Monday 25 October 2021

Tales from Wales #3 :: chasing the Blue

Hi there everyone 😀

After our short walk down the estuary on Saturday and Sunday spent in the kitchen ... doing a mega batch cook ... we had our first big day out on Monday.

It was one of those days with a real mix of pretty heavy showers with some good flashes of blue sky in between and we pretty much spent our day chasing the blue stuff and trying to avoid the wet stuff.

Our first quick pit stop was at Carew Castle, where the castle was looking particularly lovely with a bit of blue sky and we just pulled in to grab a few photos …





We were soon on our way, but with plans to come back and visit properly later in our stay.

We were heading for Angle beach, about the furthest point we thought we would go heading south. We were hoping that the café would be open as it seemed like a good spot for lunch.

We did a bit of a roundabout route to try and get some decent views of the refinery … which was actually strangely fairly photogenic …


Eventually we found ourselves at Angle Beach, where it wasn’t long before the rain came in …



… and disaster of all disasters … the café was closed 🙈

Undeterred we were soon back on our way heading for our next stop … the beach at Freshwater West … with a short pitstop on the way …
The showers had passed and the sunshine was back, but it was just a tad on the breezy side …


It was here that Martin let me know there was a food van that he had read about and really wanted to try out …

There were some strange ingredients going on … plenty of seaweed …

… but my burger was fabulous …

It was soon time to move on … we couldn’t carry on along the coast as the flags were up and there were plenty of tanks manoeuvring on the MoD Castlemartin training area …


Our next stop was Bosherston where we did more than our 2000 steps at the lily ponds … which were looking lovely … even with the absence of lily flowers …






By the time we’d got back to the car we were both shattered …
… and decided to call it a day and headed back to Garden Pitts for tea and home made apple crumble …

🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎🍏

Friday 22 October 2021

Photo Scavenger Hunt :: October #4 ... Costume

Hi there everyone 😀

I really did have to dig deep for images to fit in with this week's challenge from Astrid. The theme for this week is ... 'Costume'.

It would have been very easy to just drop in a few pictures of my favourite little chap ... who is just really getting interested in dressing up, with big plans for a grim reaper vibe for Halloween this year ... but I though I'd have a good trawl and see if I could come up with anything else.

I did go back a fair while in time but I was surprised with how much I found and in the end it was a case of having to narrow down my selection starting with ...

Las Ramblas ... Barcelona 2003 ...
... where these 'living' statues are pretty much an every day occurrence ...



Disneyland Paris ... 2005 ...
... where there are fabulous costumes everywhere you look ...


London PRIDE ... June 2006 ...
In June 2006 I spent a weekend in London with mum and my sister and we just happened to be there as the PRIDE celebrations were taking place and there were some pretty spectacular costumes on show ...


And finally ...

Prague - March 2007 ...
... where, when just wondering around the city, we stumbled upon the film set for one of the Chronicles of Narnia films ... it was pretty surreal ... if you look closely at the first photo you will notice some of the cast are actually looking at their mobile phones ...




Well I think that's me done for this week ... the theme for next week is Halloween, so maybe the grim reaper will make an appearance 🎃🎃🎃

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Tuesday 19 October 2021

Tales from Wales #2 :: Along the Estuary

Hi there everyone 😃

For our first small venture out from Garden Pitts we opted for a short walk along the estuary. We really wanted to just see how Martin would get on walking any kind of distance with his crutches, following his recent ankle operation.

We headed right out of the gate and along the lane … which leads to a dead end, which does make for a very nice quiet spot …
Towards the end of the lane we came to the sign for the public footpath which would take us down to the banks of the estuary …
It was little odd at the bottom of the footpath as we seemed to be faced with a wall of very tall reeds and weren’t sure about where we would be heading …

When we reached the bottom we could see that the path had been trodden down to the left so we headed into the reeds …
Once we emerged from the reeds there were some lovely views in either direction …


We were heading down river …

 … and soon found the next footpath sign which would take us upwards …
After a previous hairy experience with the bovine kind we did make sure the locals were well and truly contained before making our way back up …

… and away from the river …

We were now on the homeward straight and followed the track …

… stopping to take in the signs of autumn in the hedgerows …

It was as we arrived back at Garden Pitts that we got to meet our neighbour for the duration of our stay for the first time and we had a good chat about the history of the area and the mining disaster.

We’d done just over 2000 steps, over some bumpy terrain, and whilst it wasn’t far it was just about the right distance for Martin and his crutches. We set ourselves the objective of doing at least 2000 steps a day for the rest of our stay.

A few days later, in between the rain showers, we broke out for another breath of fresh air … this time heading left out of the gate to walk down to the memorial on the quay …
The ferns were looking very green and lush …
Although rain had been forecast all day it was actually pretty nice …

This time we stopped for a good look at the memorial, reading the names and noticing the pieces of black welsh coal that had been placed in the nooks and crannies …

We hadn’t gone far enough to complete our 2000 steps so decided to have a walk along the bank of the estuary … this time upstream to see what we could find …

It was one of those walks where we kept saying let’s just get to the next bend in the rocks …



There was loads of different varieties of seaweed and so many different types of rock … which we took in in more detail in the way back …

We were both surprised too at the number of ancient oaks that were just growing out of the side of the banks …

Back at the memorial we bumped into another local chap walking his dog who was very happy to stop for a chat … it turned out that he actually stayed in Garden Pitts for a while and used to know our neighbour well, though they hadn’t seen each other for years … since the local pub shut.

As we started to head back we could see our neighbour over the other side of the quay, with his dog, so we all walked back together and we were chuffed to have kind of facilitated a bit of a reunion of two drinking buddies from years gone by 🍻🍻🍻

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