walk up the Rock, those paperwhite narcissi were photographed on New Year’s Day. After enjoying participating in a photo challenge in 2017 under the stewardship of Sandra at Wild Daffodil, I decided to have a go at running one in 2018, so #postcardfromgibfridayphoto was born on Instagram and in Blogland. I also embarked on the Seaside Stash Busting Blanket CAL in January too. Little did I know what fun it would become.

February

February saw plenty more crochet and a fair bit of watercolour painting, along with the arrival of HMS Queen Elizabeth to Gibraltar. The huge Royal Naval aircraft carrier was quite a sight to behold.

March

March, very fortunately for us was a month for travel, first to attempt skiing for the very first time in the Italian Dolomites – it was amazing, and second to take the Little Postcards on an Easter trip to the South of England.

April

We began April on Easter Sunday on the Jurassic Coast in Devon, then headed to London for a few days before heading home. It was a fun trip.

May

May meant Med Steps 5 Challenge, Gibraltar’s Comic Con and some lovely spring weather.

June

June brought with it the Calentita! food festival and my very first printed article in the Calentita! magazine. We celebrated World Environment Day and I had a go at Yarnbombing the Alameda Gardens!

July

Summer holidays we the order of the day in July (along with my now traditional annual Summer Craft Challenge). We headed off to Suffolk to help celebrate a big birthday for a member of the Postcard family. We traveled by plane, old trains and kayak! Which reminds me, we went to a fabulous country fair at Worstead, I really should get a post written about that…

August

August was spent in Suffolk, Gibraltar and visiting my family in Manchester. We watched acrobats and magicians in Gib and followed the Bee trail around Manchester.

September

Back to Gibraltar in time for school starting and the end of the Gibraltar Fair. We had National Day celebrations and the MTV Presents Gibraltar Calling Music Festival.

October

At midterm in October we headed off for a short break in Portugal. We’re so lucky to be able to drive to so many lovely places from where we live. This was also the month that I finished my Sandy Bay blanket.

November

November began for us in Portugal and ended with the Christmas light switch on with the fabulous Gibraltar Literary Festival in between. It’s a truly wonderful festival which happens right on our doorstep.

December

December saw the end of the Friday photo challenge I curated as well as a rather pleasant pre Christmas trip up the Med Steps…

Thank you to everyone who has followed and read my posts this year, it’s been lovely to know that there’s someone out there actually reading them! I hope that 2018 has been a good year for you and that 2019 is too!

Sunday Sevens #147 28.7.18

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Oh it’s been difficult to choose what to put into Sunday Sevens this week! We’ve had a rather busy time of it on our holiday, although it’s been busy in a very good way. Here’s a photo from each of the last seven days, there will be more posts to come though in the coming weeks with more pictures….

Hollyhocks galore

The flower of the moment in this part of the world (Suffolk/Norfolk) seems to be the hollyhock. They are everywhere and are truly beautiful – the epitome of an English country garden.

A woodland walk

Monday was a special day for one member of the Postcard family, celebrating a milestone birthday of 70 years. We went out as a big family group to visit Fairhaven water gardens on the Norfolk Broads before a big family dinner. It was such a beautiful, green, heavenly place and as the sun was rather hot, the dappled shade offered by all the trees was very welcome.

Aldeburgh

We took a drive along the Suffolk Coast on Tuesday, visiting Orford and Aldeburgh (above). The coastline is so beautiful here.

Messing about in canoes

Wednesday saw us repeating something we did on a visit six years ago. Back then, Littlest was too small to join in, so I stayed on dry land with him. This time, we all went canoeing on the Broads. My only previous experience was on a canal in Cheshire when I was a Venture Scout, that didn’t go too well (think hitting the canal bank with such force the sharp front end got embedded in the mud).

This time, though, it was wonderful – so peaceful and slow. There were literally hundred of beautiful dragonflies buzzing about, and I even got pecked by a swan!

A lovely day for a train ride

Thursday saw us heading north to the north Norfolk coastal town of Sheringham. Central to the town is the beautifully restored train station and the start of the North Norfolk Railway (also known as the Poppy Line). We had hoped for a trip on a steam train, but the sustained dry and hot weather made the steam engines a fire risk, and we had to make do with a Diesel engine. It was still a nice trip though…

Summer Storm

Whilst visiting Aldeburgh earlier this week, we were told that this part of the world hasn’t had any rain at all since May 4th. On Thursday night, that changed. A thunderstorm came in off the sea, and before the rain came, I went for a walk onto Southwold Common to watch the lightning. Seconds before this photo was taken, the sky was pretty dark. The sheet lightning lit up all the clouds with a pinky glow.

Wrestling at a summer fete!

Yesterday, we visited not one, but two summer fairs. The first one, in Worstead, will get a bigger mention in a future post, the second one, was at Gorleston in Norfolk. The Gorleston Clifftop Gala is an annual event, with fair rides, stalls by community groups (backwoodsmanship & a local rugby team’s stalls were enjoyed by the Little Postcards) and live music. We attended specifically to see a member of the family perform on stage with his band. Our attention was drawn to something I’ve never seen before in real life…. wrestling! It was quite a sight!

So that’s this week’s Sunday Sevens, I hope you have had a great week.

I’m linking with Natalie from Threads and Bobbins for this weekly blog series.

2018 Friday photo challenge (week 30) Seaside

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Hmmm Seaside… looks like I planned this week’s Friday photo rather well… this week we’ve been to Aldeburgh’s pebble beach.

Sunny Southwold:

And sandy Sheringham beach…

The home of naughty seagulls who try to steal your chips! The postcard which came with my latest crochet project from Little Box of Crochet is very appropriate:

Review of 2017

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Crumbs, it’s looking awfully like we are on the cusp of another New Year, it surely can’t be a whole year since the last one, it’s gone far too fast. I guess now’s as good a time as any to have a look back at some of my Postcard from Gibraltar highlights from the past 12 months….

January 2017

A new year meant a new challenge for me this year, a photo challenge. Last year I read Nana Cathy’s blog and was intrigued by her weekly photo challenge. When January came around I thought I’d join in myself. It’s been such fun and quite inspiring throughout the year to have weekly prompts to find pictures for. If you fancy joining in check out Wild Daffodil’s blog for more information.

Also in January I joined forces with my friend Kate of H and FlossieDoodle to start the Gibraltar Crochet Collective. We did meet weekly to crochet and chat over coffee although our meetings have got less and less frequent due to other commitments lately. Our mascots Gib and Rocksy went for a bit of an adventure.

Another new project for me this month was my podcast, you can find my blogposts and the related podcasts here.

February 2017

In February I ran my Creative Gibraltar series looking at some of the very talented craftspeople who live in Gibraltar. I began with my lovely watercolour teacher Deborah M Lawson and ended with local craftswoman and up-cycling guru Sue Orfila. February also brought us the 2017 installment of Gib Talks. I was also fortunate to be able to speak to Gib Talks organiser Julian Felice before the event for one of my podcasts.

March 2017

March was a month for Lenten crochet (far easier than giving up chocolate) which helped support the Sixty Million Trebles effort, a beautiful Suffolk family wedding and a sad goodbye to our rescue bunny Snowflake.

April 2017

April began for us in Southwold in Suffolk, one of our favourite places and involved a lot of Med Steps training, which was very handy for burning off those seaside fish and chips! I was also able to finish another Sixty Million Trebles blanket – this one from the Gibraltar Crochet Collective.

May 2017

May meant Med Steps 5 Challenge again this year and I even managed to beat my time from last year! You can hear my podcast about it here. We also flew back to the UK for our second family wedding of the year.

June 2017

June started for us in Wigan in Lancashire, the location of our latest wedding and the perfect setting for a lovely walk. It was also the Calentita! food festival in Gibraltar. (For some reason the same aerial photo of Gibraltar appeared in May and June’s collages – not sure why that was. It is a good photo though don’t you think?).

July 2017

In July our big summer of travel began with a trip up to the North West of England and a flying visit to North Wales. We also drove to Portugal.

August 2017

This has got to be my most cosmopolitan of all months, featuring travel in Portugal, Rome, France and of course good old Gibraltar. Which reminds me, I have loads of holiday photos on my phone and camera SD card which are crying out to become blog posts – watch this space in the New Year.

September 2017

September is a big month on the Rock, this year more than most as Gibraltarians celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum when they voted overwhelmingly to remain British. Gibraltar National Day on 10th September coincidentally happened to be the day of my 100th Sunday Sevens. We also had a fabulous music festival.

October 2017

October brought with it some interesting weather, beautiful sunshine, murky mists and exciting lightning storms.

November 2017

November was a good crochet month for me as I finally got around to making last year’s Little Box of Crochet autumn wreath. I also greatly enjoyed this year’s Gibraltar Literary Festival with talks by Nicholas Parsons, Patrick Gale and local photographers and naturalists Clive, Geraldine and Stewart Finlayson.

December 2017

December seems to have rushed by in a flurry of end of term carol concerts and panicked making of Christmas presents (some of which failed to get finished in time). There have been some opportunities for peace and quiet though, namely the last Saturday before Christmas when we avoided the shops and headed for the beach for peace and tranquility.

Summer craft challenge

For the second year running, during the long summer holiday we get in Gibraltar, I decided to set aside a little time each day to do something crafty and I documented this with my Summer Craft Challenge. Each day I featured a photo on Instagram and each week I wrote a blog post on my progress.

At the beginning of the challenge I made a little amigurumi unicorn which I got the kit for in an edition of Simply Crochet magazine. I christened her Europa and she became my Summer Craft Challenge mascot and came on our travels with us. There were several occasions when the Little Postcards thought Mummy had lost her marbles posing a crocheted unicorn in various European locations for photographs…

This year, I returned to work part-time after 13 years as a full-time, stay at home Mum. I have to admit that during the last few months I have found it hard to make time for Postcard from Gibraltar alongside my new commitments and at times I’ve wondered whether I can actually keep it up. I have had some really lovely comments and support from my online friends and that’s kept me going. Thank goodness I have Sunday Sevens and the weekly photo challenge to keep me ticking over during ‘dry’ spells.

I think I would really miss the community I have ‘met’ through Postcard from Gibraltar, and if I’m honest, it’s you and the support you’ve given me which gave me the confidence to apply for the job in the first place. Thank you very much to everyone who’s taken the time to read my posts over the past 2 and a half years, and for the virtual friendship you have given me too – it’s not taken for granted. Every comment and like is very much appreciated.

Here’s to 2018 and all the wonderful challenges it may bring!

Best wishes to you and yours for the New Year x

2017 Weekly photo challenge (week 26) wave

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Living in a tiny place which is surrounded on sides by sea makes this week’s photo challenge a cinch. That said though, my first photos feature a rather choppy North Sea taken at one of our favourite places; Southwold in Suffolk. 

Although most of my childhood holidays were spent on the west coast of the British Isles, the temperature and colour of the sea in Southwold are the same as what I was used to as a child. Rarely was it a pleasureable experience to go paddling in the sea, but you still do it when you’re a child!

Now for some waves a little closer to our current home…

Just look at that turquoise water!

Quick! Out of the way!!


Aah that’s better!

Catalan Bay Beach, Gibraltar

I’m linking with Nana Cathy and Wild Daffodil for this weekly photo challenge throughout 2017.

A Postcard from springtime Suffolk

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Two weeks ago, we all hopped on a plane, said goodbye to Gibraltar and headed off to England for a few days.

Our destination…. Suffolk. Southwold to be precise, but also Beccles too for the special day that was to be a Postcard family wedding. More on that later…

It’s eight months since we were last in Southwold. It’s a special place for us which we have visited many times over the years. Regular visitors to this blog may remember my posts from here last summer… A postcard from Southwold & A postcard from Southwold Pier

It was so nice to be back on the pier admiring the view into town and towards the beautifully painted beach huts.

There weren’t as many visitors in town as we’d experienced last August, but there were still some folk around doing the touristy things. Oh, and maybe eating a portion or two of fish & chips…

Southwold is such a pretty place.

There are cute little cottages around every corner.

Oh, and did I mention I have a thing about beach huts?! 

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside…

We went crazy and had a go at the two pence penny pushers in the pier amusement arcade.

We swerved the Punch & Judy show, although it did have a decent audience who persisted through the show while being blown by strong sea winds.

It may have been a bit grey at times, but that didn’t spoil our fun.

The roadside verges and people’s gardens were bursting forth with the most beautiful spring displays. Excuse me this indulgence please, I miss seeing spring flowers like this!

Oh the blossom!

And just look at this quaint architect’s office, complete with coordinating car!

I do like a colourfully painted front door…

One evening we set off across the fields behind the town and leaving the grand Victorian homes behind us, headed into the fenland towards the harbour.

Within a short walk we were by the river and tucking into a delicious pub meal. The gorse flowers glowed in the setting sunshine.


So, the reason for this jaunt to England during school termtime? We had a wedding to attend. 

Tucked away in the lush green countryside near Beccles is White Dove Barns. Surrounded by fields of crops and cattle and looking glorious was the venue for the nuptials.

The converted farm buildings were just so English and so, so picturesque.

As the registrar got everything ready for the ceremony I sneaked in to take a peak before the guests arrived.

And after the ceremony, this is the room where the reception took place.

The renovated old barn was so pretty, and the table settings, just gorgeous.

The beautiful flowers on the top table were stunning and so springlike. 

Even the wedding cake was covered in flowers. 

It was a really beautiful venue and the perfect backdrop for a very happy day.

With the happy couple successfully hitched, we had time for one more delicious breakfast at the Adnam’s brewery and another wander around Southwold before heading home.

There she is, our Rock. Thank you, Suffolk, it was lovely to see you again! Until next time…

2017 Photo challenge (Week 15) Lunch

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It’s a very tasty photo challenge this week…

Fish and chips always tastes better when you are at the seaside doesn’t it? We enjoyed one or two cheeky portions of fish and chips when we had our recent trip to Southwold. They were so nice, we may have  had to have some more again the next day! Shhh, don’t tell anyone!

Here’s a couple of Gibraltar related ‘lunch’ photos from the Postcard from Gibraltar archives…

…a couple of apes enjoying a healthy lunch provided for them in the Upper Rock Nature Reserve.

I’m linking with Nana Cathy and Wild Daffodil for this weekly photo challenge throughout 2017. 

Sunday Sevens #78 9.4.17

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Hello there and welcome to this week’s installment of Sunday Sevens. A week, when again, Gibraltar has been hitting the headlines. I’ve had a lot more views than normal (presumably because of the Brexit issue and as Gibraltar features in the name of this blog) so hello to any new people. 

If you have just joined us and are hoping for topical newsworthy Gibraltar chat, I’m afraid you may be disappointed. I won’t be offended if you head off elsewhere! 

Without further ado, here’s Sunday Sevens:

Heading home

Last week we were in Suffolk for a family wedding and so last Sunday morning we began our 9 and a half hour journey back home to the Rock. It was a lovely trip back to England for a very special reason, but traveling (especially with children) can be quite tiring. 

We were so relieved when Gibraltar came into view and the pilot had let us know that the weather was calm so we should have a simple and straight forward landing at Gibraltar. My last trip back to the U.K. ended with a diversion to Malaga airport due to strong winds so I was slightly nervous that we may be delayed again, thankfully not. 

A beautiful spring evening

Mr Postcard enjoyed an evening at the Rock Hotel on Monday and sent me this lovely photo. I did nothing worthy of mention so thanks to him for Monday’s picture looking out across the top of the Alameda Gardens and out to the Bay of Gibraltar.

Fiery sky

Tuesday evening brought us the most beautiful sunset. The sky went through every colour of the rainbow (except green!). I caught a glimpse of the colours as I was making school packed lunches for the next day. I quickly grabbed my phone and shot out the front door to enjoy the show.

Dressmaking progress

So far this term, I have managed to miss 3 and a half lessons of my dressmaking course due to sick children being off school and last week’s trip back to England. Needless to say I am very far behind where I should be. For that reason I attended two lessons this week and am pleased to say I have made quite a bit of progress. I am now all ready to begin setting in the sleeves on my dress when we resume lessons after the Easter break.

Watercolour classes

Similar to my dressmaking predicament I’ve missed a lot of watercolour classes too. I’m currently working on a painting of the Med Steps, but it isn’t quite going to plan. While I was doodling on some scrap paper, this little picture appeared. Not bad considering I was mucking about! Shame the picture I was working on isn’t as good!!

Talking of painting…


One of Gibraltar’s historic buildings has been undergoing a bit of a makeover this week and it’s caused a bit of a stir. A façade of the Inces Hall had been brightened up with some officially sanctioned street art. It’s part of an urban regeneration project by the Government but it has angered some who think it’s the wrong location for the artwork.

This time last week…


I have had such a busy week but very little of it was worth recording in a photo, so for my final photo in this week’s Sunday Sevens I’m breaking the rules and including a photo taken last Saturday evening as we walked across the marshes from Southwold town centre to the harbour for our dinner. It was so tranquil (if you focused on the bird song and ignored the sounds of bickering Little Postcards).

I hope this has been a good week for you, thanks so much for stopping by!

Sunday Sevens is a weekly blog series created by Natalie at Threads & Bobbins blog.