Wild strawberries in the rain

I have to say I did not feel at my best yesterday.  Combined chronic lack of sleep and overdoing things, plus the general effect of steroids on the body removed all energy and stapled me to the sofa with a good book and some sewing.  I have had to abandon the pills I am meant to take before the steroids, to stop them damaging the stomach lining, as they made my mouth so bitter and anything I ate or drank brought the bitterness out more.  Yuk!  Friday was the most awful day as I could NOT STOP EATING.  I hated myself for it, but the steroids were making even a bucket of wallpaper paste look appetising.  Having lost 6 1/2 lbs in the weeks before the steroids, I put the whole lot back on in the past week and am so cross with myself - I am sure Keith thinks I have no self control, but the steroids pull all the feed me strings in your body plus they cause bloating and fluid retention.

At least I have now finished reading Things in Jars, which I thoroughly recommend.

Isn't this the most AMAZING Foxglove?  We found it and a friend on the bank of a stream by the little church at Llanfihangel ulch Gwili.  This was on another reconnoitre to check out a walk I last did on a bitterly cold and frosty morning back in January 2008.  Time to re-visit it in better weather.  If we get dropped off at Whitemill, it will be 6 miles home.

Views from the first stage of the walk:

Fields and houses behind Whitemill village.

Of course it is that wonderful time of June when all the Foxgloves were out.  Here is the palest of pinks merging into white.  I think we will get some seeds of this and the very spotty ones when we do this walk (hopefully next week).

Gilfach-y-Berthog sits in the valley of the Afon Annell. A late 17thC T-shaped minor gentry house according to COFLEIN.  We were shown round it once - grander inside than our house, with plastering over the fireplace in the parlour and a date of 1692.  There was a bedroom upstairs, painted very dark red, and the current owners brightly said, "Oh we call this the haunted room".  Moi, feeling an extremely unwelcome atmosphere, quickly backed out of the door!

I think the big white farmhouse is Tanerdy or possibly Penbwichisaf, hard to see without the bigger picture, just using the map.

Sweet Cecily, the county plant of Carmarthenshire, growing on a bank.

Well, this won't do.  I have spent over an hour getting distracted by local history, and I need to do some baking and some sewing now. 

Oh, and the title of this post?  It's because I managed to walk up to the very top of our hill yesterday - in the rain (so hopefully no pollen about) and Tam kept finding patches of wild strawberries to feast on.  Hopefully I can get out with her for another short walk today.  The walks are the main thing we look forward to at the moment, when we are hefted to our home spot.