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| My 60th birthday cake |
The reason that I was
heading back to Cheltenham in mid-August was to celebrate a
'significant birthday' – my 60th! My birthday was
actually on the 18th, which was a Monday, so we held the
celebration on Saturday, 16th. All my family managed to
get there and most of them were able to stay for the weekend, which
was lovely. In addition, my best friends, Karen and Ade also made it
up from Somerset to join us all at a local restaurant for lunch. The
food was good, the company better, and the icing on the cake, so to
speak, was a beautifully decorated cake made by Jeni that was brought
in by the front-of-house staff singing 'Happy Birthday'! I had an
amazing time and a fantastic weekend altogether.
Back at the beginning
of August my tenant of two years gave a month's notice. For some time
prior to that I had said that I would put the cottage on the market
if he gave notice, so I have come to, what feels like, an important
decision and have put it on the market. If it sells it will mean that
my WWOOFing lifestyle will have to change a bit as I will have to
have at least a part-time job as, without the rent from a tenant, I
have no income. I feel that the time has come to look around for
somewhere to settle while I still have the strength and enthusiasm to
do my own garden. Having reached my 60th birthday
it feels like a good time to take stock and consider what I really
want to do with the next phase of my life. I have several ideas that
I would like to explore and may share them with you all later, so
'watch this space'!
Having spent a couple
of weeks back in Cheltenham resting and doing some gardening for my
mum, I headed down to Somerset for a couple of days and stayed with
Jeni in Wells. Whilst there I caught up with my step-daughter and her
mum and also went over to Draycott to take a good look around the
cottage as my agent said it was damp. It did show signs of damp, but
I was pretty convinced that it was mainly a condensation problem
rather than penetrating damp. However, Jeni's boss, who is the
surveyor who originally did the survey for me eleven years ago,
offered to come out with a damp meter and give it the once over. Yes,
there is some penetrating damp, but not much, and it could be
relatively easily fixed but, as I thought, most of the problem is
condensation from inadequate ventilation. I've got to be back in
Somerset at the beginning of October, so may get the chance to do
some remedial stuff then.
On Friday, 5th
September Jeni and I packed up the Peugeot and headed north to
Oswestry where I was WWOOFing for two weeks and Jeni was WWOOFing for
one week – there's nothing like taking a holiday from work and then
working in someone else's garden! We stopped at the new Gloucester
Services on the M5 as it has a 'Farmers' Market' of local produce
(including the delicious Lovett Pies, plug, plug!). The whole service
area is impressive as it is hidden from view under a grass roof, the
toilets are clearly indicated (unlike many of the older ones) and
everything is light and airy with a lovely-looking restaurant, too.
Back on the road again and I decided to come off at the Gloucester
turn and head up through Ledbury towards Ludlow and Craven Arms. We
stopped at the wonderfully-named village of Redmarley D'Abitot to eat
our picnic lunch and then continued north. However, the traffic was
quite heavy on this road so we headed off towards Welshpool and then
Jeni navigated us across country to Moelfre.
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| Jeni and the remains of the bonfire! |
There followed the most
wonderful week, working together in Dawn and Tony's fantastic garden.
We started off by tidying and weeding the two beds that we had
created a couple of years ago and then I took the loppers to several
overgrown shrubs, while Jeni widened and levelled one of the main
paths to the central lodge. Of course, all this pruning created large
amounts of bonfire material, so we just had to have a fire! We kept
it going for three days until we had our day off and the ashes went
too cold to start it again.
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| Inside the church of St Melangell |
On our day off I took
Jeni to Pennant Melangell where I had visited last year. She was as
entranced by the little church, nestled in its hidden valley in the
Berwyn Mountains, as I had been and we'd picked a perfect day –
wide blue skies with a hazy, golden late-summer light making
everything glow as if lit from within
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| Our Ploughman's Lunches! |
From there we drove back to
the recently re-opened Green Inn at Llangedwyn and had the most
fantastic Ploughman's Lunch which I followed up with their version of
Eton Mess! I didn't eat again until the next morning! Jeni then took
us 'off piste' again and we made a circular journey through the
mountains near Moelfre where we encountered huge numbers of
recently-released pheasants wandering in a confused way along the
lanes and then two cows and their calves who, luckily, were in a
laid-back mood and just allowed us to drive slowly past them without
panicking. I usually meet milk tankers, large tractors and trailers
and escaped sheep when I am in this area, so this was just par for
the course!
Two other WWOOFers were
supposed to materialise while Jeni and I were there – the first one
couldn't come (from America) because she'd just discovered that she
was pregnant and I was supposed to pick up George (from Liverpool)
when I dropped Jeni back at the train station in Gobowen. I waited
for over an hour and then gave up and drove back to Moelfre – we
never heard from him again! It makes you wonder what happened to him
between Liverpool and Oswestry – abducted by aliens? Fell asleep
and ended up in Cornwall? Weird! So I spent my second week as sole
WWOOFer, which was fine by me!
Jeni left on the Friday
and on the Saturday evening there was a performance, in Llansilin
church, of a one-man play about Dylan Thomas that Dawn, Tony and I
went along to see. For one and a half hours the actor kept up the
performance without a break, without hesitation and was so good that
you could almost believe that it was Dylan Thomas, reading his poetry
and recounting anecdotes from his life. The profit from the evening
was being put towards maintaining the church building which is Grade
1 listed and was the local church of Owain Glyndwr, last Welsh
prince, who had a stronghold nearby.
I spent the rest of my
week pruning two overgrown hedges, having another bonfire and
finishing constructing the three-bay compost bin that Jeni and I had
started. I have said that I'll try and go back in November to help
Tony finish the new greenhouse (if he's not done it by himself before
then) and/or help re-fence the vegetable garden, which was absolutely
ravaged by rabbits this year. There's always some project to do when
you have three acres of garden!
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| Part of the garden at Moelfre |
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