Josh’s birthday fun – Day three (Thursday)

 

The third day of our yurt adventure dawned cold and frosty once again but with the sun shining and the birds singing. Josh kindly tried to warm my clothes by the fire before I woke up but succeeded only in melting my fleece. It’s the thought that counts, aey?

 

Josh’s birthday fun – day one (Tuesday)

 

Wow, how busy can I get without my head exploding and making an unsightly mark on the church office ceiling? Things have been manic in both personal and work life and so I haven’t had time to even think about posting until now.

A whole week has passed since our yurt experience began and it already feels like a lifetime ago. All the beautiful spring whether has disappeared as well, to be replaced by the predictable Welsh rain…booo…hiss.

 

ANYWAY, I shall endeavour to remember what happened a week ago with the help of some photos!

 

Escaping the office

Yesterday was my day off, and for the first time since our Christmas break I was able to escape my office and enjoy the beautiful, cold crisp weather we’ve been having.

 

However first of all I had to endure a trip to the optician. Why is it that the optician always feels much more like an exam than either the doctors or the dentist? I just feel like an idiot because I can’t see half the letters, but perhaps that’s just because I’m a perfectionist!

Anyway, I managed to escape from there after about an hour and a half with a new pair of specs and a new pair of sunglasses on order which totally blew our budget out of the water for this month L. I nearly screamed in the middle of the shop when the woman told me my lenses weren’t suitable for the frames I’d just spent 30 minutes choosing from a whole load I hated anyway. I ended up with kids frames because my face is too small!! My wedding ring is kids size too – shame it doesn’t make it any cheaper!!

 

So after all this kerfuffle we finally managed to get out into the countryside which put me in a much better mood. Everything was frozen and beautiful.

You can’t see awfully well on this video but the banks and part of the river were all frozen solid. (Note: Sorry if you get sea sick while viewing that video – I don’t have the steadiest of camera hands!)

 

 

 

We saw Snipe and Woodcock, both life ticks (first time I’ve seen one) so that was exciting, as well as some lovely bullfinches, redwing, White fronted geese and the other regulars.

I’m not the biggest fan of proper ‘twitching’ as it involves far too much standing around looking at little brown birds that I can never find in my binoculars anyway. I tend to take a more active approach (which normally involves embarrassing Josh), like making goat noises to attract Snipe or dancing around like a Morris dancer to attract Night Jars (before you laugh this does actually work very well – they are very curious and the males think the hankies are the wingtips of a rival bird).

Try it, even if it doesn’t work the look on the other birdwatchers’ faces is priceless

Christmas Catch-up

We had a wonderful Christmas break down in Devon. Josh and I grew up together and our parents still live in the same town so it makes visiting easier.

Today is great because…

1) Isn’t it beautiful outside?! This is the first time this year that I am wearing a sleeveless top inside church (it’s always several degrees cooler inside the office because of the stone walls!) so it must be hot outside! It actually feels like summer now and Josh and I have been enjoying some late evenings at Ynys Hir. We saw two barn owls hunting the other day. Very special.

The dolphins are back too! We haven’t seen them around lately with the naff weather, but the other night we were able to sit and watch them jumping and spinning out of the water for ages.

 

2) The bin men are back and our road no-longer resembles a third world slum. Even though every house in our area got a very clear warning that the rubbish collection was suspended last week, several people in our road still put their rubbish out and didn’t bother taking it back in for the whole week. For those of you have never lived in a seagull infested area, count yourself lucky you have never had to experience the havoc that they can cause, even if you only put your rubbish out a few hours early. So hurrah, now I no longer have to pick my way through dried out tea bags and mouldy potato peelings to get to work, and won’t have pigeons flying out of bags into my face or flapping on my window sill and scaring the living daylights out of me!

 

 

3) I have just finished printing, collating, folding and stapling two hundred intricate wedding service leaflets for my friends, Reuben and Hannah. It was great to be able to help them out, but it’s even nicer to know that they are now done!

Camping in Pembrokeshire

 

I’m going to shamelessly plug everything which made me happy while on my camping holiday in Pembrokeshire as I seem to get a fair few people clicking on my blog via google, so I hope that I will be able to provide some holiday inspiration for others too.

 

We went away for four days, and camped at Foxdale Camp Site which is on the southern peninsula of Pembrokeshire in Marloes, close to Skomer Island. It’s the first time that I’ve ever been to a proper camp site and I liked what I found. It was very quiet, the facilities were clean (and the water hot) and the people were friendly. They even provide a breakfast cafe, and a bar. I imagine that it would get rather crowded in peak holiday time, but there were only ever about four other tents while we were there.

 

 

Pembrokeshire reminded me a lot of two of my favourite places, Cornwall and Skye, so needless to say I fell in love with it very quickly. We walked for miles along the coast path admiring the rocky coastline with its aquamarine water and white sandy beaches. We had fantastic weather too which was surprising, but lovely as we were outside most of the time.

 

 

One the second day we headed off early for the hour long drive to St David’s for our long awaited Whale and Dolphin Cruise (with Thousand Island Cruises). We ended up going out with a group from the WDCS, so needless to say we had a lot of knowledge on board. It was the most expensive thing we did (by a long way) but we’d been saving up for it and I got to achieve two of things on my ‘things to do before you die’ list so it was well worth it.

 

 

Unfortunately it was unsuccessful on the Orca front, but we did have a large pod of common dolphins swimming and jumping around the boat, and I also got to visit Grassholm, the only Gannetry in Wales, where around 100,000 birds live. It was amazing, and I got pooed on by a gannet! OH, and I wasn’t seasick which is a minor miracle considering we were out on the open sea for 3 hours and I normally get sick going on swings!

 

 

We then spent the rest of the day exploring St David’s which although has city status because of its cathedral, is the size a village. It’s very cute, and I could recommend it for a day visit.

 

Next day we headed off to Skomer Island. The wind had picked up a bit so I was dubious about the boat, but the weather really improved and we got there without a mishap. It was great and we saw lots of sea birds, and were able to watch porpoise and dolphin feeding just offshore. Unfortunately I haven’t loaded my Skomer pictures up on this computer yet but I will post some cute puffin photos soon!

We ate at the Lobster Pot Inn in the evening. If you’re eating in Marloes, I would really recommend this place. It looks unassuming from the outside but the menu is just amazing, with so much to choose from – I’m sure it could rival the restaurant a few doors up.

 

The next day it was back to Aberystwyth, via Strumble Head and to eat in Aberaeron!

Dreaming of Pembrokeshire

I’m at that really lovely stage of planning a holiday when it’s not too far away so you can get all excited researching everything that you could do while you’re there, but you’re not quite at the panicked ‘I need to get everything packed and the fridge cleared out’ stage.

 

We’re going away at the end of June for three to five days (depending on the weather!) camping in Pembrokeshire. I AM SO EXCITED! I adore camping, although this will be the first time that I have camped on my own simply for accommodation, rather than it being an organised ‘camp’ or camping with a big group of people. My church homegroup is giving us a tent as a late wedding present so we need to go and choose that soon.

 

We already have lots planned, including a trip to Skomer Island and a jet boat ride around Ramsey Island. We are hoping it will be a deep water Whale and Dolphin cruise but that depends on the weather and demand from other people. Apparently you can see Orcas around that area but I’m stopping myself think about that because I’m bound to be disappointed if I get my hopes up (Okay, lets be honest, I already have my hopes WAY UP!). We also plan to do lots of walking around the coast path and visit wildlife reserves, as well as some of the towns in the area (I hear so much about St David’s working for the church, it will be good to finally see it!), and maybe….Pemberton’s Chocolate Farm…EEK! I wonder if they give out free samples!

 

I have ten days off in total and I’m so looking forward to just mooching around in Aberystwyth for the rest of the time. Most of the times we have holiday it’s always a rush to get down to Devon as quickly as possible so it’s going to be good just to relax, do our own thing and spend as much time outside as possible!

Choo Choo!

  

We had our fourth annual trip on the Vale of Rheidol Railway (or the choo choo train as we more affectionately call it) on Wednesday. The weather, in a break from tradition, was stunning and we had a great time. It was nice to have a girly day for once.

 

  

The trip on the narrow gauge railway takes about an hour through stunning countryside. The Rheidol Valley is one of my favourite places in the world. It’s so beautiful, especially on a fine spring day. It can get quite touristy but if you climb up the sides of the valley there are forgotten glades and woodlands filled with ancient trees.

Anyway, back to Wednesday. We went on a different walk this year, and managed to miss all three paths we were aiming for and ended up climbing over a scree pile and scrambling down through woodland and loads of scrub and bilberry. It was very amusing, especially as Beth had chosen very practical footwear. 

 

 

We must have stumbled through a caterpillar city as well as we have lots of them all over us when we finally made it back onto a path. Josh was unable to identify them from the photo. Anyone have any ideas?