Welcome to the Visit Cleveleys blog!
For day-to-day
happenings and chit-chat about life at the seaside on the Fylde Coast...
Like many others who live here, we started coming to Cleveleys years ago as day-trippers - we parked on the prom, watched the waves and dreamed of a life by the sea.
Eventually we were lucky enough to be able to come and live at Cleveleys.
It's because we enjoy it so much that we created this website and blog, so we can share Cleveleys with you whether you are also lucky enough to live here, or like to visit!
What do you think?
To the blog, the website, to Cleveleys itself?
Share your thoughts on the Visit Cleveleys Facebook page
It's open to all users with posts every day - and it makes for interesting reading with photos, topical material and conversations from all over the place.
If you want to talk to us in person -
Just email to jane@visitCleveleys.co.uk, or ring 07932 143431
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Blog entries ...
Welcome to our new blogger!
06 February
Hello, I’m Chrissie, that must make me Jane’s mum. Somebody’s got to be to blame, so I guess that must be me.
She’s teaching me to use a computer. Boy does she need some patience! She reckons she’ll have cracked me by the time the clocks go forward. This is my third lesson and at least the mouse isn’t moving as fast!
I ripped so many pages out of her exercise books when she did her homework wrong that I traumatised her and now she’s getting her own back!
Baby it's cold outside!
03 February
We've got an outdoor thermometer in the garden, right outside the window. So when I get out of my warm bed at silly o'clock I can tell whether I need to put the heating on with a general idea of the temperature. 10 plus and it's warm enough, 5 or less it needs to go on!
This morning it was MINUS about 7 or 8 - not quite 10. Which immediately made me think about the poor birds outside, and what I'm going to give them for their breakfast.
Mr and Mrs Homer seem to be geting into baby making mood, and are hungry every morning, so they are fine with their tin of Asdas finest cheap dog food. The rest of the gull population are showing an interest so I have to stand by and make sure that the residents get their fill first. Normally it's just two for breakfast.
We put all our kitchen scraps out for the birds. Do you? You'd have read that we have a mouse worry in the previous blog, so I'm very limited in what I can get away with bird feeder wise, and all food has to be eaten immediately and completely or the mouse police go mad.
Earlier in the week they'd had three Aldi mince pies which my husband proclaimed 'as hard as board'. All the dog ends of cheese and any bits of meat go out. We had a chicken yesterday, and as with beef, we put the fat in a bowl and sop it up with bread broken into chunks - they all LOVE that and it goes within seconds. Plus it stops it blocking up your drains.
I find it really thrilling that I can go out in the gardem at any time of day and shout Homer and he comes to be fed. That a wild bird will do that still amazes me. I'm not sure who is trained though, him or me...
Cake, biscuits, buns, anything with a fat content is perfect. Mashed potato and cooked potato generally goes down well too. Starlings and Blackbirds will also enjoy dog food. When Homer has finished, they polish the bits of food up and jelly - he's not keen on jelly...
Make sure that you put water out too, especially in this weather. I just have a plastic garden saucer that auto-fills in the rain. Yesterday it was frozen solid, the slab is probably still on the lawn. You need something that you can break up and replace with fresh so a plastic saucer is ideal. Yesterday morning I was thrilled when I saw a Pied Wagtail walking up and down on the lawn picking at food! That's the first time I've seen that one in the garden, they are usually in car parks!
So there you go. Some ideas for doing your bit for conservation, that don't cost you any money, use your scraps and save food going to landfill. Perfect!
When I got to Asda today I shall buy a block of cheap lard to make bird food with. Very embarrasing buying it, it stinks to high heaven when you melt it, but the starlings LOVE it. More on that later!
Twittering in the garden
01 February
It was the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch this weekend. I'd have loved to take part, but just didn't have the time. But I've got a good idea of what's happening in our garden - with a look every time I go past the window.
Despite the salt air and the wind, we've managed to start to grow some good cover and mixed plants to attract our feathered friends, and I've got back onto the wagon of feeding them too, which is already making a difference.
I buy the hulled sunflower seeds because they make so much less mess, and serve them in a feeder with a tray fastened to the bottom, to reduce what drops onto the floor. Our big concern is mice - specifically getting them in places where they shouldn't be...
When we lived in Yorkshire, we had quite a big garden and we backed onto a primary school with fields like the local wood, and at the side of that was allotments, so you can imagine we got every kind of rodent under the sun. I wasn't particularly keen on the odd rat that came to call, but mice were part of life. I kept rabbits for many years in a brick shed in the garden and we often had them in there. One year, we caught them one by one and took them to the woods. I couldn't bear to kill them, and only use poison as a last resort. Our living room backed onto the garden and we used to watch them running round under the birdfeeders - they're very cute.
Anyway, I've made it a mission at Cleveleys to attract the birds - we had everything in Yorkshire, attracted by the trees and natural food they came in their hundreds and plenty of types. Here, it's a red letter day to see a blue tit! Last year we had Goldfinches nesting in the garden which thrilled me, and starlings in the parrot nesting box that I put up when we blocked the holes up in the soffit. The tame blackbird builds half a dozen homes until he hits on his favourite (I throw worms to him when I'm gardening, and he follows me round), and we've had a robin coming every day to feed. We had collared doves by the hundred before, so I'm thrilled that a pair have worked out how to the use the feeder and are hanging about in the garden. I'm wondering now what I can rig up to encourage them to nest...
Then of course there is Mr and Mrs Homer, who seem to be revving up their feeding, presumably to get into top condition for this years baby making. They have their breakfast and then the starlings and blackbirds come to hoover up the bits of dog food that they leave. So this is all conducted with me talking to them all and running a commentary! The gulls do know you though, when I occassionally send my dad or husband out to feed them, they won't come to either of them and feed by hand. Clever birdies, eh?
... or a
light hearted
look at life
from the people
who have
brought you
'Visit Cleveleys'
