An eventful week, starting with Mouse Wars and ending with Storm Dennis. This morning [Monday] the River Wye at Hereford Bridge is the highest it’s ever been since records began. At 9am it was at 6.09m, at 9.45am it was 6.10m. at 10.15am it’s 6.11m.

Mouse Wars commenced on Monday, after we found a shredded crisp packet in the bin – despite plugging the gaps around the holes-for-pipes under the sink. The current status is Mouse 1: Mary & Phil 1. We zapped a mouse within hours of setting the trap on Monday, but since then we’ve come down each morning to find mouse poo and / or more shredded crisp packets under the sink. Clearly Mouse No. 2 is savvier than its predecessor. Perhaps it’s time to add more steel wool around the holes-for-pipes under the sink to keep it out. And relocate the trap into the roof.

After all that excitement, I spent most of the afternoon on follow up from the LED Trustees’ meeting. And cooked vegan shepherds pie for dinner(s).

It was colder overnight, and having got up early on Tuesday for a morning walk I encountered icy roads and snow flurries, which had turned Hatterall’s Ridge and the Black Mountains white. Beautiful. My old iPhone’s photos didn’t do it justice. But the dramatic chiaroscuro lighting over Garway Hill worked better:

(As an aside, one of the email newsletters I subscribe to is Craig Mod’s Ridgeline. One landed in my inbox on Thursday, and this part paragraph jumped out at me:

On media-free strictness: A smartphone excels, above all, at teleportation. It takes you from where you are, and places you elsewhere. If not physically, certainly mentally. This is great when you’re where you don’t want to be — on a packed commute for example. You can listen to a podcast, read an article, and be far, far “away” from a squished train. The issue is when this teleportation superpower intrudes on moments when you want to be present.

Perhaps I should try doing my morning walks without the company of a podcast or two.)

Back to Tuesday, I spent a chunk of the morning transferring info from emails into my 2020 Picos Trip Prep spreadsheet. Alfonso had emailed to say that he’d made the refugio bookings online, and Steffi had sorted out the last of the hotels. IOU payments whizzed their way across the international bank networks. Over the weekend, confined indoors by Storm Dennis, I finished the job although I’ll need to fine tune the packing list given we’ll be carrying out stuff for the 8 days on trek.

The main event of my work week was learning that my trip to LA needed to be rescheduled. Long story. A time consuming pain to have to reorganise everything, but by Thursday evening I’d managed to get all concerned to acknowledge the new date – and thankfully the March weekend we’ve agreed doesn’t muck up any of my existing arrangements. And my all-important birthday weekend. I definitely don’t want a repeat of my 40th….

On Thursday, Storm Dennis’ leading edge arrived and it poured with rain for most of the day. The was a short dry spell mid morning which Dad and Colin had spotted so they came to chunk up the trunk of the fallen willow tree. The chunked “cheeses” are huge. Friday morning provided another dry spell and so Dad and Jean came over and between the four of us we rolled the “cheeses” over to the BBQ yew tree and stacked them there to dry out. To be fair, the “cheeses” were so heavy, it was mainly Phil and dad doing the heaving lifting, and rolling.

Job done, dad took us to The Temple Bar Inn for lunch in the bar. Not a huge success. I’d go for a pint but £7 for a cheese sandwich is a bit steep when the thickly sliced bread is dry and the not-very-exciting-cheddar cheese slices are thin.

Earlier on Friday morning I’d ticked off few more of the To Dos, the main one being to organise someone to come and replace the gutters overlooking the road. Having had the gutters cleaned, the week’s rain had proved that we still had a problem. Best get that done sooner rather than later, but not something I ever needed to know how to get sorted in the Barbican. A post on Rated People produced a response while I was still at my computer, and as I type [Monday] Marshall and team are on the job.

Phil and I have yet to get our heads around “nipping out in the car”, but maybe that’s a good thing. We tend to bundle up things to do in Hereford itself, and drive in on a Friday. This week’s visit was brief as the clouds overhead were full of rain. Not an afternoon for pottering around the city as planned. Instead, a tactical shop at Asda (not my favourite) and picking up the mattress topper we’d left for a service wash at The Laundry Basket last week. Slow traffic all the way from Belmont roundabout, and it was only just after lunch. People stocking up ahead of Storm Dennis?

Back at base I spent the rest of the afternoon snug in the lounge with the log stove on. A bit of reading, mainly finally getting around to setting up dad’s old Huawei tablet to use for a new Facebook account to use here. It’s the only thing I’ll use that tablet for – I don’t want it on any of my normal devices. It’s been helpful for checking updates about Storm Dennis’ work over the weekend, and into week 008.

So, Storm Dennis.

We are fine. Found a few leaky windows 🙂

Luckily we are high ground but for most of Saturday we had a stream running down the road outside our house. The ground is saturated, the ponds are full to bursting, and streams are surfacing in fields.

It was worse lower down though – Ewyas Harold flooded, as did the main road at Pontrilas and the village itself. There was water flowing out of Abbey Dore Court’s former car park.

Saturday was definitely worse than Sunday. When Sunday afternoon brought a patch of blue sky we got out into the fresh air and walked down to Abbey Dore Court to see what the River Dore had done. En route we cleared a few drains. Down at the Dore, we found it had burst its banks and spread cappuccino coloured water over the fields and flood meadows nearby. The road outside Abbey Dore Court and on the stretch of road on towards the village hall had standing water and the drainage ditch that’s usually dry was carrying most of the water from the farm fields on the north to the flood meadows on the south.

There are more photos and videos on Flickr, tagged to Storm Dennis.

Well, it’s 10.45m, and the River Wye is still at 6.11m. Hopefully that’s the peak. It’s been steady at 6.11m since 10.15am according to the excellent Flood Information Service page for River Wye at Hereford Bridge.

Here are some photos of Old Hereford Bridge where the gauge is:

Terrible flooding here…before and after. pic.twitter.com/wJz6HjFAD3

— Big_lebowski (@mini_lebowski) February 17, 2020

We have emergency evacuations taking place in Hereford, a Severe Flood Warning has been issued and the flooding’s been declared a Major Incident in Herefordshire. Amidst all the chaos, one highlight has been following Dave Throup’s Twitter updates. Dave’s the Environment Agency manager for Herefordshire and Worcestershire. He appears to be a very calm man.

Severe flood warning issued for #hereford

Wye now at highest recorded level and still rising.

Take immediate action if in the area and heed advice of emergency services. pic.twitter.com/hPUdRq6d8R

— Dave Throup (@DaveThroupEA) February 17, 2020

 

Just unbelievable #hereford now.

Wye at highest ever recorded level.

Severe flood warning in place. Please heed instructions of emergency services pic.twitter.com/x8y6VClLZ3

— Dave Throup (@DaveThroupEA) February 17, 2020

 

So, I might not make it to London on Tuesday for my February work-week… Depends on how much more rain we get and whether the train line to Newport reopens, or if I can reroute via Birmingham or direct to Paddington on my ticket – always assuming it’s possible to drive to Hereford station tomorrow morning…. Still, for now the sun is shining and the sheep are strolling around their field.

A much more cheerful week this week, boosted by last Saturday’s day out with the Ramblers my mood continuing to improve as I ticked off more of the minor To Dos Monday and Friday, had a good work-week in Manchester and met all the local folks I’d hoped to bump into again on Saturday. In addition, we seem to have survived Storm Ciara unscathed, had our first Sunday lunch at The Temple Bar Inn under its new management, and successfully undertook Operation Free Mouse…. read on.

Monday was a quiet day at 40A as P had one of his periodic migraines, so I pottered around – did last week’s week notes, wrote January’s diary entry in the Forty Acres Diary (vol 13), cleared the ash out of the log stove (it now burns much better as the air vents are allowed to do their magic).

Heading out to the small pond to photograph the cheery yellow winter aconites for last week’s blogpost, I discovered the first daffodils were out down by the train set. Although it feels amazingly early for daffs to be blooming, the Forty Acres February Flowers are fabulous. Dad, mum and Jean have spent a lot of time over the years spreading snowdrops and daffodils, and putting in lots of plants. It’s lovely. Over the course of this week, more daffs have come into flower (Jean reckons they’d be the wild ones – they are smaller than the ones you’d buy from a supermarket) and the winter aconites have spread up amongst the snowdrops. In the rose garden there’s a pink cyclamen, and, amazingly, two roses in bloom, one of which has been there since the start of January. We should be getting primroses soon – we spotted some out when we’ve been out and about this week.

I also spent a lot of time leaning out of my office window with my camera, trying to catch the red woodpecker that has started shy, swooping visits to the bird feeder. I eventually managed one successful albeit slightly blurry headed shot. In the meantime, it was a joy watching blue tits, coal tits and robins feasting away in the peanuts. So I videoed them.

I stretched my legs and got some fresh air with a walk down to Dore Abbey, where I spied what I think might have been a bat roosting high up in one of the arched windows.

In the afternoon, I dug out the sage green paint from the garage and painted over the polyfilla-ed patches in the kitchen, then settled down to finished off Tales of the Country and started The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – an excellent popular science meets biography account of the short life Henrietta Lacks, outlived by her cervical cancer cells which have powered bio research worldwide since the 1950s

Tuesday featured another early morning drive to a station to catch the train for a Mary-work-week away; this week the combo was Abergavenny and Manchester. We are about half way between Abergavenny (AGV) and Hereford (HFD), and it’s a far easier drive to get to AGV station than it is HFD. AGV means no rush hour traffic jams and tail backs; no need to cross to the far side of the City/Town. It’s a beautiful route up along the Welsh Marches via Craven Arms and Shrewsbury. I was in MN to spend time with a new recruit in the KM team, training them up on the document automation platform we use. A hectic but productive trip. Nice staying in the Radisson, and blue, blue skies on Thursday.

Friday morning was spent doing jobs, which meant I didn’t venture out into Ewyas Harold to hook up with the walking group. Another time. Instead, Phil and I headed out in the car to tick off a whole list of Hereford tasks (as an aside, we still find it weird to think about doing shorter journeys by car). We filled up with petrol at the marvellous Lock’s Garage in Allensmore (after a slight delay while we tracked down the lever to open the petrol cap!), bought the week’s veg, and came away with a free lettuce, kohlrabi and artichoke (fab!); took the back roads to Rotherwas and M3 Auto to get our passenger side headlight bulb replaced (top notch service from the team there) then drove through Hereford to drop off two boxes of bric-a-brac at the St Michael’s Hospice Holmer Road warehouse/shop; bobbed into B&Q to buy steel wool, expanding foam, a door hook and a large back of rock salt; sought out a new duvet cover in Dunelm, but came away with a new 1 pt glass jug (Pancake Day ahoy); left our guest bed mattress topped at The Laundry Basket launderette at the Asda junction for a service wash; toured Tesco for a small weekly shop (having bought most of the fruit and veg at Allensmore). Then home for lunch!

I spent some of Friday afternoon reboiling the rest of my marmalade in the microwave with some extra sugar, and it’s now slightly darker, set nicely and takes up only 13 jars, partly because I filled the jars up fuller, partly because the 2 x 10 mins in the microwave boiled off some extra liquid. Very satisfying.

I also spent an hour or so raking more fallen leaves and twigs out of the small pond and then raking up the last of the fallen willow tree’s leaves and long whiplike branch ends (they don’t really feel like “twigs”) and wheel barrowing them down to Mower Turn. Dad and Colin are planning to fix up a day to chainsaw up the trunk and remaining, larger branches. Final job of the day was to squirt the expanding foam into the broken bit of the garage room. I made a bit more of a mess than I meant to…..

Storm Ciara was scheduled to arrive overnight Saturday, staying throughout Sunday and petering out Monday. So, keen to make the most of the calm before the storm, on Saturday morning P and I set out for the Kerry’s Gate – Bacton – Abbey Dore walk – and met five people en route. The most sociable we’ve been (able to be) since we arrived. The Kerry’s Gate trio were accompanied by four lovely dogs too. We swopped numbers and suggested wine, getting an enthusiastic response. The blues had lifted last weekend, and this definitely banished them further away 🙂 So – big thumbs up for meeting people who live near by and are our age (ish).

On our return, we embarked on Operation Free Mouse. Background: we’ve been hearing the scamperings of mice in the roof since we got here and when I was in Manchester last week, Phil messaged to say he had encountered a mouse in the kitchen. And then on Friday morning Phil heard scratching in one of the speakers we’ve got plugged into the TV…. yup, the mouse had got in, but as we realised after a bit of shaking of the speakers and trying to lure it out with peanut butter, it couldn’t get out. URK!!!! Operation Free Mouse saw us put the speaker into the bath where Phil undid the speaker cover, and I stood by with a welly (excellent Whorton tip there) … caught the little fella / fella-ette and took s/he far, far away from the house to let s/he go!! We have stuffed steel wool into the gaps around the pipes under the sink which is where s/he appeared from but had a mere 24 hours mouse free…. Today [Monday], we found a shredded crisp packet in the bin under the sink – SIGH – which has prompted us to set the newly purchased electric shock mouse trap, chosen because you can empty the trap without looking at the Dead Thing. I’m too squeamish for snap traps.

Having mentally battened down the hatches on Saturday afternoon and evening (reading with the log stove on in the afternoon, audio conferencing in for the LED Trustees Meeting and watching the last of the first season of Succession – sooooo good! – with Pizza à la Phil – also sooooo good!), I got up in the middle of Saturday night / Sunday morning to take down the bird feeder on the still small pear tree and the willow’s wind chimes, and to check that the willow tree cuttings weren’t blowing out of the quarry/bonfire pit. All OK (or at least, it was at 4am). With the Amber Weather Warning, we were surprised to see the FloGas tanker materialise on Sunday morning, but glad to have the gas tank refilled. We’d got down to around 20%, having started the year at 50%.

We still managed to head out for Sunday lunch with dad and Jean, our first visit to The Temple Bar Inn under its new owners. Very friendly welcome from the extended Fulgoni family, and tasty food. After a massive lunch followed by coffee with dad and Jean back at base, Phil and I indulged in a lazy late afternoon / early evening reading by the log fire. The days are definitely getting longer – we only drew the curtains at 6 o’clock. The buzzards have been out more this week, and we’ve heard the mournful hoots of owls early evenings.

The first weekend in February; the snowdrops are running wild and down by the small pond they’ve been joined by the first of the sunny yellow winter aconites. The bird feeder is busy with blue tits, coal tits and robins, and the sheep are strolling around the field opposite in search of tasty patches of grass.

And the first of the daffodils are out… amazing.

I was feeling a bit down in the dumps at the start of the week. I think that the prospect and actuality of being in London for work – and being away from Phil – was part of the cause, plus getting to the stage where I need to work on meeting people but not being there to do it. I do like to get things done. And I’m not good when I can’t.

On Monday, after doing last week’s weeknotes, I tried to walk the blues out of my system, following the road up to Kerry’s Gate, down into Grey Valley and past Blackmoor Farm (along what Google tells me is Stone Street), then up to the “main” road and back towards Cockyard before returning to 40A via Jury Cottage Farm and Quarrels Green. It helped.

We were up early on Tuesday morning to allow enough time for the morning rush hour traffic jam along the Belmont Road. I had a slight panic before we left, when I thought the dusting of snow was more substantial than it proved to be. No black ice, but we did need to scrape frozen snow off the car windows. We were at Hereford Train Station with 45mins to spare (but it had been slow from Belmont even at 7.30am) and I had a good journey to Birmingham and on down to Euston. Dropped my bag off at the flat, changed into smarter clothes and headed into work.

Strange being back in the City. Scaffolding had come down from the building at the busy Moorgate/London Wall crossroads, the skeleton of the building above the entrance to Crossrail at Moorgate Station had gone up another floor. The office was the same, and I was soon settled back in at my desk.

Being back in London has meant I got to go to Wine Wednesday with Hazel, Catherine and Fiona, which was lovely. My wine tolerance has definitely dropped mind you 🙂

By Thursday evening I was feeling a bit better – my London work week was done, I’d had a really nice meal with Tom before catching the train to Walton to check that everything was OK there, which, thankfully, it was. And the first couple of visits to Herefordshire by friends had firmed up, for March and April.

Then on Friday it was aaaaaaall the way back to Hereford: I was walking on the beach shortly after dawn and looking out over the Black Mountains at dusk. The trio of train journeys went smoothly, and I walked through Hereford and out to Belmont to meet Phil at Tesco’s to do some shopping before driving home. A long and tiring day, but I was home. AND we had super home made pizza for dinner. Oh yes, Friday was 31 January 2020: Britain exited the EU.

One of the other downsides of the day was having to check my work Blackberry constantly to sort out my flights to LA after the initial options all came in at over three grand. That work trip firmed up late on Thursday afternoon and means that this month I’ll be spending more time away from Herefordshire than in it. Getting my head around that didn’t help my mood. I’m rubbish being on my own.

It was a real effort to join Herefordshire Ramblers on their Hardwicke walk on Saturday. But I am so glad that I did – I was made very warmly welcome and had plenty of people to chat with all the way round the 9 mile route up to Mouse Castle and returning via Little Mountain. As advertised, it was “A varied walk over fields, lanes, woods and some common land”. Very muddy in parts, but with some magic views out over the Wye valley. Beautiful. Sadly no photos.

I drove us both to the the Ramblers rendezvous – Small car park by bus shelter on B4348 close to junction with B4352 – and Phil continued on to spend the day in Hay on Wye. The walk finished later than I’d expected – it was almost 3pm by the time we returned to the car park – so it was straight home for tea, toast and cake….

… and the first three episodes of Succession season 1. We normally limit our TV to 2 eps/night, but it was sooooo good!

Sunday was another good day, of getting through jobs: polyfilla-ing and sanding down the holes left behind by hooks in the kitchen and bathroom and the curtain tracks by the front door; mastic-ing the leaky tall door/window in the hall; cleaning my extremely muddy boots; planting the fire bucket of demon hot chillis from Jean; cleaning the porch; packing for Manchester; buying a return train ticket to get me home from LHR at the end of the month; applying for a Coventry Building Society cash ISA to transfer in my matured Virgin Money consolidated set; emailing Cathedral Building Services to ask Chris to come and take a look at the gutters again (I think we may need to replace the ones facing the drive as they’re not draining in spite of the clean); clearing some of the weed and leaves from the small pond; watering the orchids and removing the dead leaves from my frilly green pot plant (a Boston Fern or Sword Fern, I learn); packing up two boxes of stuff to go to the Hospice charity shop, and putting “Dad’s treasures” into the roof; boiling up three jars of January’s marmalade with an extra mug of sugar in an attempt to get them to set – which was A Success.

A good end to the week.

You can never see enough snowdrops: