A very brief breath of sea air

Llansteffan again.  The default setting for sea air.  Also, today, the default setting for most of Carmarthen town and environs as it was choc-a-bloc with people.  We managed to get the (last) parking space at the top end of the beach and had a little stroll.  We had taken the cool box and bought cheap choc ices from Tescopolis, so our ice cream treat cost us something like 10p a head!  We don't often have crap ice cream but when it's hot . . . anything will do.

We are just waiting for our neighbour with the digger business to come and take the grass off the big area of chippings we had years ago when we were doing work.  Now it's grown over (and the hard core strip across the paddock where the lorry goes for emptying the septic tank) it is long overdue a sort-out and then it will be used (the stony bit) for parking again.  When Tam and her boyfriend come down in his van, they need to be off the driveway so we can get in and out easily.  One job ticked off my to do list.

I woke early and we both got up about 5.30 a.m. and started on jobs that needed doing.  I gardened in the yard, digging over the triangle for the Marigold patch, until it got too hot.  Then I went and ripped up grass and weeds from the top end of the garden behind the apple tree.  That is looking much tidier now but needs grass roots and that awful Yellow Archangel which has romped EVERYWHERE.  Why did I ever buy THAT?!  I will pot some roots up and see if I can tempt some car boot buyers to help me in my hour of need!

Right, time for a cuppa.  Back later.  Meanwhile, this is the lovely Cheesy Asparagus Tart (like a quiche) I made last week.

Looking back up the Towy.

Odd "crop marks" - I thought for a moment they had finally knocked down Iscoed mansion (where General Picton lived) but that is higher up.  Perhaps they have put in drains or something recently?

Why We Moved to Wales - Part V - "It's got a lot of Potential"

 "It's got a lot of potential" - that's what people used to say when they visited - looking back, they must have had SUCH a shock.  We were living in a complete and utter DUMP.  There were no two ways about it, the house had seen better days and it would be a good few years before we could do more than just do the minimum to put it right.  For the first few years we didn't even dare to apply for a Council Grant to improve it for fear they would condemn the place!

The top photo shows my dear husband (Hah! when he still had black hair!) showing you just how damp our sitting room was - and how excruciating the wallpaper!  You can see the awful fireplace too - that was one of the first things to go.  As you can see, wallpaper stripping was extremely easy . . .

Here he is reading little T a bedtime story (a Puddle Lane one, judging by the cover).  Look at the concentration on her face : )  As you can see this was before there was a fireplace revealed, so the grotty old Stanley (?) stove sat out in the room.

As you can see the decor of the kitchen left something to be desired . . .  Looking back, I honestly can't remember it being quite so truly awful . . .  As you can see, some foodstuffs had to be hung from the beam so that the mice didn't get them . . .

Here's a close-up.  My ma-in-law had a fit of the vapours when she came to visit and for years said we would never get our money back on the house!  She also insisted I put curtains up at her bedroom window because she knew for a fact that UFOs had been spotted in Wales, and "they took you up into the spacecraft and carried out very painful experiments on you."   !  And she was an intelligent woman . . . supposedly . . .

It was just as well really, that she wasn't here when the workmen came to excavate the old fireplace so the Hergom stove could go in.  We reinstated the beam, as it was missing, and I can remember driving around the Welsh lanes and seeing a falling-down barn and then trying to find out who it belonged to so we could negotiate to buy the beams in it to do up our house . . .

This was the rather grandly-named "Morning Room" which overlooked the paddock.  The wall to your left had quite a damp problem (down the chimney) and eventually we had to have the plaster hacked off and replaced, and it was only about 3 years ago that my husband and grown-up son (not even a twinkle in his daddy's eye in this photo!) also replaced the beautiful dentil coving - hand-made by my husband.  Then, and only then, did the roll of carpet we had bought at auction some 15 years earlier, finally get laid . . .

Outside was still pretty grim too, as the limewash soon got washed off by the blasts of winter wind and rain.  About all that has happened in this photo is a brick path has been laid across the yard and we appear to have painted over the chocolate brown paint around the windows.

However, it wasn't all doom and gloom, as here you can see T's first pony, Jo-Jo, a little section A Welsh mare who we bought aged 11 from a showing family near Sennybridge.  Unfortunately she'd had Laminitis very badly and had dropped soles but she was 100% reliable in every way, and although we always had to watch her weight, she taught all the children to ride, and we had her for many years.  You can see from this photo that the "garden" was a tad . . . basic too!

Here is T, aged nearly 2 1/2 with two of Blackberry's kittens who we kept - Sooty and Bumble.  Gosh, that takes me back.

So, do you think we were completely and utterly bonkers?  I think most sane people would have thought twice before taking THIS house on!

In which WE go and view properties for a change.

A busy week (again!)  We have our eldest daughter staying with us at the moment, as she has started a new job with a Carmarthen charity and is on an induction week.  She will be going back to Yorkshire on Sunday though, and work from home then.

We took time out on Tuesday and drove over to the Brecon/Hay-on-Wye area to view 3 properties.  Of course, what looks good on paper, does not necessarily work out so well "in the flesh".  Our first property was the "sensible option" - to see if it would work for us - a bungalow, with stupendous views (the one above is of the same view taken a couple of miles up the road).  I have to say, whilst the building worked size-wise and had good storage, the garden was NOT my sort of planting (straight lines and "easy maintenance" shrubs and conifers, and nowhere to plant fruit trees or fruit bushes.  It had a small swimming pool - a waste of time in our climate, and maintenance we wouldn't want to have to add to our list of outgoings.  However, it was rather cheek by jowl with other properties and lacked privacy for me, plus it was a little gloomy inside and I really hanker for a light airy house after years of the gloom here!




Above and below:  views taken driving through the Black Mountains to the next property, which was absolutely STUNNING, suited me to the teeth, but the Mr didn't like the beautiful natural garden due to the fact that there was a steep bank to mow (or leave, as I would - I'd plant it with wild flowers). The garden sheds were . . . well, we'll call them petite (blardy useless for us anyway!)

The cottage, however, was TEENSY upstairs - two bedrooms so small that once you got a double bed in there was room for nothing else, so storage was at a premium.  They would need knocking through to make one half decent sized room, but even so when you consider all our big lumps of furniture here, we would have needed to get rid of just about everything we owned to fit in there!  As I said, what looks "doable" on paper, falls flat when you see it with a practical eye.  Plus broadband would be expensive as it was by satellite only, due to the mountains, and there was no shop in the village (again, you don't find this out until you view).  Plus it was ALL the money (and more) and if you wanted the Aga, or various other free-standing bits of kitchen fitting, all were extra by negotiation!

We had lunch in Hay, and then had a little time to kill before the final viewing, so did a drive-by of it, and explored the nearby lanes.  It was very handy for Brecon and had nice views again, and super walking in the area.  I liked it a lot - a little on the small side but just about doable and it was the right price, so you could always put a small extension on.  Once again, my wretched husband was sniffy (HE liked the bungalow because it was bigger), and said it had no character, but I always think you can put that right with a little less beige paint (throughout!) and your own nice pieces of furniture and paintings.  It's academic anyway, since it will probably sell very quickly (it is a good buy) and we don't have another viewing for a month now - even supposing they might offer, which the way things are going at the moment, seems unlikely!

Still, we may have to bite the bullet about relocating the driveway, so watch this space.

Above and below:  views near the last cottage.

Gosh, my walking feet wanted to be up and doing!

Anyway, we shall see.  A couple of other possibles have come onto the market which we may check out - one is particularly nice and has storage.  We'll see.

It's another no . . .

At least we heard back quickly this time.  Our house wasn't suitable for them because it looks onto farm buildings (in the details it states it is next to a working farm and this WAS the farmhouse for the farm) and although they don't have horses, just "may" in the future, apparently the land was not as extensive as other properties they had seen.  Well, since they have never had to maintain fences and land, I wish them well with a bigger acreage.  I am gutted, but not surprised.

Why We Moved to Wales - Part IV

A photo of the Cothi in spate.  I think you get the general idea . . .

I can still recall our last night in our old house in Dorset, left with just a mattress and bedding to sleep on, a cot for little T, breakfast and a kettle.  Scary.  We were going to live in what was basically another country, as although we hadn't realized it at the time, Welsh was the primary language spoken in Carmarthenshire.

The journey seemed to take forever.  There was none of this "Collect the key from the agent at X o'clock" - we just picked up the key from the Farmer at his house.  We were there sooner than the two removal vans - neither of which could fit across the narrow bridge over the river, and one of which promptly broke down on the spot at the thought of it!  That was still there the next morning, when it finally got fixed and brought in another way.

Needless to say, dusk falls early in March, and so we found ourselves unloading furniture and belongings in the dark.  Only the barest basics were sorted that first night - T's cot put up (in the little room where I type this) and our bed in the larger of the two front bedrooms, next door.  At some time in the past, someone had put up a shelf on the wall in this bedroom, using 6 inch nails and not much else.  There was a carrier bag on it.  We were beyond noticing the niceties by this point and fell into bed, exhausted.  In the wee small hours I was woken by the sound of a carrier bag rustling.  Well, more than rustling, something was making quite a racket.  Somehow a mouse had scaled the wall into the carrier bag (or perhaps it had set up home there) and was doing a Jane Fonda style workout.  My husband finally lobbed a shoe at the wall and silence descended again.

Next morning, husband and daughter fed, I set off up the hill to give my old dog Tara a walk.  I can still remember reaching the top and looking at the view across the Cothi valley, towards Black Mountain in the distance.  It quite took my breath away - and still lifts my spirits today.

So we set about getting the essentials sorted.  We had a Rodent Problem in our new house.  One night that first week I was sat in the very green bath in the very green bathroom and a mouse came out of a hole in the wall and began a wash and brush up.  If it was aware of me, it wasn't the least bit bothered - talk about bold as brass!  Oh, and those baked bean tin lids on the skirting boards?  That was to stop the rats coming out into the room!!!  Sadly, all the cats we had in Dorset had died on the main road in front of the house. I might add, all these cats came unbidden to us (much as they do here in fact) - I would never have chosen to have cats on such a busy road.

So we went on a visit to one of the many rescue centres in our area, Ty Agored Animal Sanctuary near Cribyn.  We picked out a - very pregnant - black tortoiseshell queen that we called Blackberry. The Sanctuary said that they would rehome the kittens for us, and subsequently did so.  Whilst we were there, looking at cats and trying to make up our minds, we were aware of a very loud purring from a box which turned out to be coming from a small scruffy hairy black and white cat.  "Oh that's Grandma" one of the helpers said, laughingly, and later told us she had been with them a week or so and because she wasn't a pretty - or young - cat they expected to have her forever.  Instead, she came home with us, and with Blackberry.

Above, Blackberry and below, dear old Tatty.

One of the first things we did in the house was to reinstate the bricked-in fireplace in the kitchen.  We always call it an inglenook, although really it isn't wide enough.  Anyway, it took a lot of work digging it out and finding a replacement bressamer beam.  That was it being excavated anyway. (Apologies for sideways photo).

Anyway, this was a year or so on from moving in, and I know that because Blackberry's gorgeous big ginger son, Bumble, is curled up in front of it.  The Hergom stove was multi-fuel then and we burned anthracite and big logs in it, to run the central heating, but boy, did it gobble up wood and my husband found he was forever cutting up logs for it.  After a few years we had it converted to oil (it seemed like a good idea at the time . . .)

What we HADN'T realized until we got here was that the weather was quite a bit different to Dorset.  There was a bit more rain for starters . . .

This is the lane in front of our house, and what happens when it rains so hard that the run-off from the fields turns it into a fast-flowing stream . . .  It doesn't happen very often, and soon abates, but it looks dreadful at the time.

Sorry about the glare from the window in these, but I think you can get the gist.  Below is the river far right, with the run-off water a foot or more deep, hurtling into the river at the bottom of the hill.

Below - this is flooding further downstream at Pontargothi.

Yes.  We were beginning to find that life here was quite . . . different!

Viewing done and dusted, now fingers X'd

I was up at 4.30 a.m. this morning as we had another viewing today, an extended family from Dorset.  Despite beavering away in the house and garden all week to get it looking good (despite my dearly beloved saying that it was fine, nothing needed doing, why was I putting myself through all this again - it was only a fortnight since it was last done?!!!), I still had a mental list of "fings to do" this morning before the viewing and thankfully, got them all done in time.  I even found time to bake a Manderin Orange Cake which, despite being on a change your nutrition type of diet to improve my gut flora, I felt I had earned a large piece of afterwards.

I wish I had been able to make up a pretty bouquet  like this one from the garden, made up for house photos for our brochure, but it is mainly Cowslips out there at present, and though I did pot up a plant for the kitchen, I went and bought a bunch of flowers for decoration.

The people seemed to like the house and made some very complimentary remarks, other folk have done just the same and walked away.  Next Door cleaned the road for me, as requested, but he did it yesterday and then had the cows go backwards and forward 3 times after that so it was nearly as bad again.  Ah well, I can't change that.  We shall just have to wait and see.

Then I had details of a lovely fresh property come on my newsfeed and it is FABULOUS.  (This said with the eye of the Romantic rather than the heart of the Practical).  It has unsurpassed views and that is something I always wanted . . . even though you would experience every wind going - AND some!

We are going to look at three properties next week (just in case).  One is the Sensible Head and Practical Heart sort - a bungalow with some character in the right area.  My heart does SINK at the thought of bungalow living though, as it really isn't US and is tantamount to admitting we are old fogies now . . .  Local walks aren't brilliant either but it is a short walk to a couple of local shops.  

Another is a lovely cottage, but at the top of our budget, and the local walking all seems to be single track lanes climbing up a hillside to various different farms.  No loops and nothing flat.  The 3rd we like a lot, it has an Aga and good sized rooms.  (Well, the bungalow has good sized rooms too which is the main reason we're looking at it.)  It also has an acre and a half of land and views and isn't too far from a town with all the facilities we could need.  Goodly length of flat lane noticed, and some loop walks.

Local views - up by Horeb I think, taken a few years back.

Anyway, we shall now have to wait all over again.  I hope it isn't another 10 days before we get a polite thanks very much but no thanks . . .

A Visit to Nevern Church

There will be a continuing of our moving to Wales epic, but I am trying to spread it out a little.  We have another viewing tomorrow so today is going to be spent doing a final dust and vacuum and clean and polish (I have just remembered I have not yet got around to cleaning all the paintwork on the ceiling of the porch.  I suspect that after that there will be a lot of disgruntled spiders.)  

Yesterday as it was dry and sunny on and off, K and I beavered away outside.  There was a sill to repair (the price you pay for living somewhere where it rains a lot), and I HAD to get on with the garden.  I have managed to weed the first 10 feet or so of the herbaceous border (which sounds grander than it is!) and popped in a few perennials I had sitting around in pots over the winter.  So I have added a nice pinky-yellow Achillea which should romp away judging by how pot-bound it was, a lovely soft purple-blue Scabious, and nearby a taller purple Erysimum (sp?) - you know, wallflower-type thingy.  I also bagged a lovely peach-coloured Foxglove when we were in Charlies in town last week and that has gone in at the far end.  Beyond that all is chaos with the usual garden thugs having taken over but at least they hide the weeds and I can move on to clearing some gaps after the viewing.  I finally managed to clear the moss, a pile of brash from pruning dead branches off the rambler roses earlier in the year, weeds, and the earth accumulating beneath all the moss just before teatime last night, so all the David Austin roses in big tubs are now standing on clean concrete again.  Poor things - they need to get in the soil properly and so I am praying that THIS will be the year when we finally sell.  

Talking of which, we heard back (finally) from the last viewing and unsurprisingly they chose somewhere else on the grounds that the doors were too low here (hubby was 6'2" and folk were shorter in Georgian times which is when most of the doors were put in) - I knew it wasn't a good sign when he brained himself on the low beam down in what was mum's kitchen . . .  Also they said that they didn't like the house overlooking the farmyard.   A valid point, and NOT something I can paint my way out of BUT since this was the farmhouse belonging to the farm next door, of course it is going to face the farm so they can have easy access - the path used to go from the front of the house straight across the lawn to the farmyard, and it faces East so that they had the sun first thing in the morning when they were up and about.  The viewers had mentioned another property they were going to look at in Newcastle Emlyn so I got nosy and am pretty sure I found it as it was VERY them - imposing Victorian house with a gigantic kitchen, imposing staircase, a separate coach-house and Very Grandiose . . .  plus it was at an absolutely giveaway price.  No way could we compete with that even though it didn't have land for her horses.  Ah well.  

Anyway, when we were leaving Newport the other day, we did a detour via Nevern Church, famous for its "Bleeding Yew".  The trees here are some 700 years old.  I first saw it many many years ago (1972 I think) when I was staying with my penpal Sue and her sister and dad, at Ferryside.  They pointed out a gravestone to me which was so sad, as the parents had outlived ALL their large brood of children, the final daughter dieing when she was 18 or 20.  I've looked for this stone since, but haven't been able to find it.

This is the church of St Brynach, a contemporary of St David, and was founded in the 6th C. although the present ediface has a Norman tower and the rest of the church is late perpendicular (1425 - 1525).  It was "restored" by the Victorians, something they were fond of doing.

In the churchyard is the most amazing  Cross which dates to the 10th or 11th C.   It is very similar in design to the big cross at Carew, which is near the castle there.  The dedication is to H/AN/.EH but there is also a smaller one (which I overlooked) nearby, which is dedicated to VITALIANA/EMERITO with an Ogham inscription VITALIAN(o) on one edge.

Part of the key pattern design on one panel of the stone, and below, interlace.  If I wasn't half asleep I would look up Romilly Allan's Early Christian Monuments and give you chapter and verse about where such designs are also found!

Inside the church, more Ogham along the edge of the Maglocunusstone, set into the window ledge.  The Ogham reads MAGLOCUNUS (MAELGWN) SON OF CLUTORIUS and it dates to about the 5th C.  I couldn't get a decent photo of the cutting across the top in Latin.

Here is the Cross Stone.  This is executed in a pretty ribbon-like fashion of knot-work.  HERE is a link which has some wonderful photos of the Church and crosses, and a bit more information than I have in the little guidebook I bought in the church.

I'll save some more photos for tomorrow.