How to go for a walk…

…Will, Anna, Becky, Hannah, Josh and Rachel style!

 1. Peruse a map of your local area and notice that one of the nearby hills is called Welshie Law. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter that the surrounding land could be a midge infested bog, this is an adventure! And it’s called Welshie, you have to climb it!

2. Arrive at the tiny village of Yarrow to begin your walk, only to find that there is a huge funeral being held there and that every sensible parking space is taken.

3. Drive out of village. Do perilous three point turn in farm gate. Lose hub cap.

4. Park inappropriately at the side of the road and awkwardly walk out of the village avoiding eye contact with the steady stream of mourners walking the other way.

 

5. Find hub cap at the side of the road. Decide it would be too embarrassing to run back to the car past the mourners so carry it on the walk instead.

6. Find path.

 

7. Act out the Christmas story to keep yourself amused (only advisable if you’re walking with children’s workers)

 

8. Remember half way up the hill that you’re ridiculously unfit. Feel like legs will fall off. Dump all bags on the ‘fit one’ (read: Josh)

 9. Remember that the big bottle of insect spray you bought especially for the trip is still back at the cottage. Proceed to be attacked by flies.

10. Admire the amazing view from the top of the hill. Feel like it was well worth the toil after all. Eat lunch, take photos, play Frisbee.

 

11. Walk down other side of hill and realise you have lost the path. Consult map. Trespass on farm property and worry you are about to be shot by farmers.

 

12. Finally make it back to the inappropriately parked cars and head home, happy.

 13. Eat cake

Things to do on holiday: Visit Castles

Scotland is renowned for its old manors, castles and towers. You couldn’t really drive anywhere around where we were staying without spotting a grand house with an amazing view.

 Luckily for us, several of them were open to the public and so over the week we visited two.

 

On Monday we visited Bowhill Estate for a walk, which was literally on our doorstep. It had some nice grounds to walk in, and an adventure play ground, which brought us much joy.

On Friday we visited Traquair House. If you get a chance to visit this place I would definitely recommend it. My sister and my mum are really into history and old houses so I’ve been dragged into many in my time. However, it has only been recently that I have actually come to appreciate them. I have begun to read more historical novels and become more interested in British history.

Having more of an understanding makes walking round these houses much more interesting and brings alive how the past inhabitants would have lived and acted.

What made Traquair even more interesting was that we managed to tag along with a group of people that were being guided by the Lord and Lady of the Manor themselves.

Traquair is the oldest castle in Scotland to still be lived in, and I think that’s what made it so special. The owner’s dogs and cats were just running around and it didn’t feel sterile like some of the National Trust places you go where you are watched everywhere you go to make sure you don’t touch anything. It was filled with history too, they had a bed where Mary Queen of Scots slept, and the cradle where James the First slept as a baby. We were even allowed to climb down the secret escape route taken by the Catholic Priests in the time of the Stuarts.

However, just a word to the wise. Always remember that when you’re posing for a photo for someone using a telephoto lens OTHER PEOPLE MIGHT NOT REALISE YOU’RE POSING FOR A PHOTO. You will just end up looking like a weirdo in front of the owner of a big fat castle.

B.F.F

Meet Hayley.

When my parents moved to Exmouth in 1999 I had to cope with adjusting to a new place, a new school and new friends. Several weeks after I arrived Hayley started at school as a new student too. We got absorbed into the same group of friends, and gradually got to know each other. Soon we were visiting each other’s houses after school, and before long we were inseparable.

We would spend hours playing The Sims, talking and laughing in my attic room, and getting high on coke. 

Hayley is a complete coke addict. I’ve been kicked and thrown around when she’s on one of her highs, but our friendship still survived it all. 

(You do realise I’m talking about Coca Cola right? Who do you think I am?!)

Anyway, when we turned sixteen we both headed off for different colleges. Although we still spoke on the phone and over the internet our friendship suffered as it was difficult to see each other often and we were hanging out in different friendship groups. 
Over the next couple of years we went our separate ways, reaching adulthood via different life experiences.

When Hayley text me about a month ago to ask if she could come and visit us in Aberystwyth I immediately said yes. Then I began to worry.

What if we didn’t get on anymore? We haven’t really hung out with each other for five years. What if we don’t have anything to say?

I needn’t have worried. We had a great week, hanging out, chatting, laughing and reminiscing.
On Friday we walked all three beaches in Aberystwyth just chatting ten to the dozen – just like old times.

AND THEN, I found a CD of all of my files that my dad had burned from our old computer before they upgraded. We had such great times looking at all the old pictures and laughing over old MSN conversations. I didn’t even know that MSN conversations are automatically saved to your computer! Can there be anything more hilarious than pouring over hours and hours worth of teenage angst, young love and just downright randomness. I mean listen to this…

Haylesberry:     What r ya pics? [on webcam]
Rach:                    lol. It’s pheobe’s corpse
Haylesberry:     Whos Pheobe?
Rach:                    My pet balloon [chicken shaped orange balloon]
Rach:                    Its very distressing
Haylesberry:     rofl

Rach:                ive had her for two months and kept her perfect without deflating
Rach:                and then jen came along and squeezed her and she just died
Rach:                so i attempted resuscitation this morning but she couldn’t hold her skin together and her head blew off
Rach:                and now she’s dead
Hayleysberry:   rofl

RIP Pheobe

SEE! Don’t you just miss those days when you found the most random things absolutely hilarious?!

And then we found the conversations we had when I first started noticing Josh around…

Rach:                lol! [boys name]’s bugging me about Josh liking me
Haylesberry:     lol. Which Josh?
Rach:                Josh from Chapel. We’ve been talking a lot lately. He doesn’t like me, but [boy] thinks he does
Haylesberry:     HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA.
Haylesberry:     Sozzy
Rach:                What?
Haylesberry:     He’s getting jealous of Josh?!
Rach:                He’s cool beans
Rach:                If he was in our year you wouldn’t be saying that. He’s really nice.

Two months later…

Rach:                    Josh is going to ask me out on Wednesday, I just know it
Haylesberry:     awww! What you gunna say? How do you know?
Rach:                    I don’t know
Rach:                    I think I’m going to run off or shoot him with a paintball

Yeah…I was kind of scared of boys back then. And, we were going paintballing that day – I don’t just randomly carry around a paintball gun to ward off persistent boys. Oh, and Josh asked me out on Thursday, so my instinct wasn’t far off.

Anyway, back to the point in hand – I’m so glad to have made proper contact with Hayley again and to have renewed our friendship. It really does feel like we have picked up from where we left off

Other than now I have to pay my own phone bill, which kinda sucks.

Hayley has just started a new blog. Why not head over there, introduce yourself, say hi and welcome her to the blogging world!

Still laughing…

Just a quick post to share some hilarity, because it’s bringing me joy every time I think about it…

Yesterday Josh went into our local bakery to get some lunch. He’s a cheerful chap so always likes to make some small talk with the people on the till, and like any good British citizen yesterday he chose to talk about the weather.

“It’s very hot”

“I BEG YOUR PARDON?” spluttered the woman on the till incredulously

“Erm…the weather” replied Josh, turned beetroot red “it’s very hot…”

“OH, I thought you said I was hot”

Hahahahahaha…still laughing 24 hours later

Chavs and Chocolate

Yesterday I caught up with two of my good friends from secondary school and we spent a lovely day exploring Plymouth in Devon.

Unfortunately I only keep in proper contact with about four people who I went to school with, so it was great to be able to catch up properly.

We also discovered a café called Chococcino. Oh my goodness. If you have ever read ‘The Chocolate Lovers’ Club’ by Carole Matthews – this place is what I imagine the chocolate heaven café to be like. I wish I lived closer as it would definitely be my local haunt!

Anyway, one of my friends Will is soon leaving Exmouth for a new job in Oxford. It’s an end of an era really because it’s going to be much harder for our little group of friends to all meet up when we’re scattered even further across the country. We’ve always joked that Exmouth is the chav capital of the world and so the cartoon below is just for Will, in celebration of you finally escaping ‘the chav city we do not name’!

Frugal Meal #2 Oaty Top

This recipe originally came from my good friend Beth. She was the first person I met at university and we lived with each other for two years.

When she came to university Beth was a vegetarian, but only because she had been brought up one and she thought she didn’t like meat. In true first-year-of-university style we undertook the task of curing her of her vegetarianism…and how did we do that? We stole her life sized stuffed dog called Cheriton and sent her a ransom note saying she must eat meat or the dog got it. Bless her, she loves that dog so much the next Friday she was down at McDonalds chowing down on a BigMac with the boys. 

Too un-cool for school

It seems to me that the majority of the authors of blogs I have read over the last few days have either just had a baby or are going to have one any day soon. It got me thinking about how when you’re a kid you always think that ‘when I have children I’m going to be the coolest parent ever’. Coupled with a conversation I had with a colleague yesterday where I said ‘that makes me sound old’ no less that four times, I have come to the conclusion that at 22 and a half years of age I have already reached (and left far behind) the point where I will ever be seen as ‘cool’ by any child. 

The last time I went to the local (posh) hairdressers I felt about 50.
First the hairdresser (picture stereotypical young hairdresser here) tried to talk to me about Big Brother… “Umm…I don’t have a TV, sorry”… cue eye brow raising.

Then she started asking me about what products I used on my hair and how I style it. (Bear in mind here that I normally get up about 35 minutes before I am meant to be at work and that time consists of a rushed shower and flapping round the house screeching at Josh to get me some cornflakes)

“Well I normally just blow-dry it and see what happens to be honest”…cue further eye brow raising and an incredulous “rigghhhht”. By this time I was regretting my decision to change hair dressers. I am clearly not cool enough for this place.

But then came the final question. The final nail in my coolness coffin.

“So, do you ever dye your hair?”
“Erm…no”
“What…never?”
“Erm…no”
“Well…er…wow, okay”
“Why? You do realise that your hair looks completely unnatural and you look like you’re made out of orange plastic right?” Okay, I didn’t actually say that because that would have been mean and she was holding sharp scissors, but I thought it alright.

How did I become so out of date all of a sudden? Probably at the same time as I got rid of my TV, never bother to listen to the radio, read magazines or to go into clothes shops.

But that’s okay. I’m alright with being uncool. So what, I’d rather look at moths with my husband than watch Big Brother, and my perfect holiday is one that I can wear wellies and not brush my hair. That’s fine.

But I’m still not going back to that hairdresser.

Random act of madness

Okay, so you know my ‘dream house’? Well yesterday was my day off and so we headed over to Cwmrheidol for a walk and ended up going past it again.

 

(By the way…if you want to have a really good walk and see loads of wildlife I would suggest leaving your camera at home. Every time I forget my camera we end up finding something beautiful and I kick myself. Yesterday we stumbled along a new path that led high up into the valley filled with little, gnarled sessile oak trees covered in bright green moss, and leading to a waterfall that I have seen from the road and have been searching for for 3 years!)

It was lovely as usual, and although it was still boarded up people have obviously been around as the overgrown garden had been cleared back and burnt. We stood looking at it again, making comments about how we could put a bird feeder there, and a garden table there, keep the chickens there, and then made our way down the track debating what body parts we could sell in order to buy it. I might sound like I’m joking about this but I genuinely would love to live in this house.

So anyway, as always when we walk past it we also considered checking out the land register and writing a letter to the person who owns the house.

Except this time I actually did it.  

It was an accident really. I didn’t know you can actually check these things online, I figured I would have to go into the dusty depths of the town council building or something. But no, apparently you can find all the details from your office chair, and it only costs £3.

And so this has been my random act of madness for today. These people probably aren’t even going to reply to our letter and even if they do, unless they offer to sell it for 20p we’re not going to be able to afford it.

But if I never did it, we’re never going to know and every time we walk past the cottage we’ll always be wondering the same things.

So if you’re the owner of Pencnwch and by some random chance you’re Google searching the freaks that sent you a letter, then yes, hello it is us.

Please sell us your house for 20p J