A lovely spring day

 I have made the most of it.  Some sitting outside in the sun with a good book, listening to the birds and feeling very relaxed.  Then I did some pottering around in the yard - tidying up weed-filled planters and replanting them with Dahlias, Freesias, Nasturtiums etc.  All with labels or I will forget what I planted.  It was 15 deg. today and will be 19 tomorrow, then some rain in the offing.

This is a "before" photo from an area behind the greenhouse which was ignored last year.  Now I will clear it back to scrubbed cobbles again.  I made good progress on it yesterday.

A neighbour dropped me down at the garage and I picked up the car (it's the clutch, and they can't do it until 31st March). I managed to limp home with it via a swift cat-food shop at Co-op, though I had put an order in for an Asda delivery tomorrow as I can't get my grocery shop done in Llandod.

Above and below: The river Irfon on my walk back from the garage yesterday.

Below: Up the hill a bit, a glimpse of the lovely Caer Beris hotel (and ancient castle site).  There is a big holiday cabins site there too.

Sheep and lambs a little further on.

From today's walk.

Then I went for a walk - not that far, about a mile and a half, but I stopped half way on a sun-warmed log and looked across at the hills, and listened to birds again (Jays and Woodpeckers being noisy).  When I came home I started bread dough for a fresh oven-baked loaf (that's cooking now). 

I sat in the living room and read more of my book and suddenly felt really tired. I laid on the sofa and was out like alight for 40 mins.  All that fresh air I think.

Ajloun Castle

 The new header photo was taken from the road up to the Castle, which is something like 3,500 feet above sea level.  Again, the missing photos have photos from this castle with them.  I have borrowed this top one from Enjoy Jordan Travel Agency.  Please visit the link to see more. As a change from Crusader castles, this was built in the 12th Century by Muslims to protect the area from being overrun by Crusader forces.

Another Link here which will show you various internal and external photos.

Here's a rather Disneyesque AI image of what the castle looked like in its heyday.

A view from the top - there were cable cars running across our view but you can't see them here.  The castle had clearly been restored, but not to the exacting standards we are used to in the UK.

My overwhelming thought, as we climbed the very wide staircases through the building, was how weak it would be to defend.  We are used to seeing narrow, defendable stairways, and curtain walls surrounding the bailey, with murder holes and a portcullis in the gatehouse.  (That said I think this did have a portcullis and murder holes).  The spiral staircases inside Welsh castles could be defended by one man, a right handed chap with a sword.  Here - 100s of armed men could have overcome it in short shrift once the main entrance was overwhelmed.  Mind you, with the castle being so high up, the Crusaders wouldn't have had much element of surprise!

My journal says (sorry to repeat):  "Ajloun castle after lunch - 3,500 feet above sea level.  Lots of trees in this area.  Another rebuilt castle - stairways seemed impossibly wide to repel raiders.  Fabulous views and some cute castle cats!  A good, if small, museum with some Byzantine glass, pottery, small carved stone door etc."

My photos from phone of museum exhibits.

Various pipes.

Amazing Byzantine glass. Byzantine period stretched between 330 and  1343.

2 pots from Tell Abu sarbat.

Amazing carved stone door.

A hard-to-decipher stone.

Yes, yet another mosaic :)

A quern made from rock.  I imagine the resultant flour would have been quite gritty.

Back to normal.  Rosie, looking subdued (due a sleep - she slept for more than 2 hours) and I yesterday, having some granny and baby time.

I will have problems next week though.  Car, it turns out, needs a new clutch.  Unfortunately that can't be done for a fortnight.  Other garages in the area say mid or end of April!  So as I have to be at Tam's next Monday to babysit again, I will just have to not drive it until next Monday and then go steadily.  Getting into first gear when I start up of a morning is the worst bit.  Then it eases.  

I had a pleasant walk home from the garage this morning, and then later up the road to my friend's to get car advice from her husband, so past 10K steps today from that.

Jerash - as stunning as Petra

 

I have tried to get this as a BIG Header Picture, but am stuck with a mini one. Ah well, it will have to do for the moment.  This was the most IMMENSE site.  I was thinking at the start 60 acres or so but the further we walked and the site stretched out - more than half of it not excavated, it was clear it was about 200 acres of archaeology. Just AMAZING.   It was also known as Antioch, a name I recognized but knew very little about.  It was a Graeko-Roman city, originally known as Gerasa, and then Antioch on the Golden River.  Sadly in 749 there was a massive earthquake, which destroyed much of the city.  Earliest archaeology there dates from the Neolithic.

Sadly, I took SO many photographs, but they have not all loaded from either camera or phone.  I will have to wait until Tam is here and can help me.  There were videos too of the site, and of the chap playing the Bagpipes, accompanied by another on a drum. Then they got a chap to start dancing and we all joined in - imagine a take on Zorba the Greek performed by our motley crew!!! It was SUCH fun!  Gabby has the 100s taken by our tour guide but not loaded them on my computer yet (I fear no room!)

We were first taken to the chariot racing arena - quite small and not on the scale of the Circus Maximus in Rome. The horses they used must have been pony sized as it was a very tight turn either end.  I didn't take photos. Above is a complete circle of the Forum's colonnade. I did do a video but can't find it . . .

Greek inscriptions from the city strongly suggest that Jerash was founded by Alexander the Great and his general Perdiccas, who settled Macedonian soldiers there in 331 BC.  Keith always said that if you went into Northern Turkey - or anywhere that Alexander the Great had been, you would see locals with grey eyes, and I have to say that many of the men we encountered around here (and elsewhere in Jordan) had amazing eyes - grey, grey/green, hazel. 

This was the theatre where we danced to the bagpipes (which our tour guide insisted had been invented by the Jordanians).  We entered it up steps and then you could sit on the upper terraces.  However, there was a drop of about 12 feet to the next row down!  

Oh look, another mosaic!

Above, I think this was the temple to Artemis, but I couldn't get a good photo as there were people swarming over it.  We had been shown a temple to Zeus too, but he clearly wasn't as important as the Greek Goddess Artemis.  She was the Goddess of the hunt and wild animals and the wilderness, of childbirth, and also of the moon.  Zeus was the God of thunder and lightening and the sky, and of law and order.  His temple was half the size of the one to Artemis.  There was a long haired cat . . .

I took lots of photos of broken sculptures, intending to draw them on my return.  WHERE is the time (and where are most of the photos?)

These must all be off my phone, as they are not very clear.

Wasn't this just amazing?  Our guide showed us how the pillars were designed to have a little give in them and when a blade was inserted, would move!

Of course, one of the site cats - rather pregnant too!

HERE is a short video about the site, worth looking up some others too.  I was watching one earlier with a really local guide and he knew SO much.   It truly was such an amazing place.

Gifted Welsh Quilts

 Just a quick post this morning.  When my friend Nia visited this week, she bought along two family Welsh quilts for me to be the new custodian of.  One was a wholecloth quilt, made in Borth (just above Aberystwyth) by a family member, on the occasion of the marriage of Nia's grandparents in 1903.  One side is pale pink, and the other pale blue.  The 2nd quilt, probably a little later, is like a Durham strippy quilt, in pink and blue again and hand quilted within the panels, like a Durham quilt.  Quite often the Welsh strippy quilts would have the design stitched right across the width of the quilt.  They are much used and loved, and sadly faded in places where they were folded and the light got to them.  I will treasure them anyway, and am so grateful for this gift.  Nia's mum has had to go into a home and I gave Nia some advice on the contents of her bungalow, so the good stuff went to auction and not to the charity shop.

I shall research the designs over the weekend.

Then I folded them differently to the way they had been folded (e.g. not in half and half again), and put them away in Keith's chest of drawers.  Someone noticed and took advantage of this!!

The moment I opened the drawer, it had an occupant . . .

Gerroff!!

Right, I really MUST wash my hair and then go out for my Saturday paper.  Only 2 deg. out there so probably not gardening weather . . .

Distracted

 Apologies for no post today.  I got distracted first thing with Devon Inquests and have been working on bits and pieces to do with Family History.  I've also done the shopping, had a short walk and watched yesterday's racing from the Cheltenham Festival.  I shall be back to normal again tomorrow, and post about visiting Jerash.

A church with pagan origins - Ysbyty Cynfyn Stone Circle

I got Tam to set the Satnav on my phone so I could visit this church on my way home yesterday.  I meant to last time I went that way (across the hills and dales) but ended up driving straight past it! The relatively modern church is dedicated to St John the Baptist,  and the ancient stone circle remains, which are built into the early circular church enclosure, are in the Vale of Rheidol.  There is a narrow-gauge railway of that name in nearby Devil's Bridge.    It sits in the shadow of the Plynlimon and Rheidol ranges.

In these photos you can clearly see the stones from the stone circle.  The church is only 19th C and was locked, but you could tell this was sacred ground. Two ancient yew trees were inside the circular enclosure. Once, on the site of the actual church, a Knights' Hospitaller monastic hospice once stood.  They were the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem.  This site was also on the Pilgrim's route from St David's.

Two smaller standing stones from the circle were made gateposts at some point in the past . . .

HERE is the excellent page from The Journal of Antiquities about the Stone Circle and it history.

I cut off the end of the church photo, as the Portaloo sat outside the porch did nothing for the general ambience!  The church dates from 1827, and has a wooden font, which I would have liked to have seen.

Similar fun and games in the churchyard was also had at Disserth Church, off the road from here to Llandod.  I think those all got a bit out of hand though, and they were stopped as not very seemly and viewed as insulting to the church services which going to church was meant to be about!

Amongst the older gravestones, this beautifully inscribed one has survived virtually unmarked.  An unusual house name . . .

Now I am already planning my next dream holiday - to visit Orkney and its archaeological sites.  On my own - so I think it will be an organized coach trip.  I need to build up confidence to go further afield on my own (further than Malvern or Carmarthen that is!!) Not cheap, doing it that way, but I can't be organizing flights, (and parking for at the airport), hotel, and trips.

The same company I've checked out do affordable trips to the Isle of Man too, and Tam has suggested that she and Rosie also come along, which would be lovely.  That's been high on my bucket list for years, and Keith and I had planned to go before he became ill.  His paternal line is Manx for 100s and 100s of years.

There are a couple of days more of holiday photos, but you probably won't get excited about Jaresh (the ancient Antioch) - Graeko-Roman remains (nearly 200 acres of them!) or my obsession with Lawrence of Arabia and his Crusader castles, so I will enjoy them myself.

Quilting group tomorrow, so bet get my sewing organized to take.