Three Meals and a Wedding

 

Small White butterfly on water mint

The week after Cropredy it was my birthday, and it turned into a week-long celebration! First of all, my lodgers invited me out for supper with two of their friends, both of whom I had met before when we all worked side-by-side on the organic market garden that Lou and Liam ran. We went to The Crown in Glastonbury which had, until quite recently, been a boarded up eyesore in the centre of the town. The décor was modern but very pleasant and the food absolutely delicious. I opted for three of the starters, served as a main course, as I love a range of different flavours – it must be why I like buffet food so much!

The second treat was actually on my birthday, when I went for a birthday massage at my friend, Karen’s, and then she, her husband and I went off into Wells for supper at a bar/restaurant where they were serving tapas – another meal of beautifully put together flavours, with great company.

To round off my birthday week Jeni, Hutch and Dave took me for a meal at the restaurant in Shepton Mallet where we celebrated my birthday last year. Again the food was delicious and of a very high standard and my dessert was presented to me with ‘Happy Birthday’ piped around the edge of the plate and a single candle gracing the centre!

It was back to work with a bang the following week, with three mornings of gardening, followed by a week-long farm sit at the alpaca farm. There were three new alpacas – Ava and Ivor, born 14 weeks before and Chester, who was just 4 weeks old. Sarah had had a bad time with one of her favourite girls, Angelina, the mother of Ava. She always produces large cria (baby alpacas) and has had difficulties in the past but, this time, it was even worse as the uterus had twisted. The vet had to do an emergency Caesarean to save the mum but prepared Sarah for the inevitability of a dead cria. Amazingly, a very large, very much alive, cria slipped into the world and it wasn’t long before Angelina was up and tending to her new baby, almost as if nothing had happened! Not surprisingly, Sarah has reluctantly decided not to breed from Angelina again. Ava is gorgeous and looks like a big, furry teddy bear.

Angelina followed by Ava

Ivor 

Most of Sarah’s alpacas are of the huacaya variety with short, fluffy coats and a semi-erect topknot, but two of them are of the suri type, which has a much longer, flatter coat, which sometimes looks like dreadlocks, and a flattened fringe. Sarah crossed one of her huacaya males with a suri female and out popped Chester! His coat looks as if it may be typical suri but he has a fluffy topknot and is very cute – this maybe because he is small at the moment, being only 4 weeks old.

Chester and his mum (note her flatter topknot)

The three Labradors were ridiculously pleased to see me, which was gratifying, especially as I don’t really take them for walks while I’m there. However, we did go out to the unoccupied hay field twice a day where I spent a lot of time throwing two frisbees about. The two ‘pups’ would chase after the frisbee and then attempt to bring it back to me together, before trying to decide who would drop it first, so that I could repeat the performance. However, their mum, Bonnie, had totally different ideas and would grab a frisbee and then hang on to it, so there was only one frisbee available for the other two. At some point during the walk down the field, she would lose interest in carrying it and then I would have to search the field for it – it’s surprising how difficult it is to see a bright red frisbee in fairly short grass!

Hazelnut Patrol

At the end of the hayfield I gathered up the frisbees and left them on top of the gatepost while we went into the narrow triangular field that runs alongside the River Chew – my throwing skills lack a certain amount of accuracy and I didn’t want to lose one in the river! The dogs soon got used to this routine and would wait eagerly for me to open the gate so that they could go nutting and blackberrying! I know Labradors will eat most things, but these three adore hazel nuts and blackberries! I’d leave them to it and wander along the river bank hoping to see a kingfisher or even the glimpse of an otter, as Chris got a very grainy video of two otters playing in the water earlier this year. Unfortunately, I was disappointed, but I often saw and heard the buzzard overhead and was lucky enough on one solitary walk to see a large heron.

Morning rollcall of the boys

The male alpacas are kept in a field away from the females and furthest from the farm buildings. Their water comes from a large container that catches rain water from the roof of their shelter and, in a normal English summer, would be more than adequate. However, I became increasingly concerned that I would run out of water for them before the end of the week. Jeni came to visit for a day and with her riding shotgun (and opening the gates for me) we loaded four 5-gallon water containers into the back of my car and drove across two fields to get supplies to the boys. If the weather had been wet, we would never have made it but, once the dew had dried, it was all plain sailing - we still felt quite intrepid, though!

Honda Jazz water carrier!

Despite the long hot, dry summer we have had, the water mint was still thriving and flowering in a dried-up stream bed and was alive with bees and butterflies and the alder trees seemed to have a metallic blue beetle on nearly every leaf. When I looked up online what they might be I was amused to find that they are called Alder Leaf Beetles and were thought to be extinct in this country until 2004! They have obviously made a strong comeback since then, at least in this area, as many of the leaves had been reduced to lace! They do no permanent damage to the trees so that is a plus, after the ravages of pests and diseases on our trees in recent years.

The aptly named Alder Leaf Beetle

The following week was spent gardening for clients with the beginning of the autumn tidy-up and then back to the alpaca farm for a quick weekend sit.

In the middle of September, my niece and her long-term partner were getting married in Sheffield, so Jeni and I drove to Cheltenham, stayed overnight and then continued our journey with Mum, arriving the day before the wedding so that Mum would have a chance to get over the journey. I’d been quite anxious about what I should wear as I have so few ‘smart’ clothes these days. I was really touched when Jeni rang to say that she had been around the local charity shops and bought me a complete ensemble! Her choice was spot-on and fitted really well – I think I shall employ her as my ‘personal shopper’ again!

Mum and me in our finery

Don't they scrub up well!

The wedding was quite informal with the service taking place at the old industrial complex called Kelham Island, in a former engine house, complete with tall red brick chimney stack, and was then followed by a sit-down meal at a nearby venue, owned and run by the same people. The food was plentiful, imaginative and delicious and was then followed by chatting and dancing. It was a lovely, happy gathering and it made a change to see Lynda’s garden, and the rest of Sheffield, with plants in leaf and flowering, as I normally only see it in the depths of winter.

Katie, Simon and Leo

Three cousins having a good chinwag

Unfortunately, on the Sunday morning, Mum felt she was going down with a cold and spent the drive back to Cheltenham alternately coughing and sneezing, and sometimes both together. A couple of days later and she tested positive for Covid and my brother’s partner came from London to look after her, as she was quite weak and wobbly. On the same day, Dave also tested positive and I had begun to feel as if I had a cold coming, too. I'd been so lacking in get-up-and-go, that I had happily sat in front of the TV for several hours watching the coverage of the State Funeral for Queen Elizabeth II. I am not a royalist but was moved by the spectacle and our ability, as a nation, to pull together an extraordinary and splendid ceremony. 

All that week the tests proved negative, until last Saturday when I was feeling quite under-the-weather and ‘Bingo!’ a positive test! Luckily, I’d kept myself pretty much to myself during the week so, hopefully, haven’t infected anyone else. Lynda took over from Jo on Sunday, looking after Mum, and now I have felt well enough to come and do my bit, too, releasing Lynda to attend a long-booked play at Stratford. Mum is gradually recovering and the enforced inactivity won’t do me any harm either – there has been quite a lot of TV watching and knitting of socks!

Gatekeeper on water mint

TravellingJan rides again!

 

Glastonbury Sunrise

Well, it’s finally happened – TravellingJan is back on the road again! But before I tell you all about it, let’s do a bit of a catch-up on life since my last blog.

It was Mum’s 94^th birthday on 24^th July, so Jeni and I arranged to go for the weekend and then found out that my brother was going to be there, too. Jeni made a lemon drizzle cake (well several small ones, in fact, so that Mum could freeze some) as it’s Mum’s favourite and I baked a couple of different quiches for a birthday lunch. We decided to try out a new route to Cheltenham that didn’t involve the steep hill out of Bath (you’ll see why, later) so set off in what felt like completely the wrong direction, heading towards Frome and then Bradford-on-Avon, Chippenham, Malmesbury and Cirencester. Google Maps insisted it was several miles shorter than the route I’ve driven for years and, potentially, quicker, and it wasn’t wrong! It was nice to see some different countryside and picturesque villages and Bradford-on-Avon is always lovely with the river and the Kennet and Avon Canal running through the centre.

The weather was very warm, so we didn’t do too much over the weekend, but on the Saturday evening we went to the pub in the village where they were having a Tapas Evening and had a very enjoyable meal. We also went to Mum’s favourite gardens at North Cerney House where we indulged in more Lemon Drizzle cake and Millionaire’s Shortbread whilst drinking tea and looking out over the walled garden. My brother had been eyeing up a sloping area of grass with a certain wistful look in his eyes, and then gave into temptation and rolled down the hill! He didn’t get up for a little while afterwards as it had made him dizzier than he expected! Some people just never grow up!

Rich revisiting his childhood!

Back at the end of June I’d heard, via Facebook, that the young couple who ran the organic market garden that I helped with a bit during lockdown, were desperately looking for somewhere to stay. They’d rented the ground and the owner had sold up and moved to Greece where he had offered them employment, but it was taking far longer than anyone had anticipated to get through the bureaucratic red tape that is involved in setting up a new business in Greece and getting visas and residency permits sorted. They had already been staying in a room in their friends’ house for three months, but felt that they might be outstaying their welcome, so I offered for them to come and stay with me until visas etc., could be sorted. What I hadn’t realised until then, in my naivety, is that there are many people in Glastonbury (and probably elsewhere, too) who have no permanent home and move in a continuous flow of sofa-surfing and rented rooms. Lou and Liam have been great since they moved in, being very quiet and respectful of my space and privacy, but we’ve also had some shared meals and good chats, plus they have looked after the house and garden while I’ve been away. I may just hide their visa application forms, when they finally arrive, as they are very keen to help me with garden projects once the weather cools down a bit!

I finally got my camper van back on 21^st July, serviced and MOT’d, and ready for the next adventure. As it had cost a fair bit to get her back on the road, I felt that I must make a concerted effort to use her more this year, which meant being prepared to go off on my own, as well as occasionally with Jeni. But where to go? Now, anyone who has read my blogs over the years will remember that at this time of year I could usually be found heading towards a small village in Oxfordshire with a group of my sister’s and brother-in-law’s friends, to sit in a field listening to music. Obviously, the pandemic had put the festival on hold for three years, but we had stopped going the year before that because Chris, the main instigator of the group, had very sadly died and no-one wanted to go there without him. I decided to see if there were any tickets still available and duly bought one and a three-day camping pass, so now I was committed!

I decided to do the outward journey in two stages as I didn’t feel completely confident in Bunty’s reliability so, on Wednesday afternoon, on a boiling hot day, I loaded all the necessities that I could think of into the van and off we set en route to Cheltenham and an overnight stop with Mum. Driving an old, normally aspirated, diesel vehicle is very different to driving a newer petrol car and I soon found that I had to adopt quite a different driving style, shifting up and down through the gears much more frequently. I discovered that 5^th gear was only for cruising at a decent speed on flat roads, any slight increase in gradient would result in a drastic drop in revs and a hasty change down into 4^th (or 3^rd when I got it really wrong!) Bunty doesn’t like hills, be they long and gradual or short and steep, hence the need to plan my route carefully and avoid the steep hill and sharp left turn at the top of Newbridge Hill in Bath. The new route worked pretty well, apart from a heart-in-the-mouth hill start in the centre of Bradford-on-Avon, and we arrived at Mum’s in good time.

I found Mum really struggling with the heat; she hadn’t slept well for days and had no appetite, so we ditched the idea of going out for an evening meal and had scrambled egg on toast instead, which was a much better option in the circumstances. We were both up quite early on Thursday as Mum was also off to stay with my sort-of-aunty, Jen, in Cwmbran for a few days, so it wasn’t long before Bunty and I hit the road again, heading off across the Cotswolds through Stow-on-the-Wold, Chipping Norton, Banbury and on to Cropredy. Despite the embarrassment of crawling up multiple Cotswold hills in 2^nd gear with a trail of cars behind me, we made good time and arrived in Cropredy before 8.30am.

Camp site 7A from the canal bridge

At first, I was a bit upset because, at the last moment, I had taken a wrong turning and so had only one option of camping field available to me as I had come into the village the ‘wrong’ way. However, I was soon mollified by being directed to a spot right next to the canal and, as I discovered later, within listening distance of the stage. I parked up as levelly as I could and then started sorting out the interior of the van – that was when I discovered that the fridge wasn’t working! With predicted temperatures of 32 degrees this was not a good start as I only had two ice blocks in my cold box, and they were fast defrosting. I hurriedly transferred everything into the fridge, working on the assumption that it was probably better insulated than the cold box, and hoped for the best.

As the concert field didn’t open until 2pm with the first act starting at 4pm, I decided to walk along the towpath and into the village to look at all the stalls that are set up there during the weekend. I very soon came to a narrowboat where a guy was selling handmade leather items and struck up a conversation. I chatted to him for ages and then, slightly further along the canal, I found a lady who made felt hats, amongst other things, and struck up a conversation with her. She was thrilled to find a fellow wool enthusiast and we chatted for even longer about all sorts of things. It turned out that she had lived in Evercreech and Shepton Mallet and also knew Glastonbury quite well – what a small world!

Festival ready

When the field opened, I took my camping chair, a bottle of water and a puzzle book and headed in. It was already sweltering on the field as it slopes and faces due south, so the sun really pitches in there. However, I stuck it out all day as I wanted to see Clannad, an Irish group made famous by the theme to the TV series Harry’s Game, and whose music I’ve enjoyed for years. They were on stage at 7.30 by which time the heat had dissipated a bit and I was feeling more comfortable. I wasn’t disappointed as their act was just as good as their studio recordings and their rendition of Herne the Hunter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZI9ZVApSA8) gave me goosebumps. I was probably witnessing their very last live performance as they have decided to retire this year after 50+ years.

Festival evening sky

The last act of the evening was the Trevor Horn Band who, more or less, played the 80s and 90s pop charts as Trevor Horn had produced the likes of 10cc and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. It was a very lively end to the evening with lots of people dancing and singing along.

Thinking that the overnight temperatures would still be pretty unbearable I completely under-estimated how chilly a metal box with the windows open can become, and spent the night being restlessly cold and uncomfortable – another lesson learned!

Cropredy lock 

Friday dawned with clear skies and sunshine and by 9.00am it was already very hot. The music started at midday, but I decided to go in at about 1.30 and by 3pm I’d had enough and headed back to the village in search of shade and a decent ice cream. There has always been a stall in the centre of the village opposite the church that sells Water Buffalo Ice Cream, so I headed there and found a bench in the shade on which to sit and eat my ice cream whilst people watching. I was soon joined by another couple who’d also succumbed to the lure of delicious ice cream and we started chatting. It turned out that they were parked a couple of rows along from me and, when I mentioned about my lack of refrigeration, they very kindly offered to refreeze my ice blocks and lend me two frozen ones overnight. Aren’t people kind? It turned out that he was a chartered electrical engineer and he, even more kindly, offered to bring his multimeter over and see if he could work out why the fridge didn’t work. Apparently, the electronic ignition was working, even though the indicator light wasn’t on, but it wouldn’t ignite the gas and, after investigating the rear of the fridge through the outside grill, we decided not to even try as all the pipework looks very corroded – another job to sort out.

I decided it was far too hot to go back to the field, so I sat in the shade of Bunty and listened to the music from there. After a while I got out my spinning wheel (oh, didn’t I mention I’d packed that?) and sat in the early evening warmth, listening to the music and spinning away. This also led to several conversations with random strangers, so I didn’t really feel lonely at all.

Travelling spinning wheel and travelling Bunty

Saturday, if anything, was even hotter than the previous two days and I decided not to go onto the concert field until the early evening. Instead I walked down to the village and went round the car boot sale that always takes place to coincide with the festival, but it was too hot to linger long. I then walked around to The Red Lion pub, opposite the church, where I bought a pint of … no, not cider, orange juice and soda water, and then went and sat in the churchyard in the shade to drink it. Afterwards I went into the church as it was hosting an art gallery of local artistic talent, some of which was very good. For a final time, I walked along the towpath and treated myself to a pair of earrings and a wristband from the leatherworker guy, before returning to the van.

My sister had told me that Katie, the daughter of the aforementioned Chris and Jude, was also at the festival on her own and had passed on my phone number to her. We finally agreed to meet at the bar at 6pm, where we had a lovely catch up whilst not buying overpriced pints from the bar, but swigging water like it was going out of style! We then went our separate ways and I found a spot to settle for the final two acts of the festival, Richard Thompson, singer, song writer and awesome guitarist who was, for a while, part of the Fairport Convention line up, and then Fairport themselves to close the proceedings and, as the full moon rose over the field and shooting stars flickered overhead Simon Nicol sang one of my favourite tunes, The Girl from the Hiring Fair (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHWRYzXG9sU) – another goosebump moment and so very magical.

Full moon over Cropredy

I had intended to cook a leisurely breakfast on Sunday morning before driving home but, in the end I had a cup of tea (without milk ‘cos it had very quickly turned to yogurt in the heat!), packed everything away safely, checked coolant and oil levels and set off back the way I had come. The countryside looked almost autumnal with the combines busy in the corn fields and leaves prematurely falling from the trees, but it was a lovely drive home with me feeling more confident of Bunty’s reliability and my ability to adapt my driving style to meet the demands of an old diesel engine and, after just over three hours we were home!

There’ll be no stopping me now! Where shall I go next, I wonder?

Glastonbury sunset

Holiday!!

My holiday home

I’m writing this on the hottest day of the year, as it is far too hot to be outside, even though it looks lovely! I put down a small bowl of water for my resident flock of sparrows yesterday and have had to top it up as it looks as if they have been bathing in it too. Perhaps I should get a proper bird bath to put somewhere in my garden. 

This month I have finally got around to doing a couple of things that have been put off for a while. The first was a long-overdue eye test, as I realised that I have never had a free eye test, which starts at age 60, and I am nearly 68! I hadn’t noticed a huge deterioration in my sight and am still able to read road signs and number plates at a legal distance, but still … 8 years? I was amazed to find that my eyesight has barely changed at all in all that time – a slight change in my right eye, but no new reading glasses required, and I only ordered new distance glasses because my last pair are broken and I also wanted an anti-glare coating for night driving. 

The second thing was to finally get my camper van back on the road, with the intention of using it a bit this summer. Unfortunately, where it had been standing under trees for a few months, the body work was green-streaked with black spots of lichen and took several attempts to clean, especially as I had to clean the roof precariously swaying at the very top of a stepladder. Once it looked a bit more presentable, I booked it in for a pre-MOT inspection and MOT and service. This was a couple of weeks ago and I still haven’t got it back, although I did tell them there was no great urgency! 

Almost on a whim I decided to book myself a holiday, as I felt I had been ‘on the go’ for a year without a proper break, which might account for my low energy levels. I contacted my old WWOOF hosts down near Launceston and booked their Shepherd’s Hut for 5 nights, which felt very self-indulgent. I was due to travel down on Monday, 4th July but before that happened, I had a cry for help from Dave.

Before

After

Kerb appeal!

To put it bluntly his landlord inspection had not gone well, and they were telling him that he needed to engage the services of a professional gardener and a professional cleaner to get things back on track – cue urgent phone call to Mum! The only time I could feasibly go and help was on Thursday, 30th June, returning home on the afternoon of 3rd July. Over the course of those few days we transformed the garden (which, incidentally, had looked pretty much the same since before he moved in) from a weed patch to a garden with defined beds, we reinstated decorative gravel areas, put down decorative bark under the front hedge and stripped ivy from the back fence. On top of that we also deep-cleaned the bathroom and en-suite shower room and, after I’d left, Dave sorted out the spare room and put loads of stuff in the loft. We had a bit of fun driving to various garden centres and nurseries to source a selection of herbaceous perennials and did a tip run with the first lot of garden waste we produced. I think I broke my boy, and any concerns I’d had about my energy levels were pretty much scuppered! 

Now you see it ...

... now you don't

Is there really gravel there?

Ah yes, that looks better!

Another 'before' ...

... and 'after'

Dave putting down the decorative bark

However, I was really ready for my holiday after that and was determined not to do much at all, so I packed a selection of books, a couple of quiz books and my travelling spinning wheel and prepared fleece and headed off down the A30 to Launceston. It’s been two years since I was last there as Jeni and I had taken the camper van on its inaugural run down to Devon and Cornwall between the first and second lockdowns (see a previous blog). Jo and James made me very welcome and transported all my bags down the track to the Shepherd’s Hut in the back of the old Landrover, before explaining how everything worked and leaving me to settle in. Jo had provided some scrumptious scones, homemade jam and clotted cream so I made a cuppa and sat outside to enjoy the view and the profound peace and quiet. 

What a beautiful, cosy space!

Cream tea!

I spent most of my holiday just immersed in Nature, cocooned in my off-grid home, emerging from the field to go for a few short walks around the area and, on my penultimate day, to drive to the coast near Bude to paddle in the sea! 

Widemouth Bay, near Bude

I did succumb to work of a sort when I volunteered to help with the churchyard clear up at Lezant one morning, in preparation for a village wedding. I just don’t seem able to completely stop myself! There were five or six of us for most of the morning and we managed to clear paths and remove brambles and ivy from around the perimeter of the building – it definitely looked a lot better when we’d finished. 

Some of the workers on tea break

One of the highlights of my stay was when I went with James to the orchard to see Number 74 (aka Lady) the sheep whose life I had helped to save 9 years ago! If you have read my previous blogs you will know the story and the subsequent visits when she showed every sign of remembering me. She is now 12 years old and showing her age – sadly, James thinks this might be her last summer, so I had to see her one last time. Yet again, she remembered me, and I was able to give her a cuddle and a kiss on the top of her head before she showed signs of embarrassment at all this emotion! I helped a few animals in the 5 years I worked as a WWOOFer on farms around the UK, but No 74 will always remain my all time favourite.💓

She may be looking her age, but she's still beautiful to me x

I left Cornwall on Saturday, 9^th July at the start of this very hot, dry spell that we’re ‘enjoying’ and decided to go cross-country rather than blast down the A30 and A303 with the rest of the hordes. It was great fun to more or less follow my nose through north Cornwall, into Devon and thence to Somerset and I encountered hardly any traffic, even though I was using A and B roads for the most part – people just don’t seem to use these older roads anymore, preferring to drive on trunk roads and soulless motorways! It was a bit of a meandering route taking in Holsworthy, Great Torrington and South Molton before coming into the back of Taunton via Norton Fitzwarren and thence across the Levels via Othery and Burrowbridge to Street and Glastonbury, and it took an extra hour, but it was definitely worth it for the wonderful countryside that I saw.

Perhaps, once I have a roadworthy camper van again, Travelling Jan will re-emerge and go off on new adventures!

The view from the Shepherd's Hut

A trip to London, amongst other things.

 

The cousins!

Where the heck did May and June go? It doesn’t seem five minutes since I last wrote a blog, but it’s six weeks ago!

The Birthday Boy!

On May 14^th my brother was holding a party to celebrate his 60^th - this led to a bit of confusion as he was actually 62 on 15^th, but his original party plans had been scuppered by the Covid lockdowns. The party was to be held in a hall round the corner from where he and his family live in London, so I booked myself into the Woolwich Premier Inn and bought a coach ticket. Initially, Jeni was coming up with me, but she wasn’t at all well so, in the end it was just me travelling alone. The coach is a superfast service which starts in Taunton and picks up at various points along the way, one of them being Shepton Mallet. The downside to this is that it leaves Shepton at 7.45am, so I had to drive over from Glastonbury, drop my car off at Jeni’s and walk round to the coach stop, necessitating leaving home at 7.00am! The coach takes almost exactly 3 hours and is very comfortable and I had the bonus of having an extra seat booked that I could use to put my bag, etc on. Instead of going into Victoria Coach Station it terminates at Hammersmith Bus Depot and I then navigated myself across London on the Underground – I don’t know why I’ve always stressed about doing this in the past, as it is quite simple if you know which lines you need and which direction you’re heading.

St James's Park

Because I couldn’t book into the hotel until 3pm, I decided to poke my nose above ground, like a myopic mole, at Green Park Station as the name seemed to suggest greenery and a park! I soon found Green Park, which was indeed green and a park, and strolled along in the warm sunshine until I suddenly found myself on The Mall in front of Buckingham Palace! (As you can tell, my geographical knowledge of London is sketchy, to say the least!). The Mall was closed to traffic as they were tarting it all up in preparation for the Jubilee celebrations, so I crossed over and went into St James’ Park where, incidentally, my Dad proposed to my Mum many moons ago, and had a wander round there, too, stopping to eat a baguette and drink a cup of tea whilst sitting on a low wall people watching.

The view from my room towards the Thames

I got to Woolwich, booked into the hotel and had a bit of a snooze before meeting up with my brother and going to a local hostelry for a family dinner. The next morning, I ate an enormous all-you-can-eat breakfast, so that I wouldn’t need lunch and then my bro and I walked along the Thames Path which, as its name suggests, follows the River Thames. My initial idea had been to walk to the Cutty Sark ship at Greenwich, but it was further than I thought, and it was an incredibly hot day. As I’d packed light, I only had limited clothing with me, so was totally overdressed for the weather – most people were in shorts and flip flops, I was in jeans and hiking boots! We made it as far as The Cutty Sark pub where we stopped for refreshment and then caught the bus back to Woolwich, in time to meet my sister and brother-in-law who had come down from Sheffield by train. Later on my son arrived by car and Underground from Northampton and my cousins, Chris (from Dublin) and Caroline (from Oxfordshire) and we were all booked into the Premier Inn, so quite a party of us.

A beautiful Thames barge

Canada goose and goslings by the Thames Path

The party itself, was great fun as Richard’s friend used to be a professional Drum ‘n’ Bass DJ and was in his element, and the caterers produced the most mouth-watering Caribbean cuisine, plus I got to chat to my cousins, neither of whom I had seen for four years. We had to catch the Night Bus back to Woolwich and I got quite excited remembering the Night Bus from Harry Potter, but it was just an ordinary bus that ran throughout the night 😞! (Londoners have no idea how lucky they are to have such good transport facilities – a shopping trip by bus from Draycott to Cheddar, which is just a couple of miles away, pretty much takes up an entire morning or afternoon!)

The next morning there was a family brunch at another local pub, where we spent nearly 3 hours, chatting and eating, before I made my way back across Town, in company with Dave until Green Park, and then caught the Berry’s Bus back to Shepton and home.

Since that bit of rare excitement, it has been pretty much wall-to-wall gardening for clients and myself, although my energy levels post-Covid have taken a battering and I have found myself nodding off after lunch quite frequently, much to my annoyance. However, I did give myself a day off towards the end of May to go and catch up with my mate Mick, who now works as Head Kitchen Gardener at a place called Sculpture by the Lakes near Dorchester. They were hosting the Dorset Garden Festival there and also a sculpture exhibition, plus an outdoor cooking event, so it was worth the journey, plus it was another beautiful day. There are permanent sculptures set around two large lakes, easily accessible by meandering pathways and overhung by mature trees, giving welcome shade and cover for the myriad birds that sang beautifully as I passed by.

Sculpture in the Lake

A very lifelike cheetah

I met up with Mick shortly after I got there and we had a long-overdue catch up, then I looked around the Garden Festival, had a spot of lunch and then went back to the Kitchen Garden to listen to Mick’s talk on no-dig gardening, which was very informative and interesting, before I came away, but not empty-handed, as Mick had given me a couple of plants and I had treated myself to a forged dragonfly on a spike to decorate my new herbaceous border.

Another amazing sculpture

Swan and cygnets

Mum had been wanting to come and see my new home for the last year, but I had put her off as I was concerned about her safety on the landing, as there is no handrail so that, if she staggered on coming out of the bedroom, she could easily fall down the stairs. I had tried to get someone to come and give me a quote to put something in place, to no avail, and so she was unable to come, until my Eureka! moment at about 5.00am (I always have my best thoughts then!) one morning, when I realised that if Mum slept in my room and I slept in the spare room, she could steady herself with a wall until she could reach the banister rail. So, on the Jubilee Weekend, Mum finally got to come and stay, and we had a lovely time as I drove her all around the countryside around Glastonbury, which she had not visited before. I even drove her up Glastonbury High Street to show her some of the ‘sights’ but most of them must have gone home early! 😄

My haul of shrubs

This week I have finally treated myself to some shrubs for my border and have been planting it up in the early hours of the last few mornings, before the sun gets too high in the sky. I had accumulated a fair collection of herbaceous perennials, some rescued from my gardening clients, some bought from roadside stalls and some reduced plants from the sick bay at B & M (most of which revived after a good soaking) and really needed to get them in the ground but needed the shrubs in first to form the skeleton of the border. They all look a bit ‘plonked’ at the moment, but I am confident that they will eventually grow and spread and cover every inch of soil!

6.00am planting!

and from the other direction

Well, I think I’ve ‘gone on’ rather this month, so I’ll stop now and let you go off and make a cup of tea!