A freezing fog sort of walk

 

We woke up yesterday morning to freezing fog.  I knew it was bad out there as when we went to bed, you couldn't see the lights of the quarry across the valley.  Tam and I had planned a walk at Gilfach Nature Reserve, and waited until lunchtime when there was a glimmer of sun breaking through the clouds.  We set off and by the time we were on our way to Newbridge-on-Wye, the cloud had lifted and there were clear blue skies.  This is the view from the car park - the sun hadn't penetrated the valley o we knew it was going to be a wee bit chilly . . .

We were not mistaken!  I was glad of stout walking boots, woolly socks and my duck-down jacket.

The River Marteg runs through the Reserve, and reminds me of the Cothi where we used to live.  That big round hole has been carved out down the millennia by stones tumbled round in it as if it were a washing machine.

Here is the River Marteg a little further up, where it flings itself through a canyon.  This is where the Dippers nest in summer, but no sign of them today, unsurprisingly.  

The sound of the water was tremendous, and there was a very fine mist above the water from the spray as river flung itself past and over the rocks.  The negative ions in the air brought a real feeling of energy and I could have stood there for a good while longer, had it not been so chilly.

After a mile or more, we finally reached a bit of sunshine, and feeling returned to my fingers which, despite really thick gloves, had quickly frozen.

There is a long slow hill to climb and that white dot in the middle is me labouring up it!

Nearly back at the car park, and the river here reflected the bracken from the hillside overlooking it.  Back at the car we had our little treats from Greggs to tuck into - a well-chilled Doughnut for Tam and my favourite Apple Danish for me.  Yum.  It was SO good to get out and this year we really will go here when there are leaves on the trees and it's a bit warmer, and chose one of the other routes to explore.

Garway - a 12th C Templar Church

 Update to Sue and Tricia - Tam was able to get the colour embroidery thread I needed, but many thanks for both offering.

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We decided to make the most of the sunshine early on and go into Herefordshire to visit a church which we had read about and which Keith, especially, wanted to see.  The countryside was lovely, even though it had clouded over rather on our journey. Some areas are very familiar to us, others less so. We went through Bredwardine, and I told Keith about the time when Kilvert was Rector there and it had snowed and then rained and frozen solid (pretty much like 2010 when we could only make it to the front gate by hanging onto things.) Back in those days, people were very keen to go to church, and even the folk way up Bredwardine Hill, past the house we tried to buy, made it to church on their hands and knees along the ditches.

We cut across country when we neared Madley, following the lane (Stone Lane it's called) past the car boot sale we go to in the summer, noticing that Allenmore Nurseries had REALLY extended  their growing areas with huge glass greenhouses and then huge polytunnels, as well as outdoor nurseries. I'm sure I didn't notice all this back in the summer. All around this area there are acres of fruit trees too.  It is good to know that Herefordshire is self-sufficient in fruit, vegetables and livestock. Then we crossed a road, onto a narrow single track lane where you usually put your lights on in summer as the trees grow right over it and make it very gloomy.  Then we turned left onto the B road, but a narrow-way opposite the end of the single track lane continues up onto the wooded hillside.  I wouldn't mind betting that route came into being in prehistoric times.

We went "all around the houses" along single track lanes for several miles before getting to our destination.  Over 2,000 acres of land had been granted to the Templars to clear (using the local peasantry I don't doubt!) by Henry II.

Garway church is one of only 6 Templar churches in England.  It is in the most complete state of repair too.  The  tower dates to 1180 and looks to have been for defensive purposes. The Templar church which was built (with a circular nave and chancel in homage to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem).  However, this was replaced with a rectangular one by the Knights of St John (the Hospitalers) in the 15th C.  They took over from the Templars in 1326.

The font dates to the 14th C and the snake twirling round the cross represents healing  (Hospitaler iconography).

The beautiful Norman  archway and how it looks when you look up beneath it.

The Green Man.  It has been argued that he is more of a Green Cat, but I think those look like horns with human ears in their normal place.

More carvings at the top of the capitals - these are considered to be based on water leaves, Eastern iconography.

Keith is always taken by the age and integrity of the wooden chests which survive. This is a Templar one made from a hollowed-out trunk and dates to the 12th- 13th C- and would have been used for church vestements.

This would have been the top of a Templar tomb.

There were examples of the dedicated needlewomen of the parish too.

We will go back as it was a somewhat whistle-stop tour - we didn't look round outside and so missed the holy well and the carvings on stones externally, and also the Dovecote. There are castles in the area - Skenfrith is jut 2 miles away, White Castle and Grosmont about 5 in different directions. It's not that far from lovely Tretower Court either, so we will go back in the spring and see them all.

A quiet weekend

 

This was the chart I  treated myself to.  It's a Mary Hickmott design, and you can buy her charts on Etsy, for an instant download.  I couldn't wait to get started but oh boy, this is a complicated chart - especially as I am missing the ONE colour that is vital, that you start with in the centre.  I went to Llandod yesterday to the little wool shop, to try and get the 9 missing colours I needed - I got 8.   Tam has a shopping list of the last skein to track down in Aberystwyth this weekend.  The bit I am on is the chimney and foliage behind it and the darkest colour there is the missing one for the foliage!

Here's the one I've just finished.  I need to buy some acid-free card to mount it on.  The design came from a visit to Wightwick Manor near Wolverhampton for my birthday about 3 years ago.  This was a tile designed by Arts & Crafts by William de Morgan.  There is a fabulous exhibition of his work, and many other examples of Arts & Crafts masterpieces throughout the house.  It's lovely to have this in memory of a special day out. 

Henry VIII has been in the garden all winter - here he is showing off on top of the bird-feeders!

    We have had miserable weather here yet again, and it rained nastily all morning, but left off long enough for us to get a short walk in down by the River.  I have been feeling a bit "off" all day today, so haven't done much.  I just want to wave a magic wand and have a few spring-like days to keep us going until spring does arrive.  Yet there is the glitter of gold in the hedgerows, with the Hazel catkins in their full glory. The wheel has turned, a few weeks and we will have masses of celandines in full bloom along the banks.  It can't come soon enough.

    I had a lucky find in the books and dvd's for rehoming in Co-op this morning and made a donation for a book called The Good Life - Up the Yukon Without a Paddle by Forian Amos.  It should be good reading, but I can only imagine after living in Polperro in Cornwall, they had a bit of a shock during their first winter in the Yukon!

Another day, another room

 I had awarded myself the day off today, as I felt I had earned it. We went to have another look at carpet at a local shop, and found one K& I both liked for the bedroom, and they will lay the bathroom lino at the same time (last day of February.)  It's a silvery grey.  We should be able to shift all the furniture in there (Tam and I) and get the old carpet up and we will dispose of that ourselves at the Tip, rather than paying for it to be taken away.

        Then it was time for more housewifely chores. No escaping them.  I had just sat down with my x-stitch (finished bar for a bit of back-stitching still to do).  I had taken ONE stitch and Tam came in to ask if I could help her with the wallpapering in her room.   Deep sigh.  

Mushroom is such an exciting colour  . . . NOT!  Wall in Tam's room.

      

        From the first drop, it wasn't straightforward as there was a socket in the way and Tam was telling me I should be doing it the way it was done (professionally) in some videos she had watched. This is not a good career move when your mother is an Aries.  Of course, she shot my new-found confidence to bits in seconds and I did it my way and screwed up, but my error has been disguised and by the time it's trimmed in the morning, should be invisible. The corner wall was "off" too, between top and bottom and I got, oh the video said to cut it the width into the corner and then line up a new piece on the next wall (NOT what I had done in our room, needless to say).  Tomorrow should be fun! We will square up on the next corner.

   

The test wall.  The blue last on the right is the colour being used (Moroccan Mint).

Not trimmed except for partly in the corner where the white levels look totally WRONG but aren't!! Tomorrow when it's dry I get can busy with the Stanley knife and get rid of the excess.  The white line is the top edge of the skirting board where it meets the wall.  The blue paint above is actually deeper than this.

The wallpaper. Sprigs of Wisteria.

        Now I have run out of the green I was using for my backstitch and will have to go through my spares for one similar.  I have also managed to mislay the X-Stitch magazine (5 or so years old) - Mary Hickmott's New Stitches - which I had been saving to sew.  There was a design called Heart of Dartmoor (Widecombe) which I think was on the cover. Can I find it here?  No.  I am gutted.  I know I kept it and even where it was in the old house.  I have found Mary Hickmott's Etsy shop where I can purchase it on-line for £9.60 but if I do that, I will of course find the magazine . . . Update - I did another search - no magazine.  I thought, sod it, life is too short NOT to buy something which you know will give you great pleasure  - one of my g.g. aunts was a schoolteacher in Victorian Widdicombe, which is why I was so keen to sew it.

I will try for a more exciting post soon . . .

    

Shattered

 

The view from the bathroom window this morning.  These are the hills beyond the town, out past Hundred House, probably the hills around Crinfynydd, which is the highest spot in that direction.  There wasn't a great deal of snow and most of it had melted by late afternoon.  We had a few wet flakes here, evidenced on the car windscreens.

    I have had a very busy day.  Popped into town first thing for the paper (and my Homes & Antiques magazine was in too), to post a book off to Sue in Suffolk, and to get special rawlplugs for plasterboard so we could hang pictures on the wall behind the bed in our bedroom.

    Then it was compost caddy to be emptied, ditto litter tray, bird feeders to top up back and front etc. Then the kitchen floor needed mopping, and the bathroom was due a clean too. Chores done, I was able to get back to wallpapering, although I had to move half the bedroom furniture several feet away from the wall, and of course, move all the loose stuff from on top of side tables so I could move those.  

    I managed to get the heavy oak ex-Church fitting "headboard" off the wall myself.  Then it was 6 pieces and a sliver of wallpaper to match and cut, wall to paste for each bit, and trim to fit.  That is a LOT of going up and downstairs, measuring and marking wallpaper rolls, bending, stretching, being on knees etc.  I clocked up over 10,000 steps just with the upstairs and downstairs and round my lady's chamber! BUT it is now ALL done and so I can get on to finishing the corner of the bathroom with paper (as you go in) and start painting the Hot Pink bedroom at long last.  I think it will probably end up yellow with a gorgeous yellow wall paper I have seen but first I need to cover the pink with matt white as a base for the new paint.

There we are, final wall done.  Sorry the flash didn't go off.  I think I shall sleep well tonight!

Lorna Doone - and whatever happened to bathcubes?

 

I got my walk in early today and then Keith and I got the paper and had another shorter walk to stretch his legs.  I was aching from painting yesterday, and also from barrowing the contents of a large planter, the flowers of which might be dangerous to cats, so it got pushed under the paddock fence and down the bank into our rough bit of woodland. Another will follow it when my back has stopped complaining!

    Tam has gone to her boyfriend's, so I sat down with my x-stitch, and found out that Lorna Doone was showing again.  It was a repeat of the BBC drama from a few years back (we have the DVD too, and have watched it several times.  Quite my favourite film.) I'd missed the first half but thoroughly enjoyed the story, and the romance, and the music.  It was a book from my childhood (Collins version)  and I can remember buying the Ladybird book of Lorna Doone for Tam when she was 4 years old and she loved me to read it, especially the part where Jan Ridd tumbles down the waterfall. I used to have this as a story cassette too which I listened to as I do the ironing. R D Blackmore based the story on real life. In the Dartmoor village of Chagford, Mary Whiddon was married at the church of St Michael's on 11th October 1641. There is a memorial to her inside, stating that she "died a matron, yet a maid". Legend has it that she was shot (by a jealous lover?) as she left the church.  She was buried in the churchyard with the following epitaph:

Reader, would'st though know who here is laid,

Behold a matron, yet a maid

A modest look, a pious heart

A Mary for the better part

But dry thine eyes, why wilt thou weep

Such damselles do not die, but sleep.

Modern brides often lay a flower from their wedding bouquet on her tomb after signing the register.

Below is a photo of St Michael's from a post I did years ago.

Indeed, I was thinking of where I bought my childhood copy of Lorna Doone this morning, after two words set me off down memory lane: "Paraffin heater". Keith and I were discussing how we kept warm in our homes as children. For us both it was an open coal fire in the sitting room, and a paraffin heater somewhere else in the house. In our case, it was in the scullery (mum never called it the kitchen), and this was carried upstairs (unlit of course) to the bathroom once a week to bring the temperature to something a little above semi-freezing for the weekly bathnight. I only have to catch a whiff of paraffin to be transported back 50 years to the house where I grew up, or else to the local ironmongers, which sold the "pink" paraffin we used. Beauchops it was called, the shop that is, and it was separated into two parts. The smaller side sold a few balls of wool (but could order it in requisite amounts for jumpers or cardigans), soap, talcum powder, bath cubes (whatever happened to those?),  eau de toilette (I remember 4711) . . . toilet rolls, hair nets, hair grips, brushes and combs, compacts and pressed powder and powder puffs, dressing table sets (another rarity these days), and, to part me from my pocket money on occasion, it had a shelf-full of the Collins sets of childrens' classics. 

I can remember going in to the shop and asking to buy a book with horses in. Black Beauty was an instant hit, and Children of the New Forest. Then the shop keeper began to get desperate and in this way I read my way through almost all the children's classics including Lorna Doone (still a favourite with me and I think of the strawberry roan Winnie, who was outlaw Tom Fagus' mare, who, when ridden by Jan Ridd as a lad, jumped him back and forth over the farm gate); Last of the Mohicans (lots of horses but never mentioned by name and even rarely by colour); Heidi - very disappointing - I think just one horse got briefly mentioned in passing but I loved the story and wanted to live in a hay loft like she did; Little Women (I think there may have been a horse pulling a sleigh, once but I loved the film and the book and wanted to look like June Alysson for years); Hans Anderson's Fairy Tales (hrmphh but good stories); and Swiss Family Robinson, where I had to be content with Grizzle the donkey - until the snake ate it! 

In the other side of the shop, you instantly became aware that it wasn't the feminine knitting and nice-smelling side, because the overwhelming perfume was paraffin. I can remember inhaling deeply. The smell never changed. I wouldn't mind betting that if you walked back in there (although it is a small Tesco now, sigh) you would still catch a little stray whiff of paraffin. Where the aisles of bakery goods and cereals are now, once there would have been lengths of that wonderfully slightly-stretchy plastic covered wire which held net curtains up, and the hooks and eyes that fastened it. Trays of nails and screws of every dimension and length, glue, ladders, picture hooks, cutlery drawer dividers, enamelled plates, pie dishes and mugs for the kitchen, tin openers, rubber things with a slit cut in them to take the thrust end of a teatowel, dustbins and stepladders, tin baths and buckets, string and twine, packets of seeds and spring bulbs. It is long-gone now of course, except in my memory, where it is like yesterday . . .