I shall never complain again about the cold . . .

At the moment, I just seem to be wishing the winter weeks away, and the weekend's routines mark another step nearer to some sunshine and warmth again (I am hoping for a good summer).

At the car boot sale this morning, we found a book on the Welsh Borders, with lovely illustrations and excellent snippets of local history, folklore and interesting facts. I was reading it earlier on and came across the following, which I have read elsewhere a while back, but it is worth repeating here (and I shall never moan about the cold again, I promise!!!). The author is talking about a walk on the Long Mynd in Shropshire.

In fine weather its beauty has an oppressive quality; in winter, as the Reverend Donald Carr found out back in 1865, it can be deadly. Mr Carr was the rector of Woolstaston, north of Church Stretton on the eastern side of the Long Mynd, and was also responsible for the remote outlying village of Ratlinghope on the west side, 4 miles away from Woolstaston. On 29 January 1865 he set out through the snow on horseback to take the afternoon service at Ratlinghope. The fallen snow was deep enough to force Mr Carr's servant to take the horses back home, but the clergyman went on alone, crawling on hands and knees through the drifts, to reach the lonely village on the moors and take a short service in the company of a handful of people. The Journey home was a different matter entirely. Back on the heights, a furious gale had blown up. Mr Carr was at first confident that he was on the right track, but soon realized that he had lost his way, with darkness coming on and the blizzard getting worse all the time. Then he fell down the side of a ravine . . .

"I found myself shooting at a fearful pace down the side of one of the steep ravines which I had imagined lay far away to my right . . . I continued my tremendous glissade head downwards, lying on my back. The pace I was going in this headlong descent must have been very great, yet it seemed to me to occupy a marvellous space of time, long enough for the events of my whole previous life to pass in review before me, as I had often heard that they did in moments of extreme peril."

He survived that fall, but shortly afterwards, now conscious that he was completely lost, had another even worse, this time losing his hat and gloves. He still had his brandy flask, but "could hardly get my hands to my mouth for the masses of ice which had formed upon my whiskers, and which were gradually developed into a long crystal beard, hanging half way to my waist."

Somehow he kept going all through the night, continually falling down and forcing himself up and on again, fighting the overwhelming desire to lie down and drift into sleep. Dawn brought no relief, as a dense fog lay over the Long Mynd. Mr Carr found that he had gone snow blind when he could not tell the front of his watch from the back. Staggering on, he found himself at the top of the Lightspout Valley, and in his weakness tumbled over the upper part of the waterfall - somehow without adding to his injuries. Then he lost his boots:

"They do not seem to have become unlaced, as the laces were firmly knotted, but had burst in the middle, and the whole front of the boot had been stretched out of shape from the strain put upon it whilst laboriously dragging my feet out of deep drifts for so many hours together, which I can only describe as acting upon the boots like a steam-power boot-jack. And so for hours I walked on in my stockings without inconvenience. Even when I trod upon gorse bushes, I did not feel it, as my feet had become as insensible as my hands."

At last the exhausted man, "crowned and bearded with ice like a ghastly emblem of winter", stumbled down the Cardingmill Valley and came upon a group of children, who promptly ran away from the apparition. However, help soon came, and Mr Carr made his way home to Woolstaston and eventually to a complete recovery.

Taken from Philip's Welsh Borders, by Christopher Somerville.

What are you reading at the moment?

Last week, being pinned to the sofa with the chest infection and the side-effects of the anti-biotics, I read my way through "Daphne" by Justine Picardie, from cover to cover. This week I am back into Edward Thomas country, reading the biography I got for Christmas: "Now All Roads Lead to France", with the Annotated Collected poems of Edward Thomas beside me for company. Bedtime reading is Virginia Woolf's "Jacob's Room".

Now we are virtually out of heating oil, we are down to one-room living, although my little office is bearable as long as I have the small oil radiator on when I am at the computer. Curtains are pulled early, a hot bath is the highlight of the day, and regular hot drinks the order of the day! Slipping into a warm - no, HOT - bed at night is bliss. Roll on spring! But then it will be all the outside jobs which cannot be done at the moment, so I will read whilst I can.

A walk in Brechfa Forest

I had cabin fever this morning, after being confined to barracks last week with my chest infection and the bitter weather. Yesterday's walk convinced me to get out again, and I persuaded K to get the paper from Brechfa for a change, so that we could have a walk in the Forestry. The sun was out, so we grabbed the moment (just as well as it's disappeared again now). Here is Brechfa in the distance, photographed through the car window.

We parked up on a good piece beside the road, so we weren't locking the lane, and walked half a mile or so to the Forest edge. This gateway seemed to beckon me in to take a photo.

From the bridge, looking upstream.

Fallen trees across the river. Further along, a beech had toppled over, but continued growing, with lots of upright branches crossing the trunk.

The track ahead.

The Afon Clydach below us.

This footpath leads you along the bottom of Allt-y-Garth.

Above and below, early morning sun highlighting the moisture on twigs and leaves, as if they were touched with mercury.


Whinberries grow amongst the mosses and small ferns on this wet slope beside the path. Whinberries are a common feature on higher ground here. We used to pick them when we camped on Dartmoor.

Looking across the river from the pathway - a tangle of brambles and Fireweed (Rosebay Willow Herb).
The Afon Clydach scampering away downstream.

These were the colourful mosses I was speaking of yesterday. A different bridge, but same plants and same stunning colours. This is Pont Cymmawr-du.

I was intrigued by this little cabin beside the ruins of a former Hafod or barn. I wondered if anyone used it as a weekend retreat or whether it was a Hippy hideout.

I LOVED this photo (hence it being the new header.) It is the atmosphere of it - sun breaking through the river-mist and the beautiful tangled blackness of the tree boughs. This is our lane home, back down the valley.

Looking back up the valley in the direction of Abergorlech.

Frost still held captive the North-facing slopes and low-lying marshy fields beside the river.

Looking towards home . . .

A short walk

As it is so mild out again, I decided I would do a short walk to blow some of the cobwebs away and burn a couple of calories, having been stapled to the sofa all week. I took the car to the bottom of the hill, as I knew I wouldn't be able to struggle back up it at the moment, as my peak flow reading is still down (though improving).

It was a . . . mindful . . . walk. I was able to clear my mind of all my worries, and just really LOOK, noticing a sodden Celendine, and then one which had just burst into flower, and plenty of Celendine leaves pushing through now. Fresh grass on the banks, leaves of wild Strawberries and Ground Ivy, and in the wet Alder-carr woodland, whole rafts of Opposite-leaved Golden Saxifrage. The birds were singing - Robins and Great Tits mostly, whilst a Wren flew across the lane at ankle height, and I saw Blackbird after Blackbird in the trees beside the lane. A Jay's raucous call sounded from the Hazel copse, and I watched a Buzzard hunting for worms in one of the pasture fields which normally has sheep in. The deep red walls of Goitre farmstead were even darker after the rain and the house stood out against the winter-bleached fields around it.

Sheep grazed just below the Gorse coverts which surround the lips of the Iron Age hillfort and I watched a solitary Red Kite languidly riding a thermal. The emerald moss on the grey stone bridge was sporting a beard of scarlet and russet which held droplets of moisture, such an intense concentration of colour. The wheelrut of a tractor had turned into a mini-lake as a leaf-filled ditch, no longer maintained by the farm, seeped into it.

What we miss when we don't LOOK . . .

Just in case you're worried . . .

We're not snowed in. It's been arctic outside, and the hill turned into the Cresta Run when a spring decided to re-route itself across the road instead of into the ditch . . . Next door, him with the tractors and Landys, had no trouble getting up or down. We had to spread some grit, but got out on Friday. Yesterday though, I had a chap at the door looking for someone with a tractor, as his delivery van had fallen foul of the ice and was in a precarious spot, hanging over a sharp drop into the stream. I pointed him in the right direction for our neighbour (still milking), but gosh, it took two hours to get the van out safely, and my OH got involved in gritting the hill so he could get back up it.

Anyway, it's been raining all afternoon, and hopefully will stay a little warmer. We have been snuggled up by the wood burner all afternoon, covered in quilts and cats and quite snug! I've finished my Daphne book, and can heartily recommend it (Daphne, by Justine Picardie - just a penny on Amazon . . .) I didn't want it to end.

The custom of wife-selling

Herefordshire city centre.


Many of you will be familiar with the custom of wife-selling through it figuring large in "The Mayor of Casterbridge" when Michael Henchard sold his wife to a sailor in the doorway of the frumenty tent at Weydon-Priors fair. However, it was not confined to Wessex, as this webpage shows. Far from being frowned upon by the Judiciary, as one might expect, it was even actively enforced by the Poor Law Commissioners, so they were absolved from having to support the entire family in the Workhouse. The standard procedure was for the wife - usually more than willing to take her chance with a new man than the one whose failings she was only too familiar with - to be stood with a halter around her neck or arm or waist (as if she were a horse for sale) and for bids to be offered until a mutual agreement was reached. "Marriagable age" at the time of the Marriage Act in 1753 was the age of consent (12 for girls and 14 for boys). HERE is Wikipedia's take on wife selling.

Anyway, I must be feeling better as I have been blowing the dust off a bookshelf looking for a.n.other book and my eye fell on The Folklore of Herefordshire, and this has mention of the practice:

"There can be no doubt that the horrible custom of a man's selling his wife, in the open market, with a halter round her neck, was kept up at Hereford into the 19th C. In 1802, a butcher sold his wife by public auction, in Hereford market. The lot realised one pound, four shillings, and a bowl of punch. "Nonagenarian", an old lady whose reminiscences of old-time Hereford have been referred to, witnessed a similar scene more than once. Here is a description of it in her own words:

I must recall to your memory my statement as to my being playfellow to Mona Delnotte Coates, for it was while walking with her that I first saw a man selling his wife. We were going from the Barton to the other side of the town, and necessarily had to pass the bottom of the pig market. Here we saw a crowd. The girl was desirous of knowing what was the matter, so she elbowed her way through the people, and was followed by the children to the open space in the centre. There stood a woman with her hat in her hand . . . This woman's hat was a very smart one. She stood looking down. At first I thought she was admiring her own red cloak, but as she stood so still my eyes wandered over to see what was amiss, and I shall never forget how surprised I felt when I observed she had a rope about her neck, and that a man was holding one end of it. "What has she done?" we both cried out, for I believed she was going to be hanged. "Oh," said a bystander, "she has done no good, depend upon it, or else he wouldn't want to sell her." Just then there was a loud laugh, and a man shouted, "Well done Jack, that is elevenpence more than I would give. It's too much, boy, too much." But Jack stood firm. "No," said he, "I'll give a shilling, and he ought to be thankful to get rid of her at thatt price." "Well," said the man, "I'll take it, though her good looks ought to be worth more than that." "Keep her master, keep her for her good looks," shouted the laughing bystanders. "No" said he, "good looks won't put victuals on the table without willing hands." "Well," said Jack, "here's the shilling, and I war'nt I'll make her put victuals on the table for me, and help to get it first. Be you willing Missis to have me, and take me for better for worse?" "I be willing," says she. "And be you willing to sell her for what I bid maister?" "I be," said he, "and will give you the rope into the bargain." So Jack gave the man his shilling."


Well, I had better go and see to the evening meal now before a) I freeze my extremities off (9 deg. today in the house - I've known it warmer!) and b) in case my husband decides to get a shilling for me . . .

N.B. header photo taken a couple of days ago, so a slight change in the colour balance of the sunrise.

Daphne du Maurier and Branwell Bronte

Ths morning we visited our local shop and PO, which is now run by volunteers. It is a mere 6 mile round trip away which is "close" in rural terms, and also has an excellent book recycling system. Several shelves of donated books are there for you to browse, and it is 25p to take a book and swop it for one of your choice, or 50p if you are empty-handed. This morning I pounced on a book titled "Daphne" sure that it must be about Daphne du Maurier, an author whose life intrigues me and whose novels were milestones along my literary quest. I was right, and better still, it involved du Maurier and her research into a book on Branwell Bronte and his personal genius. This is all wrapped up into a modern-day story, based on the true story of du Maurier's work and correspondence with a literary academic who was also fascinated by Branwell. Justine Picardie is the author and one I've not read before.

Perfect timing, given that I finished Philippa Gregory's "The Virgin's Lover" last night, glad to get to the end as I knew the real-life ending (Amy Robsart's death of a broken neck and weakened physical state from probable breast cancer) and the shadow this placed on Robert Dudley, Amy's ambitious husband. It kept him from sharing the throne with Elizabethg I. An interesting take on it, and very well-researched.

Anyway, I am now at Menabilly in my head and on familiar ground with du Maurier's psyche and her increasingly distant relationship with her husband "Boy" Browning, who had by then found himself a mistress - although the deception of his wife and family was destroying him mentally and causing a breakdown.

The Bronte details are familiar territory too, especially as I was re-reading Juliet Barker's "The Brontes: A Life in Letters" last Autumn. The Bronte family have been a passion of mine since my late teens, when I moved on from my early interest in Jane Austen. I have quite a few literary biographies about them (and many other authors) and love to discover more.

So this book had my name all over it. As I am also hock-deep in Edward Thomas books too, the sofa is getting quite crowded at the moment. Me, books, cats and sewing (for later tonight I hope). I feel a little better, but although the a/b's have kicked in, making me feel slightly better, I woke up with a desperately nasty headache first thing, and I get out of puff very easily.

Weather-wise, there is snow on the hilltops around us, but we are above the frost line and below the snow line here, but I will say it is bitterly cold outside, with a piercing East wind - the lazy sort which goes through you instead of around you. It's fair to say that we have known the house to feel warmer - average temp. in the kitchen (indeed all the house bar the sitting room) these days is about 9 degrees in the daytime. Set to get worse on Friday apparently, when strongly minus temperatures arrive from the Russian steppes, so it will be a bit like living in the Gulags then . . . Well, we survived last year without heating, though we did at least have enough to put the Hergom on in the kitchen (not that it made a great deal of difference). Perhaps we should buy a scratch card . . .