My last few weeks in Wales

The weather on my drive from Llechryd to Llanboidy was appalling – horizontal rain and high winds. My host had emailed me some directions to the farm but I got hopelessly lost, mainly because I couldn’t see the wind farm that I was supposed to drive past owing to the poor visibility – it turned out that it was actually right next to the road I was on but completely invisible. I finally stopped at the village shop and asked directions, obvious thing to do really, I suppose.

The farm was on the top of a hill where there had originally been an ancient hill fort and was called Castell Draenog. My host thought that it had originally been called Castell Drainog (both pronounced Drynog) which means Thorny Castle, whereas Draenog translates as Hedgehog Castle! I think I prefer the latter name. The couple had five children ranging in age from eight year old twins to an eighteen month old, so I was put in the barn conversion and left to self cater for my own sanity! It was a lovely little conversion with a log-burning Rayburn providing hot water and heating and also had an electric cooker in case it didn’t get hot enough to cook on. The food they provided was really good and I quite enjoyed cooking again – I even made myself some flapjack in the Rayburn. There was also a breadmaker which I made full use of while I was there.

They had a small herd of Welsh Black cattle, some Saddleback pigs and a variety of sheep: Shetland, Black Welsh Mountain, White Welsh Mountain and some Suffolk crosses. While I was there they had a vet visit to check whether the cows were in calf and also to TB the bull, Boris, so that he could be sent back home as he was only on loan. I was in charge of letting the cattle through the gate from the barn into the cattle crush (called ‘shedding’) and had to be very careful not to get squashed against the wall by the milling cattle – it’s much easier to ‘shed’ sheep! Boris was quite good natured, but close to he was very large and gave me such a glare when I smacked him on the rump that I thought better of doing it a second time! Luckily, his TB test was clear and most of the girls were in calf so he will be able to go home soon.

Most mornings I had to go and check and count the sheep in the various fields. The most difficult bunch to count was located at the bottom of the steep farm track in a long field alongside the river. There was a lot of gorse and brambles in the field and the sheep were very small Shetland ram lambs destined for the freezer. They got tangled in the brambles for a pastime and most mornings I had to cut at least one of them out of their predicament with my pocket knife, as they were too small to pull themselves out without assistance. One of the jobs that we had to do over the course of the two weeks that I was there was to bring each group of sheep up to the yard and trim their feet and tag any that hadn’t been done earlier in the year or had subsequently lost their tags. When I suggested that I could help with the foot trimming it turned out that they only had one pair of foot trimming shears and Justin was going to do them all by himself. This seemed ridiculous, so I drove to St Clears and bought myself a pair (to add to my travelling stock of tools) so that we could share the backache! They must have had nearly 100 sheep altogether and we did all of them over a few days. Unfortunately, I tweaked my back catching the Shetlands as, although they are small and light, they move very quickly, so I was plucking them out of the air as they hurtled past me. After that I had to get Justin to catch the sheep and turn them over for me and then I could still do the foot trimming as it didn’t hurt to bend forwards.

They had quite a lot of poultry too, that free ranged around the farm yard and it was my job in the mornings to let them out and feed them – there were bantams and large-breed chickens, a whole gang of runner ducks and eight young turkeys. I’d forgotten how much I liked turkeys – they’re really cute as they strut around twittering, whistling and cheeping and they also tend to follow you around as well – I even ended up with one of them sitting on my arm like a rather strange falcon. I was invited to dinner in the farmhouse one evening where we ate roast duck that had been plucked by one of the eight year old daughters! She’s up for most of the jobs on the farm, especially if there is pocket money involved – it was £1 for plucking the duck, I believe. The other children weren’t quite so motivated to do chores, but then they are very young. We were accompanied by the toddler on most of our jobs, either toddling or being carried in a backpack, and this could make simple jobs a lot more arduous and potentially dangerous, so we had to try and fit in the more tricky jobs while she was having an afternoon nap and before the others had to be fetched home from school.

While I was there one of the Saddlebacks had a litter of piglets – only five, so not very prolific, and one of them died in the first two days. We decided to move her into one of the stables as the weather was so wet and her field very muddy. She didn’t seem particularly maternal as when Justin called ‘Moch, Moch’ (Welsh for ‘Pig, Pig’) she left her babies and hurried after the food bucket, leaving me to scoop up the remaining piglets and carry them to the stable behind her! Saddleback piglets are really sweet – shiny and black with a pink band round the middle, and really warm to the touch (and, of course, they taste really good when they’re bigger!).

On one of my days off I drove to Laugharne to see Dylan Thomas’ house, but I couldn’t be bothered to go in, although I did peer into his writing shed situated on the cliff path. I could quite see why he was able to write there as the view is out across the estuary, with its sandbanks and wading birds, to the distant horizon. However, the mood I was in on that day chimed more with his mood when he wrote ‘Poem on his Birthday’, written on his 35th birthday and full of dark and sombre thoughts, than with the beautifully musical ‘Under Milkwood’. I would have gone to visit the castle up on its headland but it was closed for winter, so defeated by the time of year and my lowering thoughts, I cut short my trip and went back to the cottage where I tried to raise my mood by reading a Terry Pratchett novel, loaned to me by Justin (I think he must have had every TP novel judging by the size of the box he presented me with!)

On 12th November I left Llanboidy and drove to Kidwelly, just south of Carmarthen. My next hosts were about my age and had lived there about twelve years. The property had been semi-derelict when they bought it as it had been empty for about six years but the water had not been turned off, so every ceiling in the house had come down! With the house they also inherited an old reservoir that had been built as a holding area for the water to drive the tin mill further downstream. It was located just in front of the house between the house and the river and was about the size of a football pitch and when they first got there it was empty but full of silt and shoulder-high weeds and brambles. Over the years they have turned it into a sunken walled garden and now have two polytunnels and several raised beds. Ingeniously, they have created the raised beds using old tyres and filled them with the silt from the reservoir base, and it is very productive. Because it is down low and overhung with trees, quite a lot of moss and liverwort grows on the beds and the polytunnels had green algae on them that I helped to wash off, but on the whole it works very well. They also had goats, ducks, chickens and a goose and at other times of the year raise two weaner pigs and some orphan lambs for the freezer. I had a go at milking the goat but found it quite tricky as my hands kept getting cramp and she had a nasty habit of leaning hard on my arm so that went dead as well!

We built a concrete ramp into the old cow barn while I was there and I also pointed around the double doors as well as painting the lintels black. I also painted another door to match the double ones – a lovely bright red! However, being me, I did insist on using the blow torch to remove every scrap of the old paint before priming and undercoating. Alan kept saying ‘It’s only a barn door!’, but I wanted to do it properly – anyway, it was fun using the blowtorch!

On my first day off I drove to Kidwelly and went to visit the ruined castle (which does not close for the winter). It is a large castle and I was the only visitor so I climbed about all over it – down into the dungeons and the kitchens and up to the top of one of the towers on the inner bailey, as well as walking all round the outer wall. It was great fun, and what I like particularly about Welsh castles is that you aren’t forbidden to go anywhere – there are just warning notices of potential hazards, and you don’t have a guide, instead there are history boards dotted around the site pointing out the changes that occurred in the structure over the years. I must have been there a couple of hours and got full value for my £3.50 entrance ticket.

On another day off I headed along the Towy valley and ended up at another ruined castle, Dryslwyn, located on a promontory above the valley and commanding clear views in all directions. They must have been horrified in 1207 when they looked over the battlements and saw 11,000 soldiers gathered on the flood plain below. The castle was besieged and the besiegers built a trebuchet to hurl boulders at the walls which were eventually breached and the castle and small township taken. There were some men doing some building work at the castle on the day that I was there, but they didn’t crack a smile when I said I thought it was a rebuild job! Well, I thought it was funny.

In the evenings I got to grips with a spinning wheel again, as Pat has two, and managed to spin two skeins of wool to add to my collection. I also learned to use a peg loom and you can use unspun fleece on that to make beautifully soft rugs, so I came away with two fleeces and my own peg loom (made by Alan). It was very companionable sitting in front of the log burner in the evening with both Pat and I spinning.

I was supposed to move to my next host on 26th November, but when I emailed to let him know what time I was arriving, it turned out that he’d forgotten I was going there and they were fully booked, unless I wanted to stay in ‘an outdoor room with no heating’! As I had heard some bad stories about the place, via my hosts at Llanidloes, about being housed in leaky caravans, I was not altogether disappointed to miss out on this experience, although I had been rather intrigued by the mention of ‘regular chanting and toning sessions in the sacred space’!! So, instead I stayed for an extra week with my hosts at Kidwelly where I was spoilt for the most part, taken to the pub every Sunday and fed very good home-produced food – and I thought I was going to lose some weight before Christmas – hah!