Herefordshire Week 086: Tuesday 17 – Monday 23 August 2021

Hay baling, bonfires and backroads.


Phil’s sister has been staying with us for most of this week, and Tuesday morning was spent driving to Birmingham and back to pick her up. Plans to see A&M were foiled by a potential COVID-19 exposure (and not enough time to get a PCR test to confirm either way).

Quiet week at work – how nice – and managed to finish up ‘early’ on Thursday which gave me and S sufficient time for a bonfire, getting through the large pile of garden cuttings plus 1 1/2 piles of Richard’s hedge trimmings. Up early on Friday to fit in the rest. A good job to have got done.


The highlight of the week was Ray and friends baling the hay in Kiln Field on Wednesday afternoon. Phil went to lend a hand. I delivered tea and cake after work.

Hay baling in Kiln Field
Hay baling in Kiln Field

More than a month later than last year.


We headed into Hereford on Friday afternoon and, after a mooch around the shops and sights, sat on the terrace of The Left Bank enjoying a (tiny) pot of tea and cake in the 30 minutes of sunshine there was, and watching a man in waders catch big fish in the River Wye. Lots of them. It is refreshing to see Hereford through someone else’s eyes, and to enjoy some of the more sociable things the city has to offer. All too often we just do a ‘tactical hit’ focused on shopping, library and admin.

Saturday was wet and with cloud so low we couldn’t see Cwm Hill let alone Hatterall Ridge. So we drove to Hay-on-Wye for an hour’s pottering, finding it full of posh London families on holiday and people dressed up for World War II. As Phil observed, reenactment and cosplay – what’s the real difference? Home via the back roads for a change.

Al fresco fry up on Sunday morning then drove S back to Birmingham Airport.

Al fresco fry up - Veggie version
Al fresco fry up – Veggie version

Plans to see A&M were scuppered again by another potential COVID-19 exposure (and not enough time for PCR results). Home around 6pm.


I’ve done the Bacton Square a couple of times this week – once before work on Thursday (backwards) and again with Phil on Monday morning (forwards). We measured our stride lengths when we got back, and I’ve updated my FitBit profile in the hope of more accurate stats. (0.83m if you’re interested.)

Rest of Monday was getting garden jobs done – weedkiller spraying, bramble snipping, black currant bush weeding – and catching up with computing. It brightened up as the afternoon went on and so I headed out for a late afternoon / early evening stroll – Cockyard & Kerrys Gate. Very sociable around Jury’s Farm.


TV: (Half of) The Lego Movie 2 (not that wowed; too frenetic), The Chair (not that wowed) and The Assassination of Gianni Versace (better).

Podcasts: The History of EnglandHistory Extra, In Our Time and Great Lives.


Photos: Herefordshire week 86 on Flickr.

Phil: w/e 2021-08-22.

Herefordshire Week 085: Tuesday 10 – Monday 16 August 2021

Good walking in the Brecon Beacons National Park – Sugar Loaf and Waterfall Country.

More Mazda musing. FLIES, meet swat.

And I had to deal with a BIRD inside the CONSERVATORY!

Sugar Loaf Circular: Panorama to the north west
Sugar Loaf Circular: Panorama to the north west

On Tuesday morning I dropped off Phil at Abergavenny station then drove up to  the car park at Mynydd Llanwenarth and did Countryfile’s Walk: Sugar Loaf mountain, Monmouthshire, which I’ve christened the Sugar Loaf Circular.

Sugar Loaf Circular: National Trust Omega Sign - Sugar Loaf & Pen-y-Fal
Sugar Loaf Circular: National Trust Omega Sign – Sugar Loaf / Pen-y-Fal

It was a super 2 hour 20 mins walk summiting Sugar Loaf / Pen y Fâl (596m). Magic views all the way, especially from the top.

Sugar Loaf Circular: Sugar Loaf summit from the lower slopes
Sugar Loaf Circular: Sugar Loaf summit from the lower slopes

Tuesday afternoon brought some drama when I heard some bangs from the conservatory – and a quick look revealed a blue tit had managed to get inside and was flapping around, banging on the windows in its attempts to escape. I’d opened the windows in the morning but only a crack. Why on earth did it decide to come in, and WHY did it do it when Phil wasn’t around???? I really, really don’t like birds – or fish.

A little later, once I’d girded my loins, I crept in, opened the double doors and retreated back into the telly room, and then went outside to leave some peanuts and a dish of water on the patio by the doors in an attempt to lure it out.

Checking again at 6.30pm, it was still inside. So it was time to put an emergency call in to dad, half hoping he’d volunteer to come round to sort it out for me. But no. He did advise that my best bet was to open all the windows as wide as they can go, and hope the bird would find its way out.  So I did – after a lot more loin girding. Thankfully, when I checked before going to bed, it looked like the blue tit had finally worked out the way out. There hadn’t been any flapping or banging in the conservatory for a while and there was no bird to be seen. And so I closed all the windows and doors back up.

When he got home, I did ask Phil to check that there wasn’t an expired blue tit trapped by the flattened packing boxes behind the chairs.


My usual working week felt longer than usual, partly because I was Home Alone and partly because August is living up to its “isn’t it quiet?” tag. Sociable evenings with S&S, VWW and Family Zoom balanced things out a bit.

Picked up Phil on Thursday evening with a speedy shop in Morrisons en route.


On Friday I managed to rise and shine early enough for my morning walk – the first time this week – and then we headed up to Leominster, partly because Friday is Market Day and partly because I’d spotted another Mazda MX-5 which I wanted to take a look at.

After nice potter around Leominster, a visit to their J-Mart (most successful purchase to date – the fly swat!) we paid a visit to Leominster Motors to check out the MX5. I preferred the colour, the mileage, price and soft top were OK but I didn’t like the fact that they’d not bothered touching up the chips and scratches on the paintwork.

Back via Bridge Sollers and some of the black and white villages.

Late lunch then an afternoon mowing. The grass collector stopped working, but Phil came to the rescue raking up the grass as I did the edges with the Honda mower. Too tired for pizza so we foraged leftovers from the fridge.


Up early on Saturday to join the Excalibur Walking Club on their Waterfall Country Walk – a fabulous 12+ mile circular hike from Pontneddfechan along a connected set of the Waterfall Country Walking Trails in the Brecon Beacons National Park.

Waterfall Country Walk: Waterfall Link Trail, following the Nedd Fechan upstream
Waterfall Country Walk: Waterfall Link Trail, following the Nedd Fechan upstream

Waterfalls galore. It more than lived up to its name.

Waterfall Country Walk: Sgwd yr Eira Trail - Sgwd yr Eira (Snow Waterfalls)
Waterfall Country Walk: Sgwd yr Eira Trail – Sgwd yr Eira (Snow Waterfalls)

A long day, especially given the Hereford – Neath drive at either end. Arriving home at 7.45pm (I’d left at 7am), Phil came to the rescue again, providing pizza and more of Ghosts.


Sunday was largely spent on the computer, flickring photos from yesterday’s walk and writing up this week’s walks. I’ve decided to add a new Category here – walking – and a new album on Flickr – Walks.

The teatime break was enhanced by the Abbeydore Golden Valley Tractor Run in aid of Marie Curie passing by our front door.


Finished off The Mystery of Mercy Close over coffee, toast and marmalade first thing on Monday morning, then did the Bacton Square backwards. Back at base, I hauled the bungalow’s surplus paving slabs over to the greenhouse to use as a border in place of the decking planks liberated in the dismantling of the outdoor train line. Staked up the tomatoes, picked the last of the tall lettuce (ie the ones that have bolted) and peas (5 pods). Pruned back some of the wild plum and brambles at the top of the lower path.

We had our first conservatory casualty for a while in the morning – a robin. But in better bird news I did manage to get some good shots of the green woodpecker that’s started feasting on creatures in the grass between the bird feeder pear tree and the kitchen window.

Green woodpecker
Green woodpecker

And we had a starling on the peanut bird feeder and font for the first time too. Just look at those polka dot spots!

Starling
Starling

TV: Ghosts (series 3). I have totally forgotten what I watched on Tuesday and Wednesday in Phil’s absence.

Podcasts: The History of EnglandHistory Extra, Books and Authors, Bookclub, World Book Club and SheDunnit.


Photos: Herefordshire week 85 on Flickr.

Phil: w/e 2021-08-15.

Herefordshire Week 084: Tuesday 03 – Monday 09 August 2021

Weekend washout – both literally and metaphorically. And boy did it RAIN this week.

On the brighter side: a smashing morning doing garden DIY with my dad… who was on The Telly!


I got out for a good leg stretch on Tuesday morning: Kerrys Gate – Cockyard – Duffryn.

Panorama from the Duffryn road
Golden Valley panorama from the Duffryn road

Then Work (thankfully a relatively calm week). VWW and Family Zoom.


Richard came on Friday morning. The front hedges are now looking very trim.

Phil and I headed to Simply Stunning to confirm our order and to pay the deposit. Then on for a Tour d’Hereford featuring B&Q and Wickes to pick up DIY stuff followed by an hour in the city centre for library return / collection and an unsuccessful trainer/walking shoe quest.

Spent most of Friday afternoon reading, and caught up with C(W) in the evening. All sounded good.


An uneventful week other than C(H) emailed on Wednesday to say she’d been pinged after meeting a friend on Monday and so she was isolating and her weekend visit was off 🙁

Saturday night’s substitute Wine Time Zoom didn’t survive COVID-19 either.


Spent most of Saturday morning computing. Every time I pondered heading outside for a walk the heavens opened. Got the dining hall curtains up and sorted out the maps and leaflets drawer instead, and read. Caught up with Hazel and then settled in for a double bill: Amundsen and Promising Young Woman.

We took a chance on a stroll down to the Abbey and back on Sunday morning, and lucked out both on the weather and with an invite in for coffee and biscuits with T&J. In the afternoon, turned some of last summer’s vegan brandy apple mincemeat into Easy Mincemeat Fruit Cake (baked in 2 loaf tins for 1 h 15 mins, a la Mary Berry’s variant), cleared the last of the broad beans, tidied up the vegetation around the large pond a bit, and then headed out to do the Riverdale loop. Bit more garden clearing on my return, then dinner and The Secret World of Chocolatefeaturing my dad!


Walked to Wormbridge on Monday morning to rendezvous with Dad and we spent a good few hours recycling some of the old outside railway track into a third veg bed and a long container to go in front of the conservatory. We both enjoyed the “doing”.

Veg Bed No. 3 complete
Veg Bed No. 3 complete
Dad and the completed Conservatory Coffin Container
Dad and the completed Conservatory Coffin Container

Yes, the container does look a little coffin-like. I’ve christened it The Conservatory Coffin Container.

Oh, and we collected the (s)trimmer mower from Powells – who’d also tracked down the hedge trimmer! Still undergoing assessment….


Pears, apples and wild plums all mouldy on the trees, and my lettuces looking decidedly limp. The tomato plants are loving it, but growing greenery rather than fruit.

Our resident gangs of great tits and blue tits, plus the greater spotted woodpeckers, are devouring the peanuts almost as fast as we can fill up the feeder. The small birds have got better at dining out on the seeds too. Chaffinches, robin, blackbirds (dad and juvenile) and sparrows/dunnocks tidy up the dropped nuts and seeds. No sign of the bald-headed robin for a while, unless it’s the skinny one with some tufts on its head. Maybe? Hope so.


TV: Mainly Mindhunter, a smattering of Tokyo Olympic highlights courtesy of BBC Sport’s YouTube channel, Amundsen and Promising Young Woman, The Secret World of Chocolate and Eight Grade.

Podcasts: The History of England, History Extra, The Essay and Great Lives.


Photos: Herefordshire week 84 on Flickr.

Phil: w/e 2021-08-08.

Herefordshire Week 083: Tuesday 27 July – Monday 02 August 2021

Back to work and into the Brecon Beacons.

Pen y Fan (886 m), Cribyn (795 m) and Fan y Bîg (716 m) from the ridge
Pen y Fan (886 m), Cribyn (795 m) and Fan y Bîg (716 m) from the ridge

Duffryn – Cockyard – Kerrys Gate on Tuesday morning, then back to work after our holidays, spending the afternoon working through my post-holiday inbox. Not too bad.

Wednesday and Thursday were busy work days, with an hour of Thursday morning spent in the company of a local Passiv Haus specialist getting ideas on how to make the house more energy efficient. As Phil says, it feels like this sort of thing should be simpler.

Sociable Wednesday evening with VWW followed by the KM (Zoom) Summer Party. Crappy internet on Thursday evening put paid to Family Zoom.


Pottered on Friday morning, then into Hereford to do a big shop in the afternoon – overcast and then wet. I did get my first email newsletter from the Abergavenny Food Festival, which we’re planning to go to, providing more details on who’ll be there doing demos and talks on 18 & 19 September.

Pizza a la Phil for dinner, and Unforgotten.


Up early on Saturday for my first outing with the Golden Valley Walking Club: the Brecon Beacons Horseshoe featuring Corn Du, Pen y Fan (886 m) and Cribyn (795 m) from Neuadd car park, 8.5 miles from Talybont on Usk.

Pen y Fan (886 m) summit
Pen y Fan (886 m) summit

There’s a good write up of the route we did on Paul Shorrock’s walking blog. We did the 8.5 miles, 2,064ft / 629 m total ascent in 5 hours. My first time walking in the Brecon Beacons National Park – I’ll be back! I really enjoyed walking with the club too, so I’ll be going back out with them again.

The route to Cribyn from Pen y Fan
The route to Cribyn from Pen y Fan

Speedy turn around back at base, then over to dad and Jean’s for a smashing BBQ.


Sunday – Hello August! Hello more cloud and more rain…. We got out for a late morning walk, doing the Bacton Square. Back for lunch and an afternoon spent partly reading and partly doing a bit of gardening – taking down the “empty” broad bean plants and relocating the lettuces from the shady chive bed into the liberated sections of the veg patch.

Dismantling the broad beans to leave only those with pods still on them
Dismantling the broad beans to leave only those with pods still on them

Monday morning mega walk, on roads old and new: Down into Abbey Dore and up Cwm Road to Tremorithic Road. North to Fair Oak, then on to Newton – continuing on the road I’d started along last week. I had planned to take the road from Newton’s phone box to the Old School, but got lured further north by the prospect of reaching St Margarets – which remained elusive, mainly because my map stopped a little before Newton and St Margarets was actually up the road on my right.

Reached a T junction where a left turn led me back to the Old School and, in time, Lower Maes-coed, which is home to the dome-shaped hill we can see from here, and from Skirrid, The Cat’s Back and Hatterall Ridge. It’s home to a trig point, and the map plus visuals promised a footpath that would get me to the top without venturing into the field of cows. I am very wary of cows. Four fields later – including one of sweetcorn and another featuring lots of large hares – I came to the top of the hill, and realised the trig point was in another field – but the views were spectacular, especially of the Olchon Valley with the Cat’s Back on one side and Hatterall Ridge on the other. Wished I’d got my proper camera with me as my old iPhone doesn’t do it justice.

Dome hill (Mynydd Ferddin): The Cat's Back, Olchon Valley and Hatterall Ridge
Dome hill (Mynydd Ferddin): The Cat’s Back, Olchon Valley and Hatterall Ridge

Based on the map and a bit of googling, I think the hill is called Mynydd Ferddin although the map has ‘Cae Tack’ marked closer to the summit. One of those (frequent) times when it would be handy to know what the names mean. At least I know the height – 323 m! Oh, and Mynydd is Welsh for mountain.

I contemplated continuing on as the footpath comes out over towards The Wigga, but the fresh cow pats in the top field put me off. So back to the Longtown Road and down to the Old Trout Inn. Up Mill Lane to Middle Cefn Farm, then the footpaths back to Tremorithic. My final section was on to Ewyas Harold Common and footpaths down to Dore Abbey and round the back of Abbey Dore Court.

Home at 2pm.

A great morning out. About 12 miles overall I think, including footpaths, in 4 3/4 hours.

And all along my walk pretty much every time I got my map out friendly and helpful people stopped to check if I wanted directions, which was really, really lovely.

Read and did a bit of admin in the afternoon – including Wooden Floor Decision, and reconfiguring the furniture in the conservatory. Thunderstorms.


TV: Unforgotten (with the ever excellent Nicola Walker) and Mindhunter.

Podcasts:  The History of England, History ExtraBooks & Authors and The Essay – the rest of Albania!


Photos: Herefordshire week 83 on Flickr.

Phil: w/e 2021-08-01.

Herefordshire Week 082: Tuesday 20 – Monday 26 July 2021

Holidays week two: Holiday-at-home.

Heatwave cont’d, and hailstones.


Too hot for walking, which had been something I’d planned to do this week. Instead, lots of reading including the wonderful, heartbreaking, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell.

Hamnet - Maggie O'Farrell
Hamnet – Maggie O’Farrell

Too hot to be indoors of an evening too so dinners have been taken out on the patio with an LRB to hand. Breakfasts and lunches have been similarly al fresco, generally taken wherever we’ve been able to find a shady spot….

Morning!
Morning!

Broad beans and peas fresh from the orchard have started to feature in meals, including a nice brown rice, cherry tom and broad bean salad with a balsamic vinegar, olive oil and fresh mint dressing.

Broad Beans from the garden
Broad Beans from the garden

The buzzards are mewing more, enjoying the thermals. And the smaller birds have rediscovered the bird feeders. Phew. Phil and I tuned into our inner twitchers on Saturday morning, counting 8 young blue tits and catching a quartet of small birds contemplating the font / bird bath: a robin, a chaffinch, a blue tit and a bullfinch:

Birds at the font - robin, chaffinch, blue tit (?) and bullfinch
Birds at the font – robin, chaffinch, blue tit (?) and bullfinch

We did manage to walk to Ewyas Harold and back on Tuesday morning, indulging in ice lollies from the village shop before embarking on the return journey. I spotted a large eel in Dulas brook. Hmmm, unless it was a river lamprey – I don’t recall it having fins. It was still there, hiding in the sediment, on Monday’s walk.

We also made a couple of trips into Hereford. Wednesday’s objectives were to borrow some wooden flooring samples from Simply Stunning (we’re deciding between two Woodpecker oak flooring options: Harlech and Lynton), to return / collect library books, to have a look for new walking shoes/trainers and walking skirt, to buy a replacement bird seed feeder (Grrrr squirrel and/or woodpeckers!!!) and BBQ supplies – and to pay a visit to Steels Corner to take a look at the second hand Nissan Leaf and Mazda MX-5 that were listed on their website.

The Leaf had already sold but Thursday’s return visit to the Big City was to test drive the Mazda. Lovely, really lovely – to look at and to drive …. but …. not practical for the potholey roads I’m likely to be driving along 🙁 We’ve started looking at reviews of second hand Nissan Leaf EVs on YouTube though. For the local driving we do around here – Hereford and back, Abergavenny and back etc – the 80 mile range would be fine. And solar panels would help with the recharging at home.


Kerrys Gate Coffee on Friday morning then a mega mow in the afternoon, when it was a bit cooler. V pleased I managed to start the Honda mower on my own twice and only needed Gyford Power once. A personal best.

Pizza Fridays resumed.


Grey and overcast weekend, which was a shame as we had visitors on Saturday afternoon and a BBQ.  Decidedly down in dumps on Sunday, despite doing the Cockyard loop with Phil in the morning.

Several COVID cases in Abbey Dore – mainly via primary school kids.


Monday was beautiful, so I left Phil to take delivery of my new work laptop and the shortened curtains and headed out to do the Tremorithic Circuit.

Nettles frustrated the footpath route, so having stuck to the road I turned right at Fair Oak intending to see how long it takes to walk to Newton / St Margarets, and with half a mind to see if I could work out the road route to the Longtown road. But once the lane started to go decidedly downhill, I turned back. Determined to do a Long Walk I headed down Mill Lane and into Ewyas Harold via Dulas instead, coming back over the Common and Abbey footpath. Fab.

Late lunch in the shade of the log shed yew tree, with Dad and Jean arriving for tea and a biscuit after a funeral at the Abbey.

We were in the middle of putting up the new curtains (EXCELLENT!) when the promised thunderstorm materialised (and the forecast has featured them for days now, without any rain arriving) and treated us to a 15 minute thunderstorm featuring heavy rain and HAIL the size of mint imperials…..

Heavy rain and HAIL the size of mint imperials..... (Video, 36s)
Heavy rain and HAIL the size of mint imperials….. (Video, 36s)

And then the sun came back out.


TV:  Godless finale on Monday, then nada until Grand Designs Revisit on Friday. Enola Holmes as a bit of a pick me up on Sunday afternoon, and we started Unforgotten (albeit in the absence of season 1) in the evening.

Podcasts: History Extra 


Photos: Herefordshire week 82 on Flickr.

Phil: w/e 2021-07-25.