I drove across to Aberystwyth today to choose my Christmas tree with Tam, and grab a bite for lunch, and then we drove on to Strata Florida Abbey- I'd not been here since about 1996, on an Archaeology Field Trip. For some strange reason, I remembered the site as being much bigger. We got rained on a bit as we ate our lunch amongst the ruins, but Rosie was covered in a little baby waterproof and what's a bit of rain? We couldn't go into the church as there was a funeral being held there.
Tam set up a sat nav route on my phone to get me back via Devil's Bridge to the A44 -not as adventurous a route as I had imagined, and I remembered bits of it from a previous x-country route home, plus we went close to Hafod, so I remembered the area around there too. It was shocking to see the damage wrought by last weekend's storm - pine trees the girth of a dustbin snapped in two, many many others uprooted - some in joined root systems which took half a dozen trees out as bedfellows. Elderly Elders smothered in ivy had fallen out of hedgerows, a few shallow-rooted Beeches otherwise in their prime were felled, branches torn off, trees twisted in half the length of their trunks. Not far after coming out onto the A44, there was about an acre of conifers just absolutely torn and flattened - that was a BAD storm. The only worse one I can recall was the Great Storm of 1987 which ravaged the South. One of the reroofed barns at Strata Florida had had several roof panels ripped off and a long length of lead capping ripped up and twisted.
Here is a photo shamelessly borrowed from my Yahoo newsfeed tonight credit to NRW and Wales Online. THIS is just how badly Wales was hit.
I have spent late afternoon and evening watching Outlander - the last two episodes from Series 7, then back to Series 6 which I didn't recall. I've been listening to Drums of Autumn on Audible in the car too.
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