We chose the grassy area out front of the visitor’s centre where there were both trees and picnic tables where we’d eat our lunch. My daughter and husband went to the car to collect our picnic items and we spread out a blanket for anyone to sit in the sun who chose to. The day was a bit cool.



I must share a humorous incident here. My husband set his sandwich out on the picnic table, ready to eat it and then remembered something in the car that he needed. Before he reached the picnic table again, a bold seagull landed on the table, next to the sandwich, and had the bag in its mouth. My daughter suspecting what might happen was first on her feet and ran and grabbed the sandwich bag from the bird’s mouth just as he began to lift off. What a sandwich rescue! My husband got to have his sandwich after all. Guess that’s a lesson not to leave it to the birds.

We played a quick game of hide and seek at the end of our lunch and then we were back into the village again for the rest of our tour.

We looked inside the Milburn House that’s first on the path. The guide there, whose picture we didn’t get, was baking cookies for the hotel which someone would collect in a basket and sell at the hotel.
I learned after posting pictures last year that Sophie, whom we saw at the Keene hotel again this year, is a descendant of the Milburn family who once lived in this home.  Her Mom, Tania, is a fellow editor in our association and who told me this when I posted my links on Facebook.

Here’s a photo of Sophie (on the right) from our tour last year. The girl on the left is also named Sophie.

On to the Douro town hall, after passing buildings we’d already looked at. In that hall, people would do their voting in an election, have their public meetings. I wondered about the little cubicles with curtains. I read in the guide book that those were installed so people could secretly mark their ballots in an election. Before that voting was done by an open “show of hands.”
There was also a commemorative plaque to famous people of the area, that included authors Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Trail.

My husband asked that I take a picture of him by this old steam engine and suggested the title be “Two old things.” His title, not mine.

Inside the Glen Alda Church, the ornate woodwork and the pump organ similar in workings and style to the one we had in our Sunday School room when I first started teaching.
I didn’t understand the meaning of the bowl and ewer in the pastor’s room, but now I do. The circuit preacher would visit four different churches by horseback. There would be fresh water for the pastor to pour into the bowl and wash off some of the travel dust before he conducted worship.
Before the church was built, people met in each others’ homes.

We were all interested in the Lowry Weaver Shop.


Interested in the small woven things made here.

We stood on the lawn and listened to a man playing a harp on the porch adjoining the weavery. It was gentle music and he played well.
Over to the blacksmith’s shop where we watched someone bend iron that had been heated in the forge. We didn’t take pictures there, but the girls watched the hot metal being bent.

The girls sitting at a desk together in the South Lake School, S. S. #4, drawing with chalk on their slates, while the teacher tells of the discipline used and lessons taught. They wiped the words and drawing off the slate before they left.

Checking out how things look from the top of the climber. Those steps were more difficult to climb than the playground the girls are used to

Seeing the chickens

and the sheep.
I’ll stop here for today. Come back to see the rest in a day or so.