Advertisement
Hello and greetings from Llangollen North Wales.
The journey home from Sri Lanka was long and tedious. We stopped in Male in the Maldives and then 5 hours in Dubai, it felt like all we did was eat airline food.
Before we set off for Sri Lanka I went to get my HRT check up and had my BP checked and it was high so my tablets were stopped and she organised a range of blood tests for my return. So first stop was the GP and happily my BP was back to normal however my cholesterol is high. She did wonder if it is family trait but as most of the generation above me died young of none heart related problems it is hard to know. So I am making a big effort to lose some weight, taking yoghourt with plant sterols every day and being much more conscious about what I eat.
I had time to catch up with my lovely girls and their boyfriends and to unpack and then sort out for our next trip. I did look at a house in Haltwhistle but it was not for me, partly as I am not ready
to buy a house yet. It was a good excuse to go to Haltwhistle and I managed to find time to pop in to Kasteale, a lovely coffee shop and had lunch there with Vicky.
This is very different to Sri Lanka in some ways but not in others. There is beautiful green landscape and signposts in a foreign language. Chris and I had only about 6 days at home, most of it sorting out the jetlag, before we packed the van up and headed off again. We spent our first night away on the outskirts of Croft village in the Lake District; the advantage of a motorhome over a caravan is you can find a quiet spot to park up for the night. In the evening we had stunning views over the fells but about 8pm the Lake District rain arrived. We walked into the village for a drink and it was good to see a thriving local pub although as its clientele were mainly after food there was nowhere comfy for a pint.
We are at the first of two house-sits, the owners are Jennie and Richard, and this one is in the beautiful Dee valley.
We got here last Thursday and have been blessed with lovely weather. We are staying in a fabulous old farmhouse and looking after the house, garden, greenhouse, vegetable patch, two holiday cottages, two dogs and thirteen chickens. The holiday cottages is a new one for us, we had to say goodbye and hello to guests on Saturday and will do the same this week. If you want to stay in a beautiful part of Wales have a look at the website
http://www.deevalleycottages.com/ or read their reviews on trip advisor.
The dogs are Poppy and Maisie and they are well trained and a delight. There are fabulous walks nearby and mostly no-one else around. From the house we can walk down the field, across the railway line and walk along the banks of the Dee. The railway line runs a steam train and it runs from Llangollen to Corwen, so twice an hour there is the toot of the engine and puffs of smoke. Llangollen is a lively little town and busy with visitors as it is half term, although at the weekend it was full of people from Merseyside who al seemed to have had a good drink!!
The chickens are easy to look after but we have more eggs than we know what to do with, the record is nine laid yesterday. The house is huge with a massive farmhouse style kitchen with dining table and comfy seats. Jennie loves to cook so the kitchen is very well equipped and I have enjoyed having the time and space to try out some new recipes. The halloumi burgers and tempeh rendang were both very tasty. There is a lovely living area with a wood burner in the centre of the house and a new conservatory extension which gets the evening sun. It has big front garden with lawn and borders and then a massive back garden. It will make Henry seem tiny when we load up on Sunday and head off.
We have had intermittent problems with a leaky window in the van so Chris tackled the job of taking it out and replacing it. I was his able assistant and between us we cleaned off all the old stuff and put in the new rubber seal and mastic and hopefully it is good for a few years yet. Chris also put on the new wheel trims, we had lost one in Spain, and they look very smart
We drove to Bala and took our bikes to be serviced and then on Friday the parts should arrive for the conversion to electric bikes. We bought a scooter last year but it has not really worked out for us. Once on the back of the motor home it bars external access to the under bed storage area which is where we keep all of our important stuff like levelling block, table and chairs etc. So for an overnight stop it would mean taking the scooter off or lifting the bed and getting access, not a good idea for heavy external stuff like the levelling blocks. So when we get back home we will be selling the scooter and then finding a buyer for our scooter rack which we had made last year in Spain. Chris is hankering after a motor home with an external “garage” which would avoid this problem as access is from the side of the van. But we need to get a few more years out of Henry before we change for another van or one of us needs to win the lottery!
We had a great day yesterday, we sorted the chickens and then Chris walked the dogs and we drove to Llangollen to walk the canal path to Pontycysyllte
aqueduct. Chris thought it was about an hour but in fact it was four and a half miles. It was a beautiful walk seeing all of the folk on the canal. At the end you arrive in a huge basin and then see the aqueduct in front of you. It is a World Heritage site and was built by Thomas Telford.We used the local bus back to Llangollen and had a drink sat in the sun watching the world go by at the end of the bridge in town. For a change we had an evening out and went first to the Hand hotel hoping to get river views and pint of real ale, the first was easy but the latter not as the only real ale was off! I don’t like keg beer so thought a Bombay Sapphire would be good idea but sadly the bottle was empty. A friendly local did say the Cornmill in town has a good selection of real ale. Chris was happy as they had craft lager on draught. We had a lovely selection of vegetable side dishes at the Indian restaurant and then a nice pint in the Cornmill. (The aqueduct, built by
Thomas Telford and
William Jessop, is 336 yd (307 m) long, 4 yd (3.7 m) wide and 5.25 ft (1.60 m) deep. It consists of a
cast iron trough supported 126 ft (38 m) above the river on iron arched ribs carried on eighteen hollow masonry piers)
From here we are off to a campsite at Bala Lake about 20miles from here and then Tuesday we pick the bikes up and head for Fishguard. We have booked onto a site outside Fishguard on the cliff top and we will walk 2-3 linear sections of the Pembrokeshire coastal path using the local hopper buses to help get us back to the campsite. This will be the third time we have done sections and we are looking forward to it, it is very beautiful. Then we hope to find somewhere to stay near Tenby and want to try out SUP, stand up paddle boarding. Our final destination is Trowbridge for our second housesit.
Till next time
Norma x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.227s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 9; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0574s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb