Maytime in Moelfre

Travelling with Jeni is a different experience to travelling alone, and a very nice one, too! For a start, we packed a picnic to have on our way from Cheltenham to Oswestry – something I would never have thought of myself. Secondly, I didn’t have to try and memorise the Google directions (the reason for many a strange, dog-legged journey last year!) and that was an enormous help. The weather was glorious, not a single cloud in the sky and we eventually stopped for our picnic at the Severn Valley Country Park near Bridgenorth overlooking the Severn Valley Railway – we even got to see a steam train labouring up the incline in front of us.

We arrived at Moelfre near Oswestry by mid-afternoon and were made very welcome by Dawn and Tony. After a cup of tea we went on a walk round the garden to see how things had progressed since last year. They have managed to trim back a lot of the overgrown shrubs and the herbaceous borders were looking a lot more under control than they did last year. Tony’s vegetable plot is a thing of beauty even this early in the season with most of the raised beds already full of onions, shallots, peas, broad beans, spring cabbage etc, and many more pots and trays waiting in the greenhouses for the threat of frost to pass. They had also created a new area on one of the levels where you can go and just be quiet amidst the trees, and our first job was to build some rustic steps up to it: this involved staking half-round rails at each end and evening out the slope to create flattish steps. Jeni proved surprisingly good with a sledge hammer having greater accuracy and stamina than me – a fact which I think pleasantly surprised her.

For the most part our work here has involved digging and weeding in the vegetable plot and flower borders, planting seeds, transplanting seedlings and general tidying up, although we have also been involved in the construction of a new decking area outside the cottage as any flat space is at a premium on this Welsh mountainside. We have both found it challenging working on a permanent slope and it is surprisingly tiring when you have to climb several flights of steps to get to the level you are working on – I found myself muttering little mantras as I walked along – ‘spade, fork, watering can’. ‘spade, fork, watering can’ as it was very annoying to get to your chosen spot and realise that the tool you needed was down a 45 degree slope in the potting shed!

The weather has been incredible all the time that we have been here (nearly three weeks) apart from the last couple of days when it has been heavy showers and sunny spells. The rain is really welcome as, despite Tony’s elaborate water catching systems, we had emptied nearly all the water butts and were having to carry watering cans further and further to nurture the new seedlings.

On our days off we have been to Chirk Castle, a National Trust property on the way to Llangollen, which has the most elaborate clipped yew hedges. I kept expecting to see figures from Alice in Wonderland playing croquet on the lawn! We also walked across the Llangollen Canal aqueduct at Chirk which is breathtaking and had another picnic sitting by the canal watching the narrowboats going back and forth. The next day we went to Lake Bala and took a trip on the Bala Lake Railway, a narrow gauge steam railway that runs along the banks of the lake, and then had another picnic on the mountain road to Trawsfynydd. There were just us and a few sheep and one house that could be seen in the distance and mile after mile of mountain terrain. The reason that we were on the mountain road was that we fancied an ice cream and the only place to get a really good ice cream is at Beddgelert!! I don’t know how many miles I drove that day but it was worth it for a double scoop of crème caramel and cheesecake ice cream in a waffle cone! This week we went to Erddig, a country house near Wrexham which has the most stunning formal gardens and more espaliered fruit trees than I have ever seen in my life. It is also very interesting in that the family who lived there kept detailed records of all their servants and had portraits of them painted and, more recently, photographs taken, so that there is a tremendous amount of ‘everyday’ history chronicled, which is unusual. From there we went on to visit my aunty who lives nearby, and had a lovely cuppa and catch up, as I haven’t been in touch with her for some years.

Also, we were invited to some traditional May Day celebrations that Dawn and Tony and their friends go to. Everyone takes food to share and a maypole is erected for dancing round to traditional tunes. Again the weather was fantastic and we all wore bright colours and the girls made flower garlands for their hair – a really joyous occasion and celebration of friendship. All in all we have been made so welcome here that it has been a great pleasure to return – so much so that we may come back this way again later in the year to see how our recent endeavours have progressed.

Tomorrow we repack the car and head over 100 miles north to our next hosts who live on a narrowboat and run a smallholding nearby................

Lambing drama at Stroud

During the weekend of my second week at Stroud Paul, Sarah and Becky went away overnight to a friend’s birthday party and to visit Sarah’s daughter who had just had a baby. This meant that I had to be on hand to check on the sheep, so Jeni came over on Saturday and stayed overnight and I also had two friends from Draycott come over for the evening – Grainne was coming from Draycott and her daughter Siobhan and her boyfriend were coming from north of Oxford where they now live. We’d decided to perhaps get pizza and share a bottle of wine and catch up on each other’s lives as we had not met up for nearly a year. We’d planned that it would be a lovely and relaxing evening.

I’ve realised that you should never plan anything as Fate has a way of coming along and scuppering any plans you might have thought you had! Jeni and I went up to do evening feeding and noticed that ‘Blackberry’ the sheep was in the early stages of labour. We couldn’t coax her into a pen on her own so we went out to the field to feed the ewes and lambs out there. While we were there Siobhan rang to say they had just arrived, so we told them where to find us and headed back to the lambing shed. As we greeted them I realised that Blackberry was sniffing at something lying very still on the ground, so I leapt over the barrier and ran to her to find that she had had a lamb but the amniotic sac was still over its head. I quickly pulled it off, tickled its nose and then swung it by its hind legs for good measure to drain any fluid from its lungs. It sneezed, shook its head and spluttered a bit and Blackberry took over the mothering duties, licking it all over and bleating quietly to it. When it looked like a ‘goer’, Jeni and I carefully lured Blackberry into a pen. Siobhan then went off to buy pizza, as her mum was due to arrive at any moment. While she was gone I realised that it was some time since the ewe had had the first lamb, but she still didn’t look comfortable, so I decided to check to see if there was another lamb – there was, but it had one leg above its head and was effectively stuck, so I realigned the leg and out it came, spluttering and sneezing as it lay on the straw, so mum carefully licked that one, too. Jeni and I were sitting on a straw bale congratulating ourselves on a job well done when Jeni said ‘Can’t I see another hoof protruding from under her tail?’ The light was beginning to fade by then so I couldn’t be sure, but just in case I checked again and there was another lamb – this time he had one leg bent back behind him and was again effectively stuck, so I had to try and flick the bent leg up and straight so that he could emerge like a diver with his head between his front legs.

By this time Grainne had arrived too and Siobhan and her boyfriend had returned with the pizza, but I was concerned that the lambs would get chilled so we needed to get them into the pen where the heat lamp was and this involved moving another ewe and her twins (the ones I mentioned in my last blog). Everyone mucked in, deconstructing and reconstructing pens and ushering the confused ewes and their offspring into the appropriate ones. At last, we had achieved that aim and decided to go into the house, eat pizza and drink wine and then check that all the lambs were up and had fed afterwards. The pizzas were great, the wine was good and we did manage to have a bit of a catch up but the majority of the conversation centred around the triplets and what should be done next! Siobhan and her chap had both been to agricultural college and had worked with sheep so I was really pleased that they had come over, although Jeni said it felt strange that three out of the five of us had helped ewes give birth before! We went back up a little later and I stressed a lot about whether all the lambs had fed – probably more so than I would have done if they had been my own sheep – and decided, in the end, to ‘tube’ them i.e. put a stomach tube down their throats and pour some milk down. By this time it was gone 11.00pm and everyone had to go – hardly the lovely, relaxing evening it should have been, but strangely satisfying anyway. I know that Grainne and Siobhan read this blog so I would like to take this opportunity to thank them once again for a) coming to see me in the first place and b) being so supportive with the sheep! I am also pleased to report that mum and babes are all doing really well!

I left Stroud on a Thursday evening have renewed friendships, not only with Paul and Sarah, but also with the market gardeners who come on Tuesdays and Thursdays to grow their own organic vegetables and with whom I worked in October and again this last couple of weeks. I drove the fifteen miles or so to Cheltenham to spend four days with my Mum before she went off on a short break and Jeni and I repacked the Peugeot to start our joint WWOOFing adventure, beginning in Oswestry, Shropshire where I was last June.

Surfing the Spring

My last two weeks at Launceston rushed by as we battled to get the bungalow as finished as possible while still not being able to complete the bathroom, cloakroom and kitchen because of work that the plumber had to do. He couldn’t complete anything in the bathroom as the bath had not been sent with its handles (or they’d been accidentally thrown out with the packaging) and the suppliers did not seem to have the same sense of urgency as we did about supplying a new set. Without the handles, which are fixed on from the underside of the bath, the bath could not be plumbed in, the loo and wash basin could not be sited accurately and the tiling couldn’t be done. Jo and I busied ourselves with ironing and lining new curtains and then with revamping some old slub silk curtains to make new curtains for the dining room.

On one of my days off I took myself to Tavistock and had a look around – I met a lovely lady who ran the local crystals shop and obviously believes that everything happens for a reason. I was in there for ages and then only bought a card! She did say, however, that I should visit Brentor which is just outside Tavistock and is sited on the crossing point of two ancient and important ley lines – the Michael and Mary lines. I visited the Pannier Market which is very similar in function to the one in Barnstaple, in that it has a variety of markets on different days of the week – the day that I was there was a General Market and there was a mixture of craft stalls, ‘tat’ stalls, pet food stalls, etc. Again, I stopped for a chat with a lady who was demonstrating the art (craft?) of rag rug making. This is something I would quite like to try at some point – I can still remember the rag rugs in my Gran’s cottage next to the Bluebell Railway line in Kent. The lady says that she makes them out of old T-shirts and sweat shirts as well as other fabrics and some of them are almost like memory quilts in that she is reminded of some of her children’s outgrown clothes when she looks at them.

I eventually left Tavistock and drove the few miles to Brentor; the church of St Michael is the highest still-functioning church in England and has a service every Sunday evening from Easter to September. I clambered up the tor to the top and would have had far-reaching views across Dartmoor in one direction and towards Bodmin in the other if there had not been a heat haze (in March?). It has a similar feel to Glastonbury Tor but is a natural rock outcrop and quite craggy – I think Glastonbury is man-made as it is very symmetrical. When I told Jo and James about my visit they told me that the Michael line runs through their parish of Lezant and that, at one time, the church there was dedicated to St Michael too. Apparently it stretches for miles across southern England.

On my last Friday at Launceston we all went to the Wine and Wisdom quiz evening at the local school. It was teams of four but we had two extras, so Jo and I ended up partnering two poor, unsuspecting men who had come to spend a quiet weekend with their friends, who happened to be the quizmasters! We made a lucky choice though as these guys were pretty knowledgeable and we managed to win, much to Jo’s delight as we beat James and his team into a cocked hat! I had no idea she was so competitive – quite scary, really! Our prize was a bottle of Cava each and then, guess what? – I won a raffle prize – again! It’s beginning to get a bit embarrassing. They’ll ban me from the area soon.

The day before I left Jo and James treated me to lunch at a farm near Launceston. The wife diversified, during the Foot and Mouth outbreak, into patchwork craft workshops and now holds many courses in purpose-built work rooms, has a shop dedicated to patchwork fabrics and all manner of sewing items and also has a cafe which serves delicious lunches. It is called Cowslip Workshops and was recently featured in a magazine that my Mum had sent me just before I went to Launceston. One day it might be good to go back and do a course there.

Having spent quite a few days doing ‘inside’ jobs, it suddenly struck me that in the space of a week Spring had really taken off. When I arrived there were a few daffodils, and then a few grape hyacinths and camellias; by the time I left there were primroses everywhere, wood anemones, celandines, tulips, apple blossom, may blossom and leaves were breaking out of their dormant buds and filling my eyes with every shade of green you could imagine, and as I drove through Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and then into Gloucestershire I felt as if I was surfing on a rolling wave of green that was surging ever northwards, driving the winter before it.

I am now back in the Slad Valley near Stroud at a farm I visited back in October and it is lambing time. Most of the sheep have already lambed but there are still six to go. One lambed the other morning before I went out and had had just one lamb and Paul had put her in a pen on her own. I went out to do the feeding and, literally while my back was turned, she popped out another one! It is very tiny and is currently sporting a very snazzy woollen jumper to help keep it warm, but it is feeding well and should be OK. One of my jobs is to ‘top up’ the triplets i.e. offer them a bottle of powdered milk in case they are still hungry, and I have quite a following who mug me every time I climb in the pen, or go out to the orchard where the older lambs are. The weather has been fantastic but the lack of rain is beginning to be a worry for the farmers as it is time for all the stock that has been indoors during the winter to go back outside, but the grass is not growing fast enough to provide a continuous supply for hungry beasts so they can’t be turned out yet. Fodder prices are at an all time premium, because of the dry spring/early summer last year so it is a careful juggling act between putting the animals out too early and risk not having enough grass or keeping them in for a bit longer and risk running out of hay/silage.

Finally, I have to tell you that Jeni arrived back in the UK on April 4th (Dave’s birthday) and is currently staying at my Mum’s about twenty minutes away. Dave and I went over to welcome her home and completely overwhelmed her! I may have a WWOOFing partner for the next couple of months, if she feels like it, which will seem quite strange after being alone for nearly a year – I’m really looking forward to it.

Springtime in Cornwall

Maude, the French WWOOFer arrived at lunchtime on Monday and seemed very nice and keen to work. In the afternoon she cut down the brambles that were growing in between the raspberry canes at the bungalow, while I carried on with the job I had started in the morning – painting the outside loo! Well, the plumber had arrived, so I couldn’t really do anything in the house.

On Tuesday it was a beautiful day and we spent all morning barrowing loads of topsoil from behind the barn up to the vegetable garden to fill in the old pond just inside the gate to enable James to safely get the tractor in to do the rotovating. The top soil had been in a large heap for a number of years and had compacted somewhat - we had to use a pickaxe to break it up enough to shovel into the wheelbarrows. It took 18 wheelbarrows to fill what looked like a small hole but, as I said to James, they were ‘girlie’ wheelbarrow loads as we didn’t have the physical strength to have them really full! It got so warm that eventually I was working in my T-shirt but, unfortunately, I didn’t think to up my fluid intake accordingly and ended up retiring to bed at 7.30 with a migraine – no, I don’t expect sympathy – I know I don’t drink enough. Maude was very concerned about me and the next day made sure I drank several glasses of water.

Maude left again on Thursday (I don’t think it was anything I said!) because she found out that she had a job interview back home in Brittany, and as she has not had a paid job since she finished her studies 7 months ago, she felt she had to go back and attend. It was a shame really, as we were getting on quite well and I was beginning to remember a lot of basic French from my school days (thank you, Miss Archer, you may have scared your classes witless but at least we learned something!), so there were some simple language lessons going on most of the time that we worked together. For instance, she would ask me what the time was as she didn't have a watch, I would tell her in English and then she would say 'and in French?'

On Wednesday afternoon, another glorious sunny day, Maude and I went for a circular walk along the lane from the farm, down another lane to the old mill (now a rather lovely house), back along the strip of land between the old mill leat and the River Inney, and up through Jo and James’ wood back to the farm. On the way we passed ‘my cottage’, which I first discovered back in November and have thought a lot about since. It is situated on a very quiet lane, facing east with magnificent views across a wooded valley and not another house in sight. It is also empty, locked and semi-derelict. My heart is drawn to this little cottage, it is so sad and I want to make it happy again. At the moment it is still probably saveable with a lot of hard work and quite a lot of money, but the upstairs windows are broken and have been for a long time, the window frames are rotten and the outhouse that once housed the ‘bathroom’ has caved in. How do I know all this? Because, dear readers, I had a damned good snoop about one day back in December! It has a lovely (well, you have to use your imagination a bit) south facing garden and would be ripe to re-do as an eco-home; ground source heat pump, bore hole, solar panels, etc. etc. Unfortunately, I have been told that the people who own it want it to fall down so that they can try and get planning permission to build a bigger, modern home on land adjacent to the site. Ugh! It shouldn’t be allowed – this is a traditional Cornish cottage with a large inglenook (judging by the size of the chimney – I did not break in!) and deserves to be saved! Perhaps I should write to the local council and see if I could get it listed? That would stop them allowing it to fall down. Okay – rant over.

We continued on our walk and saw primroses and celandines all along the hedgebanks and then we startled a deer that bounded across in front of us, forded the river in two bounds and disappeared up the slope on the other side of the valley. We also heard the woodpecker in the oak wood and the buzzards mewing overhead. The season seems to be so well-advanced down here that I wouldn’t be surprised to see returning swallows before I leave on 1st April.

The days here pass in a contented blur, so much so that I cannot remember from day to day exactly what I have been doing – suffice it to say that the majority of the time has been spent doing things at the bungalow, although I did make some bread yesterday using the recipe I tried at Cusgarne, and yesterday afternoon and most of today I have had an enormous bonfire! Bliss! It never ceases to amaze me how small a pile of ash is left after burning massive amounts of branches and twigs, quite magical......and also extremely therapeutic.

Back to Lucky Launceston!

The Lemon Drizzle cake and the scones (both plain and raisin) went down a storm, so I shall definitely try the cake recipe again. The second week at the organic farm was pretty similar to the first week – I spent the greater part of three days in the packing room making up the miscellaneous boxes i.e. the special orders. There is a standard box too so we had to bag up potatoes and carrots and onions for those – I got to be quite good at estimating what 500g of carrots looked like! The weather did improve in that it stopped raining but, unfortunately, it meant that the nights got even colder – I resorted to a hot water bottle in the end as well as the layers already mentioned. However, the clear night skies and lack of light pollution did mean that you could see thousands, if not millions, of stars – it was fantastic.

On the Monday of the second week a new WWOOFer arrived, Anna from Germany, so for a few days we were a very cosmopolitan bunch. She had just come from WWOOFing with Lawrence and Karen at Lee near Ilfracombe, so it was great to hear how they were all doing. We all went into Truro on Wednesday afternoon to do a bit of shopping but also to look round the cathedral. It is a beautiful building; quite simple in design but full of light and soaring pillars and some of the loveliest stone and wood carvings I have ever seen. Afterwards, we went to a Thorntons cafe where I splashed out on a Thorntons Hot Chocolate with cream and marshmallows and extra chocolate shavings on the top! Mallory and Adele were leaving on the Friday to go to Bristol for the weekend before starting at new places, and Mallory asked if I could give them a lift into Redruth to catch their coach. It was only after I’d said yes that she revealed that it left at 5.40 AM! On Wednesday, the weather was really cold and icy first thing but it suddenly warmed up and we ended up eating lunch outside – I realised at that moment how nice it must be here in a good summer. It was my turn to cook lunch so I made vegetarian Cornish Pasties (substituting cubed cheese for meat) and these were well received – just as well really as it took ages to dice the vegetables!

We walked to the local pub on Thursday evening for farewell drinks and didn’t get back until 11.30, then I couldn’t sleep properly and at 5.00am Adele woke me. The car was covered in ice and it took a good ten minutes of de-icing and scraping before we were ready to go. My in-car thermometer told me that the outside temperature was 24 F – about -5 or 6 C, I think (I really must read how to change the reading to Centigrade) and was the lowest I’d seen it all winter – mind you I’m not normally up at 5.00am to register it. I got the girls to Redruth in plenty of time, but decided there was no point in going back to bed so I would drive somewhere and watch the sunrise. For some bizarre reason I decided that Falmouth was a good place to go, but having driven round the town centre (twice) and got lost in a strange pedestrianised one-way system, I gave up on that idea and started back towards Cusgarne. The sky was paling in the east and I became aware that all around me were the ruins of tin mines reaching their silent chimneys to the sky so, following my nose and a very narrow lane, I drove towards one of them and managed to get a photo of the sun rising behind it by climbing up a hedgebank and balancing precariously on the top. I then drove back to Cusgarne and cooked myself breakfast before starting work.

I decided to leave Cusgarne on Saturday instead of Monday, as there was little point in staying on my days off, and Jo and James had already said I was welcome at Launceston. I’d intended to leave at about 10.00am but, while I was up at the farm shop collecting my boots and waterproof trousers, a phone call came through from a wholesaler that Greg sells to, saying he needed 10Kg of Purple Sprouting Broccoli by lunchtime. Greg was away and the only person able to pick the PSB was Thomas, Greg’s second-in-command. It seemed mean to leave him to pick that much by himself, so I volunteered to help – well, it was a lovely sunny day and it didn’t take that long to pick.

I arrived at Launceston at 1.30 and was welcomed with open arms by Jo, James and their grandchildren, Ella and Christopher. Then I was fed homemade soup and bread and later taken on a tour of inspection of the almost-but-not-quite-finished bungalow that Nathaniel and I started decorating back in November. They’d stripped out the old shower cubicle that had been situated in one of the bedrooms and the vanity unit in another bedroom, both of which drained into the flower bed outside – very unconventional, and had also removed the bathroom suite – a plumber is allegedly coming on 14th March to reinstate it. As well as that they had re-papered and painted the sitting room and both the remaining bedrooms that I hadn’t done, so they have not been idle since I was last here! There is a certain amount of urgency attached to finishing the decorating as the first holiday let is the second week in April – it’s always good to work to a deadline!

On Sunday I walked down to the oak wood and the river taking Jess, the collie, with me. We startled a roe deer in the wood – I just saw a white rump disappearing through the trees, and then we came across a huge drift of daffodils growing on the edge of the wood and cascading down the bank into the field below – spring has really arrived. In the afternoon, we had the first (I hope) of several bonfires to burn up the remnants of the hedgelaying and orchard pruning that has also taken place since I was last here. It was a beautiful day with an immense, cloudless blue sky above and all the birds chirruping in the trees, and the chickens scratching around for tasty morsels in the hedgebanks. The most wonderful feeling of peace and tranquillity stole over me – I wish I could somehow bottle that feeling and open it on days when I feel blue – or send it to Jeni who, sadly, is still struggling to cope with her broken heart in Bolivia.

Work started in earnest on Monday when we all went up to the bungalow, Jo to strip wooden kitchen cabinet doors, James to start laying a laminate floor in the dining room and me to paint the kitchen walls and so it has continued all week. It never ceases to amaze me how long these things take to do, mainly because other jobs become apparent as you work and need to be done too. However, after a week we can see a big difference and soon we will have to wait for the plumber to do the bathroom before we can do the finishing touches.

I have already been to two social occasions since arriving: one was to Jo’s local WI meeting which was held in Lezant (about two miles away). It is a small WI but everyone was very friendly and great fun, and the other was to a Pampered Chef party (like a Tupperware party or Virgin Vie, but selling kitchen/baking equipment). There was a free raffle and guess who won the prize? Yes, it was me (I won a raffle prize at their school Xmas Bingo back in December, too) and I am now the proud owner of a very well designed garlic press! I’ve decided that this must be some sort of a sign (as yet I don’t know of what) and my luck continued when I booked my car into the local garage for its MOT and it passed first time without any problems – Lucky Launceston indeed!

Another WWOOFer arrives on Monday – she is young and French, so I hope we get on alright.

Mud, Veg and a Blind Date!

The weather during my second week at Saltash did not improve; it remained generally wet with occasional periods of very wet! However, for one morning the sun shone and it felt quite springlike. I took a lump hammer, spade and crowbar and went to mend the corner of a hedgebank in a gateway. There was a tumble of rocks and stones on the trackway and I had to disassemble the area still further to get a good base, then I rebuilt the bank, packing earth between and behind the stones and sloping them backwards to try and give a stable structure. It’s a very satisfying job when you’re on a roll, but towards the end I was having to pinch stones from other bits of the bank!

The main job of the second week became the tractor shed: between us we managed to erect all six elm trunks and packed them in place using a local stone called schillet. I personally think there are too many letters in that word to best describe this stone! I was very glad we were not trying to build anything with it, as it just breaks up into small fragments, like slate, when it has been exposed to frost. Luckily, it was ideal for our purposes, as it packed down really tightly around the posts. Malcolm was into reusing materials, so the next job was to somehow lift into place three A-frames that had come out of the Cider Barn when it was turned into a cottage. These A-frames were either oak or, more likely, elm and were very heavy. After a great deal of thought we decided to use the mini-digger, without its bucket, as a type of crane and hang the A-frames off it by a chain. This idea worked up to a point, but the arm of the digger was not quite long enough so we had to lift one end into place and then winch the other up using a ratchet strap. Everything was very precarious and Heath Robinson-ish (lots of ropes lashing bits temporarily to other bits to stop them toppling over, etc) and I had to wear a very becoming hard hat whilst Malcolm swung off unsafe ladders wielding hammers, nails, saws, etc.! To make life even more difficult, the ‘floor’ of the new shed was a claggy quagmire of sticky mud that made walking a challenge and nearly led to several face-down- in-the-mud scenarios. By the end of the second week we did have the skeleton of the shed in place and Malcolm can work on it by himself for a while, until the next WWOOFer arrives.

Malcolm and Miriam took me out for a meal to a very nice pub called The Weary Friar at Pillaton, a village a few miles from them. I am seriously impressed with the pubs in Devon and Cornwall – this one had Addlestones and Thatchers Dry Cider on draught! Decisions, decisions....! Having managed to eventually eat most of the mince that Miriam had given me, I steered clear of the meat on the menu and went for a salmon steak with veg and new potatoes – it was so delicious that I almost licked my plate!

I have now moved to my next host near Truro, and things are different again. This is an organic vegetable farm supplying boxes to individuals via their own delivery van, on several different routes over three days of each week, as well as there being a farm shop, too. For the first three days I hardly saw the outside of the packing shed – not that it mattered as it was heaving it down with rain and I was definitely in the best place – weighing out and bagging up vegetables and ‘picking’ orders.

There are two other girls here at the moment, one from France and the other from New Zealand, and we all seem to get on OK even though I am more than twice their age. We are completely self-catering again and the kitchen is situated in the farm shop so that is where we tend to hang out when we’re not working as our rooms are too cold to sit in (I slept in trousers, T-shirt, Hoodie and two pairs of socks for the first two nights until Greg got round to sorting out the heating). We work five hours a day, five days a week which means we start at 8.00am and finish at 1.00, leaving the afternoons free.

I drove the girls over to Padstow on Wednesday as Mallory had a job interview for the summer season and it would have taken them hours to get there by public transport. It would have been a lovely afternoon out, as Padstow is quite pretty, but the weather was wet and misty and quite cold too, although, true to the intrepid British holidaymaker spirit, the place was busy and some people were sporting shorts!

The girls went off to Newquay for the weekend to try and find some nightlife and I have hung around the farm as the weather has not been brilliant and I didn’t feel like sightseeing with it still being half term – perhaps I’ll go to Truro sometime next week for a look round. As we were getting short of bread and the alternative is sliced shop-bought I spent part of Saturday making bread – very relaxing, especially when it turned out OK.

Yesterday evening, Greg asked if I would do him a favour – would I go to a concert in a local village hall with his next door neighbour? A strange request, I thought, but it was because Greg and his wife Teresa had bought tickets but did not feel like going so had given one ticket to their neighbour and then thought that I could use the other one so that it wouldn’t be wasted, so off I went on a blind date! Of course, it wasn’t a date but if it had been I think I got the better deal as he was quite good looking and several years younger than me and he was a GP. I refrained from asking his opinion about my various aches and pains and we actually had quite a good evening. The concert was by a young folk singer from Devon, who writes most of her own material and she was very good. Afterwards we retired to the pub where we struck up a conversation with a solicitor who turned out to be originally from Bristol and knew Draycott and Wells very well. I think my little GP felt a bit left out but never mind, eh?

Today, I am going to make some scones and try my hand at Lemon Drizzle Cake – no doubt the results will be eaten however they turn out as there are usually six of us (there are two other male employees) at coffee time and lunchtime and they seem to have big appetites!

A 'crunch', a coincidence and a complete contrast

I thought I knew why Windy Ridge was so called when we were standing outside in a brisk north-easterly at the follow-up TB test, but I was wrong – it was a mere breeze compared to the south-westerlies that blew in during my second week there! Not only were they fearsome in their strength, howling round the bungalow all day and night, but they were loaded with moisture, so that stepping out of the back door was like stepping into a garden sprayer – not pleasant. However, most of the jobs were mainly inside the buildings, so it was not too arduous, and once the Raeburn had been serviced, the bungalow was a haven of warmth and laughter. It was great fun watching Cathy using every ploy she could think of to get Glyn to let her drive his tractor – he would look as if he was seriously thinking about it and then say ‘No, I don’t think so – you need to practice more on the quad bike first’.

There was one unfortunate incident caused by the wind: a friend of Denise’s came for coffee, bearing freshly made scones, and as she opened the door of her Landrover Defender, the wind caught it and smacked it into the passenger door of my poor little Peugeot, causing two dents and a couple of scratches. She was mortified and immediately offered to pay cash to have it repaired if I would take it into the local bodyshop for an estimate. As this happened on the Saturday, I could not do anything until the Monday morning (when I was supposed to be leaving). I know it’s stupid to get upset over such a silly accident, but I felt disgruntled for the rest of the day and I’m afraid it was rather obvious to everyone that I was not a ‘happy bunny’. I duly took it in on Monday morning and got an estimate and the lady duly paid up, but I’m not sure when I can get it fixed – perhaps I can work something out when I am back at Launceston for a month in March.

On my last Sunday, Glyn and Denise took Cathy and me for a drive over Dartmoor to Widecombe and also Princetown (to show Cathy the prison!). It was as we were driving along that I heard Denise mention a name I knew – Bill Olding. He was someone that Barry and I used to meet frequently at horse shows all over the South West and in Wales as he also bred Welsh ponies and we were often up against him. It turns out that he and his wife, Dorothy, are Glyn and Denise’s oldest friends! I can’t believe these coincidences that keep happening, although it did start me thinking about the past again, which is not particularly helpful.

I finally left Ugborough on Monday afternoon and drove for just over half an hour to Saltash, just over the Tamar Bridge, in Cornwall. Although, Malcolm and his wife Miriam made me very welcome and invited me to supper, it soon became apparent that this will be a total contrast to the last two weeks. I am by myself in a small holiday cottage attached to a larger (empty) holiday cottage that is then attached to their house, and I am completely self-catering. This will be a huge challenge as there are not even the basics (salt, pepper, herbs, sauces, etc) and I couldn’t find any saucepans either (I was finally directed to a large cupboard in the other holiday cottage where I even found a pressure cooker!), plus there isn’t a conventional cooker, just a two ring hob and a combi-microwave. Thinking on my feet, I asked for a few essentials which duly turned up and then I started to make a list of other items. However it is very difficult to know what sort of things to ask for – what sort of meat are they prepared to provide? Vegetables? Fruit? I had no idea so asked for some mince, carrots and broccoli. The mince was an extra-large pack so I have had several meals from it so far – spaghetti Bolognese without tomato puree (bland), savoury mince (very similar, but served with potatoes) and homemade beefburgers that I coated in oatmeal and fried.

The actual cottage is very comfortable with under-floor heating, huge fold-back windows onto a deck with a lovely view, and a woodburning stove. At the moment I am partially living in the other holiday cottage, too as the painter has been decorating upstairs and the place is in turmoil. However, I should be moving into the bedroom upstairs later on today, so that should be better. The weather, apart from the day I arrived, has been pretty miserable; misty and/or raining for most of the time and as the sheep are all outside and most of the other work has been outside too, I have been very glad of my waterproofs and wellies.

My day starts at about 9.00am when I let out and feed the chickens (sadly reduced to only two at the moment since a recent fox attack) and then I go to feed the pregnant ewes and check on the lambs from last year. The farm is quite large (about 80 acres, I think) and the sheep are in fairly far-flung fields so it involves quite a lot of walking – I have been very pleased to have the thumbstick that my Uncle Tony made for me, it has definitely helped me on the hills and in the slippery mud. In addition to these jobs I have also been helping Malcolm with construction jobs; digging a trench to run some drainage pipe to pipe a spring in one of the fields, patching some holes in the stone hedgebanks (a bit like dry-stone walling but with a bank of earth behind) and digging post holes for a new tractor shed and also for a lean-to on the existing barn. I hasten to add that I haven’t physically had to dig the trench or the post holes – we borrowed a mini-digger with an augur for that, but it has been quite hard work in adverse conditions. The weather was so bad the other day that I had an enforced day off, which allowed me to catch up with my journal and some reading, but by mid-afternoon I was going slightly stir-crazy, so in a break in the weather, I went for a walk round the farm going downhill to the wildlife pond where there is already a large amount of frogspawn, then along the banks of the estuary, where a lot of the trees are covered in grey-green stagshorn lichen (used to make a purple dye when mixed with ammonia) due to the moist, mild conditions. The tide was out revealing a large expanse of mud flats where I hoped I would see some birds feeding but, although I heard curlew and geese, they had flown by the time I got near enough to see them. However, I did see a large flock of mallards and some shell ducks, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. I also found what was, I think, some otter spraint on a patch of ground right next to the water and, further along, some opened mussel shells as if something had been feeding there. Then the weather set in again, so I made my way back to the cottage and lit the fire and drew the curtains.

I really don’t like feeling quite so isolated as it gives me far too much time in my own company and I was never good with that. However, I suspect that the next place I go to will have more WWOOFers but will also be self-catering (I could be wrong) as it seems to be a more commercial, organic vegetable-growing enterprise – it is very difficult to form an accurate picture from the ‘blurb’ that the hosts write. Ah well, back to planning today’s menu – will it be rissoles, cottage pie, spag bol again.........?