Some Me-Time

(Click on photo to enlarge.)

I had a lovely walk up the hill this evening before our evening meal. I felt a need to unwind and touch base, and walking in the countryside always does that for me. We are fortunate to live in a very beautiful area and I never tire of the views from the top of the hill, across to the distant Brecon Beacons, with the vitrified hillfort of Garn Goch inbetween. The foothills of the Carmarthen Fans sweep the skyline, topped by huge defiant stone ring cairns, clearly visible from many miles distant. My eldest daughter and I walked to these once and they are immense and have 360 degree views of course. Amazing places.

I picked a few wild strawberries as I walked along, and looked at the hedgerow flowers - returning after the verges had their summer trim recently. There was Wood Sage, right in the roots of the hedge itself, and a few furtive blooms of Meadowsweet had survived the cutting by being similarly placed. There was Nipplewort, Perforate St John's Wort, Red Campion faded in the summer sun, a few battered Foxgloves, Meadow Vetchling with its yellow pea-like flowers, and two stray and very late Large Stitchwort. The ferns had revived and put out fresh growth too.

I walked up nearly as far as old Isaac's house, now lived in by his grown up son and family. The remains of the old once-thatched cruck-frame cottage are collapsing more with every passing winter, and the hens no longer choose to roost there as it isn't particularly weatherproof any more. The wind plays with the rotten thatch that pokes out from the twisted lengths of wriggly tin, and horsehair plaster falls from the crumbling walls. How pleased the family must have been to have finally built the cottage's replacement around the turn of the 19th century, when Victoria was in her final years, though it resolutely faces away from the wonderful view and into the prevailing weather! - which is South-Westerly in these parts. That attitude reminds me of our kitchen when we moved in - the sink resolutely faced a blank wall as if to say "you've no time to look outside you know - you're here to work!" and our farmer neighbour, who stopped us when we had been here a few weeks and said, "I suppose you think it's beautiful here." Well, actually we did - and we still do . . .