Things have taken a distinctly autumnal turn around here lately. 

I think autumn might be my favourite season, but this year it's not been great so far. My nan died this week, we are still in limbo waiting for things to happen with our house, and altogether things are rather gloomy and unsatisfying. 

A look back through my photographs tells me we have been getting out and about though. 

We spotted these flowers planted into old milk cartons on the side of a metal fence screening some building work. I've never seen this before, but how pretty! 

Last weekend we went to Bakewell, a little market town out in the peak district, where I tried to hold onto the end of summer with a last lolly ice. 

We walked into town along the river, and I love to see the old houses lining the banks. 

This bridge was built in the thirteenth century, and is still one of the main routes into the town. 

We visit Bakewell quite a bit, so didn't feel the need to do anything particularly touristy. We wandered around the charity shops, bought some books in a second hand bookshop, and then had tea and a sandwich in the memorial gardens. 

I think we feel a bit discombobulated at the minute. We're moving - but who knows when? A lot of our stuff is packed, so we don't have access to most of our books or any of my sewing stuff and even some of our clothes. But there's no point packing anything else at this stage as it might be months before anything else happens. 

I'm trying to be interested in the legal and practical process of buying and selling a house, neither of which I've done before. I'm also trying not to get too hung up on whether we end up in this particular house that we're trying to buy, because so many things could still go wrong. We'd hoped to be in by Christmas, and there's still time, but I'm not holding my breath.

Hey ho. There's nothing I can do at this stage other than wait, so I suppose that's what I'll have to do. In cafes, mostly, particularly now the weather is turning. Maybe I'll knit myself a new scarf to keep me occupied. 

It's funny how a flurry of words comes over me sometimes. I'm sure my family would tell you I never shut up, but occasionally I just don't really have anything to say here. 

I'm here now though, because I came across these photographs from a few weeks ago when I took a detour on the way to a friend's house and ended up in the woods. 

I do so very much love these woods. This path is an old carriage track which snakes up through the trees. There's a steep bank to the right, and a steep drop to the left, at the bottom of which is a swirling stream and a rocky path. I'm usually cycling, so I take the top path, but the bottom one is magical in the evening sunlight and I really must get up there again soon. 

The day after this cycle trip, I found myself in a different woodland, on foot this time and with Peter in tow. 

This too has a stream, and snakes upwards, albeit far more gently. There are even stepping stones. 

(Gosh, I can't remember when it was warm enough to wear sandals! I'm sat here in a woolly cardigan with a hot water bottle just a couple of weeks after this was taken!)

Even back then though, signs of autumn were starting to emerge. 

I haven't been outside much this week, and these pictures are reminding me that I really should remedy that tomorrow. I've walked to work, of course, but after we gave ourselves food poisoning at the start of the week, we've spent a fair bit of time resting. 

Today has been a pottering sort of a day - a cafe, a bit of a shopping trip, and a visit to see friends. We've tidied up a bit after our enforced rest, and this evening we'll settle down with a film. 

Tomorrow, though, I can feel the outdoors calling again. I'm not planning anything energetic, but a little stroll might not go amiss. Maybe I'll take the rocky path by the stream through the woods. 

Yes, yes, I know it's the middle of September, and the leaves are falling and it's raining and it's not really summer any more, and definitely not August, but things rather ran away with me. 

​So before we get too far away, I wanted to share these pictures from when the sun was shining (occasionally) and I was sitting outside every day. 

I don't think I really thought about it at the time, but that was (hopefully!) the last summer we'll see in this garden. I feel like I didn't really take as many pictures as I should have done, but we were caught up with the decorating, and then with people traipsing in and out, and then mired in a pit of bureaucracy. 

I did sit outside a lot though, which I'm grateful for, and while I didn't grow any veg this year, there were plenty of flowers. 

Right now we're feeling like we're engaged in an elaborate bureaucratic game, and we're not even sure what the outcome will be. There are many hurdles still to cross. We're still quibbling over the mortgage, and this week we learned that our new house has rights of way for people to shoot on our land. Shoot what? I can't imagine there's anything much more than rabbits. I'd rather they didn't. Should I be concerned? There's so much to learn.

In the meantime, we try to carry on with normal life, which is easier said than done. Weekends are better, because I know the phone won't ring, so I'm not sitting waiting for a call. People keep telling me that we'll move eventually, and I keep telling myself that plenty of other people move house all the time so it's clearly not impossible, but I won't truly believe it until we're standing on the inside holding the keys.  

I think I've only travelled by plane four or five times in my life. A trip to Jersey when I was a teenager, then not again until I was in my twenties, doing a PhD and jetting off to a conference in Denmark. I think there was another trip to Denmark at some point, and last year I went to Norway - all for work. 

This week Peter and I boarded a plane together for the first time and went to visit our friends in Berlin. 

From my photos, it's quite difficult to tell we were in Berlin. I'm ashamed to say I didn't take a single photograph of our hosts together, and only about three photos of Peter. My eye, it seems, was drawn to things growing on balconies. 

Most people in Berlin live in flats, and a lot of them have balconies, and many of the balconies are filled with flowers. I even saw grapes growing in a couple of places. I loved looking at these little gardens in the sky, thinking of people sitting up there drinking tea (or probably coffee, more likely), watching the world go by. 

Of course, I didn't only take pictures of balconies.

There may have been a cafe or two involved too, although I regret to say the only place to get a decent cup of tea was at home with our hosts. Earl Grey and coffee creamer? I don't think so. 

As is usual with our holidays, we didn't really do a tour of the tourist hot spots, although as my knowledge of Berlin history was woefully inadequate, our hosts did suggest we went to the open air Berlin Wall museum, and then did us a personal tour of the path of the wall near their home. 

I think I found the short film clips of people escaping from the East most moving, and was appalled and ashamed by my own ignorance (whilst also realising that my ignorance extends to so many other things too). The line of the wall is traced in cobbles and signs throughout the city, so once you know what to look for, you see it everywhere, dividing the streets. 

There is plenty of green space in Berlin, and we spent lots of time just wandering around looking at things and taking in the scenery. I love a good bit of urban hiking, and I reckon we walked at least thirty miles while we were there. 

Because we were staying with friends, we did a few things that we probably never would have done had we been by ourselves. On two evenings we went to a global band competition, with bands from Berlin who had members from all over the world. As we speak almost no German, the announcements and jokes were largely incomprehensible but it was interesting to see just how much we could get the hang of through a vague understanding of the context. 

We also visited this exhibition, put on by a camera company presumably to demonstrate their cameras. You signed up and were given a camera, and then got to keep the memory card with your photographs at the end, although I got rather muddled and just ended up using my own camera and my own photographs are mediocre to say the least. You can see some more interesting ones here. 

Apart from balconies and pancakes and the wall, three things stood out for me in Berlin. The profusion of places to eat in the evening - cafes and restaurants and candlelit pubs, all quietly thriving without being rowdy, tables out on the pavement, people just chatting late into the night. That felt really different to an English city, and very nice.

Oddly, the second thing that stood out was graffiti. I don't know whether it was particularly prevalent in Berlin, or whether it's just quite rare where we live, or whether my eye was drawn because I didn't know what it said, but it seemed like there was writing everywhere on walls.

The third thing, which should really be the first thing, was the sheer number of bicycles. I loved how many bicycles there were. Berlin is pretty flat, and there are cycle lanes between the road and pavement (quite alarming when you're not used to them), and people do just seem to hop on a bike when they need to go somewhere. Most sensible if you ask me. 

Altogether we had a most excellent time. Our hosts, John and Hassina, were perfect - entertaining and feeding us, translating in the supermarket, giving us a history tour worthy of any tour guide, and distracting us when it became apparent that our mortgage broker had made a mistake which may have cost us the new house (fortunately this appears to be mostly sorted out now - no thanks to the broker - but I have rather more grey hairs than I did last week). 

We spent a lot of time just sitting in their flat, drinking tea and watching the sparrows on the balcony. 

Do you think they'd mind if we went back again this weekend?