Back to the Future in Monmouth

At the end of March I left Cornwall behind once more and drove back to Somerset where I spent a night with a couple that I met through my earlier Somerset WWOOF host, who want me to do a paid farm sit for them in June when they go on their annual holiday. I have been toying with the idea of doing paid farm/smallholding/house-sits as a new career, but hadn’t made a firm decision about it – looks as if Fate took a hand in the proceedings and precipitated me into it. It will be quite nice to earn money again! My first-ever WWOOF hosts, who were quite money-oriented, couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to get paid to look after other people’s places, but in those far-off days I didn’t have the confidence to believe I was competent enough.

From there I drove back to Cheltenham for a few days with my Mum and also had the lovely surprise of not only my children visiting on the Sunday, but also my brother and his little daughter who came to stay for a few days during the Easter holidays. My WWOOF hosts in Cornwall had generously given me the gift of a leg of Cornish lamb (their own) which had been wrapped in bubble wrap and newspaper so that it would be OK overnight in my car on the way back, so we had that for Sunday lunch. It was absolutely delicious, and made me realise all over again, just how much I miss being self-sufficient in meat production.

On 2nd April I sallied forth once more and headed for a new WWOOF host just outside Monmouth. Luckily she had emailed me some very comprehensive instructions on how to find her, which was just as well, as I seemed to be driving for a long time down narrow lanes with very little in the way of habitation! Eventually, I came upon a small hamlet with a cluster of houses around a tiny green complete with waterpump and a tiny church, which is now a private house. From there I had to drive a further half mile down a no through road before arriving in the farm yard. The farm dates back in part to the 16th Century and was obviously quite important at one time as it had its own mill down by the stream to which other local farmers would bring their grain for milling. It is thought that this mill was not for grinding flour for human consumption but more for milling grain for livestock feed, but very little is known for sure. However, there was evidence of several cart tracks coming from different directions to reach the mill. I spent my first day off poking about in the woods surrounding the mill and trying to make sense of the layout – behind the mill was an obvious flat channel (the mill leat) that ran for several hundred yards back from the mill ending abruptly at the stream. However, I could not make sense of this as the stream level, even allowing for the fact that the water level was low due to the dry winter and early spring, was far too low to have ever fed into the leat. Eventually, I waded across the stream and had a look on the other bank where it soon became obvious that I was standing in what had once been the mill pond, confirmed by the finding of a very well-built overspill weir in the remaining stone wall. This made no sense at all and it wasn’t until I spoke to my host that things became clearer – in the early years of the twentieth century there had been some very wet and stormy winters and it is thought that during one of these the stream, that had once flowed into and out of the mill pond, dramatically changed course and cut a much deeper bed slicing straight through between the mill pond and the mill leat and effectively making the mill redundant. It is certainly true that the records show a Miller still present in 1896 but no record of one after that date.

My host is heavily involved with the Transition Movement in Monmouth and is Chair of the Food Sub-Committee. The Transition Initiative originally started as an academic investigation at a college in Ireland, into what could be done to lessen the impact of less and more costly petroleum products after Peak Oil. It is also closely tied in with the movement combating climate change, and really took off in Totnes, in this country, before spreading worldwide. I read most of a book about the movement that Ann lent me(The Transition Handbook), and it was quite inspirational – instead of seeing the world as a worse place without cheap petrol, it is viewed as a much more community-based world with food being grown more locally and people being employed within the community, etc. It is far too complex to go into here but worthy of further investigation, if you are interested. It seems to herald a return to a slower, more community-based way of life, which existed everywhere before the middle of the 1800’s, and I, for one, would not mind that too much. Ann is already investigating the purchase of a house cow and also a pony that could be used for transportation but also as a replacement for the diesel-guzzling tractor! I think, if you know anything about the way the Amish live, this would give you a clue to how life could be after Peak Oil.

Ann is essentially self-sufficient year round in vegetables, which is an amazing achievement! However, this is the ‘Hungry Gap’ in terms of vegetable gardening in this country, when the winter veg are coming to an end and the new season’s vegetables are not quite ready. There was still some early purple sprouting broccoli, carrots, parsnips and leeks in the garden but little else, although there were a few salad leaves in the polytunnel so some vegetables did have to be bought, but not many. I was also treated to some home-reared pork and bacon which was truly delicious! Ann had just taken delivery of her next batch of weaner pigs, five Tamworth x Gloucester Old Spot, and they were settling into their new quarters out in the orchard. For the first few days they rarely moved from the area around the old chicken house that they had made Headquarters, but quite soon they were roaming all over the orchard rooting around and playing with old bits of polythene, etc. I tried not to get too distracted by their antics as my main job was to do some serious weeding and digging in the vegetable patch as Ann had a bad back and her 92-year old mother could only manage lighter weeding jobs! These two ladies were inspirational and I admired Ann tremendously for even trying to carry on the farm virtually single-handed – she could really do with a regular farm-worker but, alas, she lacks the money to pay someone. As well as the pigs and the vegetable garden, she had a small flock of sheep of whom thirteen were due to lamb starting during my second week there. They were mainly Ryeland ewes, a lowland breed, but Ann had decided to out cross them with a hardier native breed and had chosen two jet-black Hebridean rams with impressive sets of horns. We were intrigued to see how the lambs would look with such a cross, but the four that were born before I left looked just like their mothers – no black at all apart from the usual Ryeland speckling around the ears.

On another of my days off, I went for a walk starting at the mill and climbing up away from the farm on one of the old sunken cart tracks before heading off along a ridgeway. I then plunged back down another steep valley where I came across the remains of some more houses before striking back up onto another ridgeway and back around to the farm – a distance of about 4 miles. Again, the ruined houses by the stream in the wooded valley held some historical interest as the footpath that ran past them had been the original main route from Monmouth to Abergavenny and it is thought that one of the ruins was an inn and another was the old smithy where weary travellers could put up for the night and get their horses re-shod for the journey ahead. The ruin that was probably the smithy had a small stream running underneath it in a stone conduit so water was handy for quenching the redhot metal – ingenious! I sometimes wish there was such a thing as a time machine, just so that I could travel back to see what these places used to look like instead of having to imagine it and fill in the missing bits with guesswork. My knowledge of social history is abysmal – I really should make a concerted effort to rectify that at some point.

On a beautiful, sunlit Sunday morning I left the little sheltered wooded valley and meandered my way north, up the Border Counties once more, threading in and out of England and Wales so frequently that I was almost dizzy, to return to another Welsh valley, and forty-five-degree-gardening, near Oswestry.

Last days in Cornwall

For the last ten days of my stay at East Penrest Farm I was a lone WWOOFer as YaYa left on the morning of Mothering Sunday, but not before she had constructed Mother’s Day cards for Jo and I using scraps of coloured paper beautifully fashioned into 3D-effect pictures – mine was of a landscape with hills and a lake and a tree in the foreground, and Jo’s was of flowers – so clever!

Jo and James went away for a couple of days, leaving me in charge of the farm, as they wanted to go and stay in another Shepherd’s Hut to pick up a few ideas for theirs. I was a bit concerned that the ladies-in-waiting might pick this moment to start dropping their lambs even though it would be nearly two weeks early, but everything was OK and there were no incidents to report. I spent my time constructing raised beds in the greenhouse and barrowing in well-rotted manure from the heap outside the animal barn. I also decided to tidy the shed as I thought it would be a useful storage area for seed trays, etc and it had got to be rather a jumble – these WWOOFers never put anything away properly! I found a long length of batten and decided to screw it to the wall of the shed to hang tools from. I thought I’d do a proper job so took up the spirit level – luckily I stood back from my work before I’d fixed the second screw completely, as the wood was running downhill at a steep angle. For a moment I couldn’t quite understand why it wasn’t level when I’d carefully used the spirit level, and then it dawned on me – the shed wasn’t level! I adjusted the slope of the batten to follow the sides of the shed and soon had all the spades, forks, etc hanging neatly from nails – see, that controlling nature of mine is still only just below the surface!

When Jo and James returned they took me, and their daughter’s family, for a special tea at Endsleigh House Hotel. This had originally been the Duke of Bedford’s ‘country cottage’ and is set down a very long driveway lined with rhododendron and camellia bushes. The front door was opened to us by the French Maitre d’ who escorted us to a cosy sitting room complete with log fire and fine views down across the grounds to the River Tamar, and then took our orders for the type of tea we would like to drink. As I don’t have a clue about different tea types, I settled for Earl Grey and then we went into an adjoining room where a circular table was groaning under its load of delectable tea-time treats: there were sandwiches (no crusts) with smoked salmon, egg mayonnaise, ham, etc; scones (both plain and fruit) with bowls of jam and clotted cream; a jam-and-fresh-cream-filled sponge cake; a cake stand with small chocolate brownies and flapjacks. The amazing thing was that we could eat as much as we wanted for an all-inclusive price and a waiter just kept replenishing the plates! I was very sad that, despite the fact that I’d only had a very light lunch, I was full after a couple of sandwiches and two scones, jam and cream – I couldn’t even manage a piece of the sponge cake!

Next day it was back to work, at the bungalow this time getting it ready for some weekend visitors. I also started to cut down the beech hedge which had got seriously out of hand over the last few years and needed loppers and a pruning g saw to get it back down from about twenty feet high to about four! Over a period of a couple of days Jo and I managed to virtually finish it leaving us with a seriously large pile of brash that needed burning. There was also a large heap of brashy timber halfway down the paddock that had been there since last April, so I promised myself a bonfire once the visitors had gone home. The following week, while Jo and James were busy sorting out the garage at the bungalow, I dragged all the beech cuttings down to the heap and cut off all the bits that couldn’t usefully be used as firewood. When I was part way through this exercise the urge to light the bonfire got too much for me, so I got some cardboard and matches from Jo and lit it. Well.........it wasn’t quite as spectacular as The Great Pallet Fire of 2002*, but the whole lot went ‘Whoooosh!’, and by the time I’d walked nonchalantly back to the garage to return the matches, the whole enormous heap had virtually disappeared! Well, ‘if you’re going to have one, have a big’un’ is my motto!

On my last Saturday in Cornwall, I decided to venture off the farm and explore the Tamar Valley a bit. I thought of going to Morwellham Quay (where Edwardian Farm’ was filmed) but ended up going to Cothele House and estate instead. The weather was spectacularly warm and sunny and it was their Daffodil Weekend. They have over 180 different varieties planted around the gardens and orchard and most of these were grown commercially in the Tamar Valley at some point. The Tamar Valley was a bit like the Cheddar Valley used to be, in that they grew strawberries and cut flowers for the markets around the country, but a few weeks earlier than the Cheddar area. A small mystery was solved for me while I was reading the display boards that they had in the daffodil marquee: I had noticed that there were lots of ‘wild’ daffodils in the hedges all around this part of Cornwall, but they didn’t look like the really wild daffodils that you find around Newent in Gloucestershire. Apparently, during the Second World War the market gardeners of the Tamar Valley were forced by the Ministry of Food, to reduce their daffodil beds by 50% year on year. Because, they still had a market for early flowers and because they didn’t want to lose their carefully cultivated varieties, a lot of the market gardeners dug up the bulbs and carefully replanted them in the hedgerows! I had great fun using my new camera (thanks, Dave!) to take close up photos of several flowers and some butterflies (have a look on my Facebook album, if you haven’t already) and had a marvellous day out.

Because I love this part of the country so much, I have been keeping my eye on the property market in case anything appealed to me, and I was intrigued to see a property actually in Launceston with a huge back garden for a ridiculous price, so made an appointment to view it. The cottage (Grade II listed) dated from the 1700’s and was set on quite a steep, but quiet road in the town. However, although I was up for a project, this was a project-too-far, I think! Jo came with me and we met the estate agent outside, but inside there was a tremendous amount of work that needed doing, including what looked like the replacement of a very large structural beam that was holding up the dining room ceiling. The roof also needed re-doing, but I think the biggest challenge would have been the garden. The chap who was selling it had lived there with his parents who had basically, run a market garden from there with every inch of space utilised for crops (as borne out by the aerial photos on the wall) but as they became elderly the ground had been gradually covered with paving slabs and gravel, all of which had been brought through the house as there was no rear entrance to the garden! This meant that, if the garden was to be returned to anything like its former glory, all that hard landscaping would have to be taken back out through the house! I’m sure someone will snap it up at that price and make a real gem of a property out of it, but I don’t think that person is going to be me.

*For all those that don’t already know the story: Back in 2002, Barry and I were renting a field that we subsequently bought. It had an old Dutch barn in one corner and leaning up against it was a huge mouldering pile of pallets that spread out and back from it and covered many square yards. Most of the pallets were sodden and rotten and overgrown with brambles and we asked the owner if we could gradually burn them up. Permission having been given we chose a still evening and I cautiously started a small fire on the furthest edge from the barn. The fire smoked and smouldered and did very little as this was where the most rotten pallets were, but a little breeze blew up and a few little flames licked up. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a red glow over by the barn and before Barry could get back to me (in the truck from the stableyard just a couple of hundred yards away) the whole stack of pallets by the barn was well alight. Luckily, there was nothing else around that could catch fire, but of course the flames were about thirty feet high, at dusk, on the slope of the Mendips and could be seen for miles! It wasn’t long before we heard sirens approaching from the direction of Cheddar! At this point, I legged it into the darkness leaving Barry, leaning nonchalantly on his pitchfork, to explain to the firemen that he was ‘just burning up a bit of rubbish’! I was not allowed to forget for a long time that a) I’d started the fire and b) I’d run away from the scene of the crime! The fire chief seemed quite happy with Barry’s story and assessed that the fire would be out in about an hour – in fact it was still burning the next morning and we never had any trouble with brambles on that patch of ground again.

Springtime in Cornwall - again!

It is almost exactly a year since I was last here in Cornwall – I realised that when I noticed that my MOT was due and I’d had it done here last time I was down, so I promptly booked it in again at the same garage. ‘Lucky Launceston’ did not let me down – two light bulbs and a bit of sealant on part of my exhaust! I begin to warm to my little Peugeot – it’s only taken three years and I feel that the ‘bonding’ is still incomplete, for a start it lacks a nickname which is almost unheard of with vehicles belonging to me!

Cornwall is just as wonderful as I remember: the air is incredibly clear and a big lungful is enough to set you up for the day, like a swig of ice-cold spring water. As soon as I could I went for a walk to the woods - there were still drifts of crisp oak leaves carpeting the track and I kicked through them like a small child, just to hear that rustling sound, while overhead the ancient oaks lifted their gnarled, winter-bare branches to embrace the blue expanse of a Cornish spring sky, and down below the primroses peeped from the hollows alongside the track and the wild daffodils shyly nodded in the breeze. Bliss!

One of the first things I did was to help James vaccinate the sheep – they are due to lamb at the beginning of April and are all beginning to look quite large. If I was ever going to keep sheep again, I would definitely be tempted by this breed (Lleyn from the Lleyn Peninsula in Wales) as they appear friendly and docile, are good mothers and are small enough for me to turn over for foot-trimming, which is a job that we did during my second week here. By then we had been joined by YaYa, a Chinese girl, originally from Northern China but currently living in Hong Kong. She had never WWOOFed before and never been to this country before but, having a couple of weeks left on her student visa after studying a module for her Master’s Degree at the University of Warwick, she chose to come here. She was very keen to take part in every aspect of the life on the farm so, while James foot-trimmed the larger sheep using a contraption called a turnover crate (the clue is in the name – the sheep walks in to the crate, is clamped securely in place with ratcheted metal arms, and using counterbalances, the mechanism turns the crate over, supporting the sheep at all times, so you can work on the animal without it struggling) I showed YaYa how to catch, turnover and foot trim the smaller ones. She was a quick learner and, although slow, did a good job and really enjoyed doing it. In fact, that epitomised her attitude to everything – she was enthusiastic, eager to learn and unfailingly cheerful. She stayed for twelve days and we seemed to get on really well together, talking about our respective cultures while we dug, weeded, processed apples, put glass into the greenhouse and cleaned the bungalow ready for the first holiday let of the year.

For most of the winter James has been engaged in building a traditional shepherd’s hut that will be sited in one of the fields, with a view down across the pond to the fields and woods beyond. This is the next stage in their farm tourism business (www.organicfarmholiday.co.uk ): they already have the most wonderful barn conversion and also the bungalow that I helped decorate last year, and this new venture will be two huts, on wheels, sited in a secluded place on the farm, so that couples can really feel that they are ‘getting away from it all’ while still having a certain amount of luxury. One hut will contain the sleeping/sitting accommodation and the other will contain a shower room and a kitchen. Initially, it is intended to offer it as Bed and Breakfast accommodation, with breakfast being left in a basket on the shepherd’s hut steps every morning, but it can also be self-catering. Jo mentioned buying a ‘rustic’ hot water bottle cover to go in the hut, so I finally got inspired to knit something with my hand-spun wool that I made in the autumn, and I also used some hand-spun, hand-dyed (with lichen) wool that I’d made a couple of years ago to introduce a stripe. When I’d finished it, James made some exquisite little oak buttons to use as fasteners – you can’t get more rustic than that!

One of the jobs that I started and YaYa helped me to finish was clearing a gap in the hedge to open up the vista from the shepherd’s hut to the pond. I also helped James when he chainsawed up some fallen trees that had broken some stock fencing in one of the fields. There were about four of them and they were all silver birches that had blown down in the pre-Christmas gales. The following day we went back down and mended the stock fencing using some amazing little gadgets called Gripples. The broken wire is inserted in one side and is gripped by a one-way clamp and then a new piece of wire is inserted in the other side and the whole thing tensioned with a sort of ratchet tool – a very clever (and British) invention that saves a huge amount of time and money on fence repairs.

I also spent one very peaceful day weaving in the new willow growth on the living-willow bower down by the pond – the sun was warm and all the birds were singing and the little freshly emerged tadpoles were basking at the edges of the pond, and from the far side of the pond I could hear a moorhen in the rushes. For part of the day I was accompanied by one of the farm dogs, Shep, who likes to attach himself (like glue) to lone women and is a real ego booster as he greets me ecstatically each time I step outside the back door. He did eventually get bored with my self-absorption and trotted back to the farm.

Another job is to get the vegetable garden ready for spring-time sowing, but first we had to re-glaze part of the greenhouse, so that we could use it to plant seeds in. YaYa and I managed to re-glaze the majority of it using some old recycled greenhouse glass, but we had a couple of disasters trying to cut the small angled bits at the top of the gabled ends, so Jo got some professionally cut in Launceston so that we could finish the job – I am now hoping to make some raised beds inside on two sides with a potting area on the third side. We then turned our attention to weeding the vegetable beds which is quite a daunting task as the area is quite large and the soil heavy in places. We’ve made a good start on it and, considering that she has never done this kind of work before, YaYa made a great attempt at forking over the ground and digging out the docks and dandelions, not to mention the creeping buttercups!

Since I have been here the weather has been remarkably mild and I have been working in a long-sleeved T-shirt on a couple of days. We have only had two days of rain and that was when we processed some of the remaining apples from the orchard, par-cooking them ready for the freezer. We also sorted all of the Wellington boots into matched pairs and sizes – there are a lot of them as Jo and James supply their guests and children with suitable footwear, but they had all got rather muddled up. By the time we’d done all that the weather had brightened up again, so it was back to the garden for a spot more digging!

Jo and James always treat their WWOOFers as part of the family, including us in outings and social occasions, and this time here has been no exception. On the second day that I was here I helped with the local Luncheon Club dinner, acting as a waitress to the thirty plus members of the community who attended, the same evening I was taken to a talk by Alex Langlands of ‘Victorian Farm’ and ‘Edwardian Farm’ fame – he is such an enthusiastic person and a very natural speaker, so it was a fascinating evening with supper afterwards in the church hall; then last week it was WI and I also attended the Mothering Sunday service at the local church where I was presented with a small bunch of daffodils and a piece of Simnel Cake and made to feel very welcome by the small congregation. You can begin to see why I always enjoy coming back here!

Starting off in Somerset

Well, I’ve started my WWOOFing year! It didn’t start too well, actually, as the lady I was going to stay with didn’t want me to get there until 4.00pm. ‘Great!’ I thought, ‘I’ll go and see Jeni for lunch and part of the afternoon’, so I left Cheltenham at about 10.30 (I was actually 3 minutes later leaving than I’d hoped, but not too bad!). Now, under normal conditions the journey from Cheltenham to Chilcompton via Bath is a tad over one and a half hours, so I anticipated being there by midday or just after. I hadn’t reckoned on Bath being solid traffic from Batheaston Hill through to the bridge by the fire station, and I still have no idea what the holdup was, but it took nearly half an hour to negotiate about one mile, and that was on a Monday morning. Then, when I got to the top of Radstock Hill I hit another traffic queue that barely moved for three quarters of an hour – they are doing major sewerage works there but I only spotted a sign about it after I’d seethed in the queue. I was more than an hour later than anticipated but we still managed to have a nice lunch together at The Somerset Waggon.

I found my host’s house very easily, as I had driven up that road many times on my way into Bristol over the years, and was made very welcome. She has about 30 acres of land, most of it is rented out to other people, but she has a cider apple orchard in front of the house, a walled flower garden to one side and a forest garden to the other. All the apples from the orchard are sold to Thatchers, so I heartily approved of that! I was intrigued to finally find out what a ‘forest garden’ actually is – I had been due to go to an established one in Wales just before Xmas, but the host forgot I was coming and was fully booked. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to plant a garden in a forest, but that’s not it at all – it’s all about planting a garden like a forest (or wood, if you prefer) would grow naturally. You start off by siting the largest trees – sweet chestnut, almonds (if you live in the right climate) etc.: then underplant with smaller trees like apple, pear, plum, quince, hazel, damson, bullace; next come raspberries, loganberries, blackberries, currants and gooseberries: and finally, perennial vegetables and herbs. This makes best use of all the space available, and every layer is productive. In addition to this planting plan, Bryony had planted a shelter belt of willows on two sides of her field and an edible hedgerow (hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, crab apple, etc) on the other two sides. Hers was quite a young forest garden as she only started it about four or five years ago so all the trees are still quite small, but you can get an idea of how it will look eventually, especially as she had drawn a plan with tracing paper overlays of the planting scheme.

I stayed at Chew Magna for two weeks and during that time I planted a few plants in the walled garden; tied in a climbing rose and a honeysuckle over the rustic arch; tied in the willows that are being grown to make a willow archway in the forest garden; fed the cider apple trees with a seaweed compound; sorted out the old and new log piles; picked up some of the apple tree prunings in the orchard to be used for kindling next winter; planted up some tree saplings that Bryony is growing on to form a small woodland at the top of her land – these were mainly ash, but also a few oaks, beech and holly, so a good mixture; tidied up the two courtyard areas and sorted all the empty plant pots into size order; constructed two new compost bins out of pallets and baler twine and filled them with rotten apples interleaved with straw, as this makes a really good compost after a couple of years; and mulched some of the eating apple trees with manure.

On my days off I caught up with Dave and Jeni and also some of my friends. I must apologise to all those friends in Somerset that I didn’t get round to seeing – I just ran out of time, but I’m sure I’ll be back that way again sometime soon. Dave treated Jeni and me to a meal at the Oakhill Inn at Oakhill on the first Sunday that I was there. For anyone in that area I recommend a visit as this is the third time I have eaten there and the food has been consistently good. On the second Saturday I went to a Jumble Sale at Coleford with my friend Karen and her friend Lorraine. Of course, I needed more stuff for my car like a hole in the head, but I do like a good bargain, so I had to have a look! I ended up buying a small blue teapot for 30p (haggled down from 50p!); a hardback copy of The Cranks Cook Book for 50p (this will come in handy on my WWOOFing journey as I am sometimes expected to cook and my vegetarian ideas run out after pasta!); a pair of original Crocs for 30p (original price £30) and a pretty lace tablecloth with a butterfly/moth motif (40p) – not a bad haul for someone who wasn’t going to buy anything!

I also suddenly remembered that I still owned a pony (rather a large thing to slip one’s mind, you’d think, but he has been out on permanent loan for many years, now). Anyway, I was fairly close to where he lives, so I drove over to see how the old chap was doing – he’s doing extremely well and obviously landed on all four hooves when he found Sam, as I think he is very well looked after. He doesn’t get ridden much now as her daughter lives away from home, but he is a good companion to her old thoroughbred, and I don’t think he misses the exercise – he was never a great one for unnecessary exertion! I got the impression that he did vaguely recognise me as he strolled over and nuzzled my face and allowed me to give him a cuddle (I then embarrassed him hugely by bursting into tears! You could almost see him giving me an exasperated look as if to say ‘Get a grip, woman!’)

It was nice to spend some time back in Somerset, but also a bit strange as I felt like a returning exile but with no home of my own. Yet again, my house is up for let as my tenants have given notice. I am trying not to worry too much about this at the moment but it will, of course, prevent me from continuing my preferred lifestyle if I don’t find tenants soon. I am now back in Cornwall and will write more about that later.

New year, new blog, old memories!

Well, it’s been ages since I last wrote a blog and, as I’m back on the road next week, I thought I’d do a short one now to kickstart the year.

This is the longest I’ve been in one place for nearly two years now and, at times, I’ve found it quite difficult not to be moving on. I’ve got so used to living out of a suitcase and re-packing every two weeks that it took me ages to unpack everything into drawers and wardrobes and I keep taking my stuff back up to my room at the end of the day so that I don’t lose track of where it is! As someone said to me the other day ‘it’s become a lifestyle now, hasn’t it?’ and I believe that’s true – what started out as a journey of self-discovery and also a journey around the UK has morphed into a way of life that I do not want to give up any time soon. That said, I have decided to do things a little differently this year, at least for the first half, anyway.

I am starting my working year with two weeks back in Somerset at a farm I have not been to before, set part way between Bristol and my old stomping grounds, in the hope that on my days off I can catch up with a few friends that I haven’t managed to see since I started this nomadic lifestyle. From there, I journey back to my friends at Launceston in Cornwall where I hope to stay for nearly a month, then it’s back to Cheltenham for a few days catch-up with Mum before heading to Monmouth for another two weeks at a new place (for me). After that I return to my friends in Oswestry for three weeks staying over for their May festivities that Jeni and I attended last year. The last bit that I have planned so far is a return to the wonderful farm at Llanidloes where I hope to stay for a couple of months, tending the sheep, planting veg, milking the cows, making butter and cheese and perhaps finally getting to work with bees. This takes me up until July – I haven’t planned further than that yet! So – that’s a foretaste of where my blogs will be coming from for the next six months.

I’ve had a bit of a nostalgia-fest in the last few weeks as this is the longest that I have been back in my birthplace since I left home to go to teacher training college when I was 18! Additionally, I have been by myself for the last two and a half weeks as Mum and her friend, Mary, decided to go south for the winter and headed off for a Caribbean cruise while I stayed here to house-sit and decorate the kitchen. Anyone who knows my Mum will know that the only way to decorate the kitchen is when she is out of the country as she spends the greater part of her time in the kitchen preparing delicious food! It seems to have taken ages, but admittedly I have been trying to ration myself to a morning’s decorating followed by something completely different in the afternoon, even if it’s only reading a book.

To stop myself going stir-crazy, I have taken myself off for walks around the area on days when the weather has been OK – hence the nostalgia. My first walk was from this house to the house on the other side of the village where I spent most of my childhood, then around the lanes we used to play in before walking back again – a distance of about 2 miles. I was really pleased that my knee, which had been so painful when doing any concentrated walking for about 4 years, did not cause any problems at all. (This is all down to the inserts that I had made (at huge expense) by a podiatrist down in Launceston last March.) I still find it incredible to think that my sister and I, at the age of 7 and 6 respectively, used to walk from our house to the bus stop (after Mum had seen us across the main A40), catch the bus into the centre of Cheltenham, change buses and catch another bus to the other side of town and then walk about half a mile to our Junior School – Social Services would probably be called in if the same thing happened today! But we did it every day in all weathers and lived to tell the tale! The road where we lived has not changed very much in the last few years – it was originally a private road and was never adopted by the council, hence it has never been surfaced – and it still hasn’t! The potholes were always bad, but now they are horrendous, I certainly wouldn’t want to drive a car down there, and to think my boyfriend used to ride down it on his motorbike!

The other day I had to go to the other side of Cheltenham on a mission to B & Q, and on the way back decided to go and see the house I was born in. I had a few difficulties finding it, at first, as the road layouts have been changed slightly, but when I got there it had hardly changed at all and neither had my old school. However, the green that used to be at the end of the road has now got houses on it and there are speed bumps everywhere so looking around as I drove was not really an option. I was going to take some photos but then realised how weird that would look if there was anyone in the house, and I’d probably be arrested if I stood outside the school gates and took photos!

My second walk took me up the hill on a network of footpaths, skirting the local golf course, and finally ending up on the lower slopes of Leckhampton Hill where I slipped and slithered my way to an odd little road with fabulous views over the town. I knew a girl from school who lived along here and I came up once to ride her pony – it was not an auspicious memory as the stirrup leather broke, the pony bolted and I slid gracefully(?) to the ground over the pony’s left shoulder – I never did get the hang of this riding lark. Anyway, this lane is a strange mixture of very expensive, architect-designed houses and the original tiny bungalows that don’t even look like they’ve been painted since they were built, in some cases. It must be ‘prime real estate’ as they say in America, and I’m surprised that more of the original houses haven’t been swallowed up by the wealthy and turned into futuristic pads with glorious views. I slipped and slithered a bit more down muddy footpaths to the bottom of the hill and then back to the house via the many ‘drangs’ that seem to exist in this area. This walk was about 4 miles long – and still not a murmur from the knee!

Building on the confidence that my pain-free walking had engendered, I went for another walk yesterday. I started off by crossing the village to the area that I knew from many childhood adventures, when my dog, Bunty, and I would go off for walks across the fields and along the lanes. I had intended to do a circuit of my old haunts but, feeling still quite fresh at the point furthest from home, I decided to carry on and turned uphill to go past the riding stables that I used to frequent, when funds allowed, when I was a horse-mad young’un. It was a much steeper climb than I remembered and the stables are no longer there – I imagine the house is a very impressive country home for some wealthy person now, as it has a commanding view over Cheltenham and the race course towards Cleeve Hill. However, I could almost hear the ghostly hoofbeats as I walked along the lane past the stables – we would sometimes come out for rides along this route and then turn down another lane that went out onto Cleeve Common. Another of my horsey memories (why are they never good ones?) was of going to the stables one Saturday and being put up on a roan gelding, appropriately called Scamp. We then all left, in convoy, with the more experienced riders at the front and the novices (including me) at the back. We climbed up a steep and rutted bridleway onto the lane and then set off past open fields towards the turning to Cleeve Common. Everything was going OK until we turned towards the Common when Scamp suddenly woke up to the fact that we were probably going to go a bit faster than a leisurely walk when we got there, and pre-empted the ‘off’ by taking off down the hill at speed with me clinging like a limpet round his neck as he overtook every rider in front of us – I think he must have been talking to an ex-racehorse or something. I was mortified, but I didn’t fall off, so that was an improvement but I don’t ever remember going back to the stables again, so that was more or less the end of my riding career! When I got to the turn to the Common on my left, I took a right hand turn to follow the Cotswold Way back across country to the A40 and thence via the back ways to Mum’s – a distance, when I measured it, of approximately 8 miles! I think I can safely say that my knee is cured! I was tired and my feet ached but not a single twinge from the knee. Hooray! I must pop in to the podiatrist when I’m back in Launceston and say a heartfelt ‘Thank You’.

I didn’t see much wildlife on my walk, in fact I’ve seen more in Mum’s garden recently. She puts out scraps for the birds but, until recently, didn’t buy any commercial wildbird food or have any feeders, just her bird table. Well, I took part in the RSPB Garden Bird Survey on her behalf last weekend and in the space of the allotted hour I saw umpteen blackbirds, a wren, two pairs of blackcaps (they used to be summer visitors, but not anymore), a lone fieldfare (strange, because they usually go around in large flocks), two magpies (I call one of them Duncan, because he has learned to dunk stale bread in the birdbath before eating it!), wood pigeons, robins, house sparrows, dunnocks, chaffinches, blue tits and an LBJ (Little Brown Job) that I think was a Garden Warbler as well as the usual tribe of jackdaws and the resident pair of crows, one of which is so splashed with white that it is almost speckled. I thought that was pretty impressive until a fox meandered across the garden later on, in broad daylight, and just strolled past the patio windows!

Well, I think that’s about it for now – I’ve just got a few more handles to put on the kitchen cupboard doors and a short piece of fencing to replace before I start my WWOOFing year in earnest.

Frustrating times!

While I was at my last placement in Wales, Jeni forwarded on to me a link to a job vacancy in Frome. Now Frome is one of the places that quite appeals to me as a possible place to settle down – still in Somerset; within reach of my two offspring (who seem to be quite content to stay within the county boundaries, at the moment); not too far from my Mum; close enough to my old stomping grounds to keep up with friends and without being so close that I bump into unwanted people at every turn! plus it has a nice vibe to it these days – a bit green, a bit bohemian.

The job was a year’s contract doing Purchasing for a defence company – exactly what I used to do – and the salary would have come in handy, but I wasn’t really looking for a job. However, on the spur of the moment I cobbled together a sketchy CV and a covering letter and emailed them off to the HR Department. Several days later I started looking at my emails on a daily basis (not easy when you have to use your host’s computer) and on 30th November I checked the Junk box – only to find an invitation to interview for the following day! It would have been difficult but not impossible to get there from South West Wales so I rang to speak to someone in HR – there was no-one in, so I spoke to one of the guys who was supposed to be interviewing me and he said, “No problem! We can rearrange it for next week – any particular day suit you?” I said I could be there any day to suit him (well, you have to try and score Brownie points!) so he was going to get HR to send me a new appointment for Monday. Reluctantly, I said goodbye to my hosts and drove back to my Mum’s on the Sunday.

On the Monday morning I still hadn’t received a time for my interview so I got up early and dressed in the only ‘interview clothes’ that I had in my possession (well, it is 8 years since I last worked in an office!) and then rang, only to discover that, not only were HR absent, but so was the guy who was supposed to be interviewing me! I changed back into my old jeans and ranted a bit (my Mum is becoming almost unshockable when I use bad language, now!) and then sat back to wait for an apologetic phone call or email............and I waited...............and I waited. Finally, after several fruitless calls to their switchboard, I emailed HR on the Friday asking what was going on. On the Monday afternoon I received the reply that they weren’t rescheduling interviews from 1st December, after all. I was a ‘little miffed’, to say the least, and sent a very caustic reply, so I hope I spoiled her day for her! I now remember exactly why I left industry in the first place – it’s much less frustrating working for yourself – or WWOOFing in my case! I know that it’s an employers’ market these days, but when did they get so callous and rude? Jeni had a far worse case of this earlier in the year where she was actually unofficially offered the job and then kept waiting for a month for official confirmation, only to be told that head office had pulled the plug on all recruitment and she didn’t have a job after all! How cruel is that? And how rude and insensitive!

Rant over!

I am now having an extended Christmas break at my Mum’s and doing a few odd jobs – fitting draught excluders, new light fittings, mending roller blinds, that sort of thing and am going to redecorate the kitchen after Christmas before getting back on the road sometime in February. So far I don’t know in which direction to head – I still haven’t been to the South Coast counties or up the East Coast – perhaps I should adopt my daughter’s approach to travel – close my eyes and stick a pin in the map!

I would just like to finish this blog by wishing you all a peaceful festive season filled with lots of good things and a happy and productive 2012 – and for me? I’m just going to keep on WWOOFing!

My last few weeks in Wales

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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