Wrexham County Borough 3 - freedom at last - a trip across the border

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It is Wednesday - Ok - lets have a bit of a change. Let us do something different . It is not a walk around the area where we live. It will be our first trip out to Wales since lockdown. For weeks, 4 weeks in fact we could not really go anywhere. We were locked down confined to barracks . No going out unless absolutely necessary. It was awful with all planned trips cancelled including holidays. Imprisoned within our own four walls. Walks up the same old road. Quietness. Will we ever go back to normal. Looking back - was it a blessing or a curse? It depends which side of the fence you stand. Schools closed apart from classes for the children of key workers. Education on hold. . Working from home normal. Daily press briefings. A graph that looked like a sombrero in the early part of the pandemic. March, April , May and June had just disappeared and then we got to July. July so what was today going to bring.

The thoughts that things were getting better . Today we were heading for Wales. It has been a long time . The roads were not as quiet as we expected . The weather was awful . Heavy persistent rain fell all the time . The Cat and Fiddle pass was thick with fog. It was hard to see far in front of us. The fog suggested today was a morning in October rather than a morning in July.

Our first trip was to the churchyard . The grass was longer than it would normally be. Perhaps the grass cutter had not been to cut the grass for months. His shed was locked . We had the place to ourselves . Some Christmas wreaths were still placed on graves. The church as always was closed . It is not an old church . Probably just over 120 years old . The gravestones were looking their age . Some leaning over like drunken men. An old yew tree dominated the graveyard. It is not that old but it certainly looks more ancient than it is. I popped garden flowers on my mums grave .She would have loved them as she loved her garden.

I walked round the church . Its stone had turned black apart from the line of the roof where new corbels had been cut . In the quiet I walked round it before heading for the car . We were heading for the hairdressers . I was looking foward to the hair cut . Been waiting a long time .

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