I have been here nearly two weeks now and feel quite at home - it never ceases to amaze me how 'settled' I can feel in just a short time. When I first started to plan my journey I thought that the minimum I would want to do would be four weeks in each place, but now I feel that two weeks is quite long enough to get a good feel about a place and learn how to do the jobs that are required.

I have continued to work in the vegetable patch weeding, preparing beds and planting a variety of plants. The vegetables are all grown in beds about eighteen feet long by four feet wide that are raised on one side to lessen the effect of the hillside and this means that they don't present such a psychological challenge when you come to work on them. It means that 'weeding the onions' can be seen as a finite job and then you can move on to 'weed the cabbages' rather than being presented with one huge plot to weed. I shall definitely go for raised beds or, at least seperate beds, when I have a veg plot of my own again.

Up until now I have been moving north ahead of the season, so everywhere I have been the fruit is not quite ripe before I move on again, but here, at last, the season has caught me up and we are beginning to harvest soft fruit. Yesterday I picked some blackcurrants and today the new Wwoofer (Helena from Hong Kong) and I picked more blackcurrants, gooseberries and raspberries. When it started to rain this afternoon, we came indoors and have just finished making jam out of the blackcurrants and gooseberries. Dawn is now going to start some winemaking with the rest of them and we will have a fruit salad with raspberries, etc tomorrow.

On a few days in the last week I have spent about an hour each day sawing up wood from some of the fir trees that they have felled and stacking it in the log shed for winter. The shed is beginning to fill up nicely now and I feel quite proud that quite a lot has been cut and stacked by me! I know - sad, isn't it!

When not involved in the veg patch or log sawing, I have been weeding one of the herbaceous borders and transplanting ornamental grasses and other plants from different parts of the garden into it. It is now beginning to look quite good and is inspiring us to gradually progress along this level, clearing as we go.

I had another day off on Thursday and decided to drive around and look at the scenery in this part of the country (which is actually Powys, not Shropshire). Just a few miles away is the pretty village of Llanrhaeadr and the famous Llanrhaeadr Falls, so I felt I should start there. As it feels a bit odd at times sight-seeing by myself, I have decided to share, as best I can, some of the places that I visit with you, my avid (and not-so-avid) readers! The Falls are 240' high from top to bottom which is 60' higher than Niagara Falls and are, apparently, very spectacular after a lot of rain. They were still pretty spectacular after hardly any rain at all! I decided to follow the footpath to the top of the falls but did wonder, halfway up the steep climb on slate steps cut in the rockface, why I wanted to climb yet another hill! However, the view from the top was quite impressive, but I didn't go too near the edge as there was no fence and I thought I might get vertigo and take the short cut back to the bottom! When I returned to ground level I treated myself to a cold drink from the cafe strategically placed at the bottom of the footpath.

Then it was off to Lake Vyrnwy, a large man-made reservoir, where I drove along the lakeside road before taking the mountain road to Bala. Up on the mountain there were only sheep for company and a single track road snaking away into the distance clinging precariously to the steep mountainside. In places there were metal crash barriers to prevent the careless driver from plummeting over the edge, but as the wooden posts that supported them looked pretty 'ripe', I hoped I wouldn't have to put them to the test. At last I reached civilisation again and turned northeast to continue my big circuit. At a place about nine miles from Bala was a glass studio called Glassblobbery where they made sophisticated versions of the glass ornaments I had in my bedroom as a child. The most beautiful ones were brilliantly coloured dragons that hung on the wall. They were about a foot long but as they cost £250 they were a little out of my league! I got chatting to the man who was in charge of the gallery and told him roughly what I was doing and as soon as I mentioned 'gardening' he handed me a leaflet about a garden back the way I had just come and said I really ought to visit it. As I didn't have a particular timescale for my drive I once more headed towards Bala turning off at a village called Sarnau and driving up (yes it was 1000 feet above sea level!) a small lane to Caerau Uchaf gardens. It was certainly worth a visit - the gardens were quite inspiring and the view across Lake Bala to Snowdon was breathtaking, plus the cream tea was quite good, too.

From there I headed back via Llangollen and Oswestry having covered quite a few miles during the day. It was only the next day when I went out to my car for something that I realised I had a completely flat rear tyre! All I could think was 'Thank heavens that didn't happen on the mountain road!' I'm going to get it mended in Oswestry on Monday as I shall need the car on Wednesday when I move to my next place just a few miles from here.