Lodge Life :: October

Hi there everyone 😀

In October we only managed to get away to the lodge for a week at the end of the month. I think with our three week break in September we both felt like we needed to spend some time at home.

We had both been knocked for six by Covid at the beginning of the month and we were both really looking forward to our first autumn break ... hoping for a bit of rest and recuperation, without having to think about housework or all of the jobs mounting up in the garden.

It was another good run over, with a mixture of sunshine, rain and rainbows ...

We pulled in just past Bala to have a look at the reservoir, which still looked seriously low compared to how we'd seen it on our first trip ...

Whilst we'd had a good journey our arrival was not quite the relaxing sigh and drop of the shoulders we'd been expecting. It was more the thought that we'd walked into a bit of a horror film.

Flies ... everywhere ... 100s of them ... live ones, dead ones. Fly dirt all over our lovely clean windows. To say it was stressful is a bit of an understatement. I did take photos, but won't post them ... they aren't very nice. We spent ages getting rid of them before feeling like unpacking.

The next morning they were everywhere again. Just horrible. We had another big clean up session before sitting for a couple of hours in the site office chatting with the salesman, who kindly ordered us some smoke bombs that he was sure would do the trick.

From chatting to a few of the other owners it seems it wasn't only us plagued with this problem. It also seems that it is likely to be a bit of annual thing. They are cluster flies, which like to find a way inside to hibernate for the winter. Then they send out pheromones to all their mates to encourage more to congregate. You'd think they would then just settle down nicely for the winter and come out in the spring. But it appears they might just fancy popping out for  bit first.

Anyway ... it seems that they are getting into the roof space somehow and then when they fancy popping out they don't go out the way they got in. They opt for sneaking down through the gaps around the velux windows. Our next visit will involve ladders, a lot of fly spray and some insulation tape ... wish us luck 🍀🍀🍀

We didn't venture out that much on this visit. We had a short walk around the shops in Pwhelli, lunch at the Fron Goch Garden Centre and a walk along the pier at Bangor ... which gave us time to set off one of our smoke bombs ...

We got back to find another batch of dead critters so had another clean up session, including re-cleaning all of the windows and frames.

With our annual Halloween walk with Bobby being cancelled we decided to stay another day but spent it not really doing much, but finally managing to chill out a bit.

We are back again this week and I have to say I'm just a little nervous about what we might find. Fingers crossed they have all settled down for the winter and we won't have to do quite as much vacuuming 🤞🤞🤞

It seems that life at the lodge isn't all sunshine and roses 😀

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