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| Woody and me at Maesbury iron-age hill fort |
Today marks the
anniversary of the commencement of my WWOOFing adventure 5 years ago
but, instead of doing a summing-up of my previous year I have decided
to get up-to-date with my general blog. I have called this blog
'Walks with Woody' because I rather liked the alliteration, but there
has been a lot more than that going on recently.
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| Rabbit proof fence panels |
On Friday, 1st
May, Jeni and I donned some 'decent' clothes and headed off to my
friends' handfasting ceremony which was held in their garden on top
of the Mendips at Binegar. They have been together for many years but
finally decided to make it all legal, and the handfasting was just
the beginning of a weekend of celebration which Jeni and I were
privileged to attend. Unfortunately, the weather was not as kind as
it could have been and our flimsy summer clothes were no match for
the cold wind that was blowing atop Mendip. However, the ceremony
itself was lovely with Karen and Ade being 'handfasted' (literally
having their hands bound together) with strings of ivy, before
jumping the broomstick and also a cauldron of hot coals! This
ceremony has its roots back in antiquity when the poor of the parish
could not afford to pay the priest to marry them in church and so,
with all their friends and family as witnesses, they 'tied the knot'
and jumped the broomstick to begin their lives together. It felt very
special to be part of such an age-old custom.
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| A lovely cake for a lovely couple |
On Sunday the actual
marriage took place and, because the Shepton Registry Office is in
the throes of moving and the Wells Town Hall venue was unavailable
due to the upcoming elections, the Registrar was able to perform the
ceremony in the marquee that had been set up just along the road from
their home, on land belonging to some good friends. Karen
had requested that everyone (both male and female) wore hats to the
ceremony and had then provided clothes pegs around the marquee on
which we could hang them, if we wanted to. Respecting Karen's wish
that we post no photos on the internet of the actual ceremony and
guests, I have taken the liberty of including a couple of general
shots from the day. I didn't know many people there although, over
the years, Karen had mentioned most of them so it was good to put
names to faces at last. One person that I did know, however, was my
old work mate, JP, who was over from Ireland especially for the
ceremony and had brought his lovely new partner, Nina. What a treat it
was to catch up with him again after so many years.
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| Festive bunting and hats |
On Bank Holiday Monday I drove to my
Mum's in Cheltenham prior to us going on holiday the following day.
We set off for Port Eynon on the Gower Peninsula just after 10.00am
and met up with Mum's friend, Meg and her daughter, Deb, at a beach
just south of Bridgend for a picnic lunch. Well, although the day was
bright and dry there was a stiff breeze (strong wind!) blowing in off
the sea so that our salad was in severe danger of blowing away so Mum
and I retreated to the car to eat ours. Afterwards Mum and I went for
a walk to stretch our legs and investigate a walled garden (I am such a sucker for walled gardens!) that was
just along the beach and was the sole surviving part of a large house
called Dunraven Castle. This beautiful-looking stately home (from the
photos on the information boards) was demolished in 1962 as there was
no perceived use for it! Criminal! It would have made an amazing
hotel or holiday apartments – why did so much destruction of fine
buildings take place in the 1960s?
Having lost our
bearings around Port Talbot, and seen rather too much of that town,
we finally arrived at our holiday cottage at just gone 4.00pm and
joined Meg and Deb in the pub, which was just across the road. We ate
there that night and the food was surprisingly good plus they served
Thatcher's Gold cider on tap, so I was happy. The cottage itself was
done out very stylishly – not an old lobster pot or carved seagull
anywhere! - and was very well-equipped. There were four bedrooms and
three bathrooms so we hardly got in each other's way at all and it had
been a well-priced bargain for a mid-week break. From there, for the next
couple of days, we explored as many of the beaches and bays that we
could drive to and managed to get Meg, who uses a 3-wheeled walker,
down onto a couple of them. I had never been to the Gower before and
thought it absolutely beautiful with its long, sandy beaches, narrow
lanes and abundance of wild flowers – I don't think that I have
ever seen so much wild garlic growing anywhere before – the woods
were carpeted with it!
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| Port Eynon, Gower, South Wales |
We came back on the
Friday, calling at Aberdulais Falls at Neath, to break our journey,
look around the old tin works and have some lunch in the old
schoolroom and then, on Saturday, I headed back to Somerset where I
weeded the vegetable garden, packed my car and headed off to Binegar
to house/dog sit for Karen and Ade while they went to Cornwall for
their honeymoon.
Woody is a Border
Terrier crossed with a Jack Russell Terrier and is a lovely little
chap. He always gets very excited when I visit so I was a bit
concerned when I opened the front door and he didn't even come to see
me or bark at my arrival. I can only think that he had seen Karen and
Ade packing and was upset that he'd been left behind – I don't
think they've ever left him before. However, we soon settled down
together and he took me for a lovely walk around the village that
afternoon. I say 'he took me' because, as we walked along the lane
near the house, we passed one public footpath sign, which he ignored
but, when we got to the next public footpath sign he got very excited
and pulled me off along it! We crossed a field and clambered over a
stile into another little lane and walked along this, passing under a
disused railway bridge, before coming out on a lane I recognised and
making a circular walk back to the house.
The next day was dry
with some sunshine but a really cold wind. I had looked at the
Ordinance Survey map of the area and decided to visit Maesbury
Castle, an iron-age hill fort, which was a short car journey away.
Woody sat as good as gold as we drove the couple of miles to a
pull-in that I had noticed at the side of the road, and then we
clambered over a stile and walked steadily uphill until we reached the
hill fort. The earth bank ramparts are still really impressive,
particularly from the outside where they are about 20 feet high, in
places. From the top of the bank there is a 360 degree panorama and,
on a clear day, you can see to the Quantocks in the South, the
Bristol Channel to the West, the Cotswolds to the North and Wiltshire
to the East – an amazing defensive position. It was a bit hazy but
the view was still spectacular and Woody enjoyed himself trying to
dig for moles and rabbits, which obviously abound up there.
Weather changes so
rapidly on Mendip – the following day was hot and cloudless with
hardly any wind and we spent some time in the garden. Later in the
afternoon I decided to take our last walk together along a lane in
the village, along some footpaths across farmland and back into the
village further down the hill before returning to the house and,
perhaps, calling in on Karen and Ade's friends in their beautiful
cottage on the corner. However, things did not go according to plan!
I took the map with me (always a good idea) and we set off happily
enough along the lane. It was very pleasant walking in the dappled
shade with bees and flies buzzing about and the bluebells nodding on
the grass verge. Eventually we came to the track that was marked on
the map as the start of our footpath walk. It looked like someone's
driveway but soon widened out into what had once been a sizeable
lane. At the end of this green lane we came out onto a farm track and
this was where our problems started. We walked up the track towards
the farm and were directed, quite firmly, by a man in a tractor, away from
the track and through a field gate. 'Go through the gate, turn right
and across the field', he said, so that was what we did.
Unfortunately, the only gate out of the field was back onto the track
on the other side of the farmhouse and was tied shut. It also had
weld mesh cladding on one side (and this is important in the story)
so, while Woody scrambled under the barbed wire fence, I climbed over
the gate and dropped down the other side, as I couldn't climb down
because of the cladding. Back on the track we took off again but then
I realised that it was veering away from the direction shown on the
map and we soon found ourselves on the disused railway line – not
where we were meant to be at all! I did not want to go back the way we
had come because I couldn't climb the gate from this side (because of
the cladding) and I didn't want to walk through the farmyard and risk
being shouted at by an angry farmer on a tractor! I made the
(foolish) decision to walk along the railway line towards the road, in
the hope that we could get out from there. It was not long before I
was thigh-high in nettles and brambles and poor little Woody had
disappeared in a green jungle that closed over his head. We struggled
on for a bit but it was obvious that we would never make it back to
the road that way. In the end we slid our way down the embankment,
over a barbed wire fence (under in Woody's case) into a field and
then through another barbed wire fence into another field that ran
alongside the embankment, which we then followed until we reached a
lane where, thankfully, there was a gate. We were both hot, tired and
I, for one, was tingling all down my legs from numerous stings from
the nettles, and scratches from the brambles, and we still had a mile
or so to go to reach home. However, the walk along the lane through
shady wooded areas restored us both a bit and I was looking forward
to calling in at the pub for half a pint of cider, but it looked as
if it was still closed as we tramped past and I felt rather disheveled anyway so, nearly three hours after we had jauntily set
off on our short walk, we limped home and collapsed in a heap. Well,
I did – Woody promptly went off to find a ball in the garden and
try to persuade me to play catch!
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| En route between Somerset and Cheltenham on top of the Cotswolds |
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