Trip to Wales

Long day today driving across Wales.

Hunting for a Stone Circle , Carn Llechart, in horizontal rain. I found some of it, but then the weather closed in and I abandoned my search 

 I then drove through Mynydd y Betws , a spectacular   huge windfarm  

Road over the top of Betws Mynydd was v v interesting. At one point I was driving up a hill, with only the tips of the turbine blades just visible over the top of the hill. Surreal.

Then arriving at Newgale to watch the Sun set, over the sea.

Then on to The Old School House at Trefin

Good to be back in Wales.

Stayed last night at the Dragon in Crickhowell, excellent place to stay, really good food (and very gluten friendly for me!) but with a VERY narrow entry to the car park!

Major groundworks pts 2, 3 and 4.

More earthmoving and diggering.

Flattening the area between the Wood and the pool, this making the pool a bit smaller (it's totally dry at the moment, being a seasonal rain filled pool)

This work went on end of August through to mid September.

RIP Tom Puss.

Found Tom had gone out for a morning walk in the sunshine, and had curled up and died by the garage door.

We had taken him to the Vets on Fri because he seemed a bit off colour and  breathless, and were told to bring him back on Tuesday for exploratory tests.

Tom hated going to the Vets and was still very distressed last night. 

It looks like he had a heart attack.

Words cannot express how heartbroken we all are, so I'm not going to even try.

Rest in peace, beloved puss

Major ground works PT 1

After a rough couple of years with fairly major ill health scares, we have finally come round to recognising that there are some jobs we can no longer do with ease, and are finally employing people to do the hard work we used to be able to do. 

And some jobs, that we paid for many years ago, need re doing. 

One of these was the gravel drive. We had this done by an excellent local contractor more than 12 years ago

We have never used any chemicals on this place, so we don't spray weeds. We kept the weeds out of the gravel drive for many years by hand weeding, flame weeding and raking, but over the last few years it's got weedier and weedier, until, quite frankly, it looked an eyesore as you drove into the garden. 

So, we employed an another excellent local contractor to come and remove and redo the gravel drive, laying down heavyweight geotextile, then a crushed, compacted stone layer, then top gravel. 

What a difference! It looks fabulous! Mat and Luke, who did this work during the hottest week of the year so far, were amazing.

They are coming back to do more groundworks in a few weeks, so watch this space. 

Perseids, Full Moon and a Glow worm.

Sitting outside,  looking towards where the Perseids will appear in the night sky,  listening to the warm breeze in the trees and waiting for the moon to rise over the top of Moors Wood.

And saw a Glow worm! We used to have lots ads of them when we first moved here, but haven't seen any for years. So excited!