Springing into the rest of the year

I love those moments in the year when you can just tell that the season has changed. Spring has been just around the corner for a few weeks now, but last Thursday as we climbed Plymlimon we could just sense the change: spring has finally sprung.

I love the area around Plymlimon and Nant-y-Moch. It feels so wild and isolated. We would occasionally just stop and listen and hear nothing except the wind moving through the grass and the geese on the lake below us.

As we climbed higher (without coats for the first time this year!) we heard a sky lark singing high above the moorland. Surely that must be a contender for one of the best sounds in the world?! Perfect.

Gradually the track levelled out and we reached a series of pools where we could hear a chorus of frogs calling to one another.

It all just makes me so excited! I love winter for many reasons, but there is just something about Spring that promises potential for the rest of the year.
It has spurred us into action for planning our summer break and this week we’ve organised and booked quite a bit.

So far we’ll be visiting the Lake District before spending a few days hostelling in Glencoe.
Then we’ll be travelling to Knoydart. I’m so excited about this leg of our journey! Knoydart has been called the last wilderness in Scotland because there are no roads to it. To reach it you must hike 18 miles over the mountains or by a 7 mile sea crossing. Eeek!
We’ll then be spending a week on Skye before meandering our way back down South spending time in Devon, Wiltshire, the Cotswolds, London and the Lake District again.

My problem is that I’m an administrator through and through. I love to achieve things and tick them off my list. It’s not just office things – I find that I do it in normal life too. Even as I’m doing something, my mind is often on the next thing to be achieved.
However, I don’t want to be like that with our last few months in Aber and with the time we’re taking off from work. I want to try and enjoy each day as it comes and make the most of it because I know it’s going to pass really quickly. I’m not very good at sitting back and letting things happen, but I’m working on it!

It won’t be long

Oh, I can smell spring today

It makes my heart ache for fields filled with flowers

Cool evenings that smell like grass

Long days exploring hill and dale, and lying at the top of a mountain and staring at the sky

Not long now lovelies! Happy Saturday x

Holidays

Happy New Year!

We have just about settled in back home after our two week Christmas/New Year break. I thought you might like to see some photos from our time away.

Although the UK was in the grip of a deep freeze we managed to make our journeys safely, even if some of them took longer than normal.

Josh and I met in Devon where our parents lived in the same town. However, this summer Josh’s parents moved up north to the Lake District, so this year we had to travel between families. I actually think I prefer this way of doing things. The six hour drive on boxing day was a bit of a drag but it meant that we were able to focus on having quality time with the family we were with and be totally engaged with what they were doing.

I’ve not spent much time in the Lake District before so it was good to do a bit of exploring. On Christmas eve we went to a lake called Tarn Hows. However, when we got there it was completely frozen and we were able to walk across it to the island in the middle!

It freaks me out that it normally looks like this (source), and we were right in the middle! I don’t know how thick the ice was.

The rest of the time we spend walking, eating and playing games. It was a great Christmas, and a good end to a WONDERFUL year.

Day Two – Seasons

Brrr…hasn’t it turned cold today? I spent most of the day huddling in my freezing office wearing a fleece that I found in the upstairs office even though it was about five sizes to big for me.

Apparently it snowed in Scotland last night. It only seems like a few weeks since the spring thaw – I hope it’s not going to be a very harsh winter again.

 

Today’s 30 day blogging challenge prompt is ‘Your favourite season and why’. 

I can defiantely say that my favourite season is NOT winter. I like some parts of it, the season obviously has its inviting and beautiful parts. Christmas wouldn’t be quite the same without frosty mornings and dark cosy evenings for a start. But since I’ve started working in the office I’ve come to dislike the dark winter days spent conserving heat in any way I can, and when I can go for weeks at a time without getting any real light!

 

I think I would have to say that my favourite season is Spring. After a long winter there is something amazing about the natural world coming out of hibernation.

Things begin to warm up, and there such an expectation for what is about to come during the rest of spring and summer. I can start dreaming of lying in wild flower meadows, staying out late watching bats flit around twilight skies, and of feeling the first warm breeze of the year.

It’s a treat to be able to get out more as the days start to lighten, and the fresh delicate greenness of new life brings joy to my soul.

Only four months to go!

Holiday Highlights

For the last three weeks, I have spent a week in Devon, spent a week in Abersoch and have spent a week getting back into normal real life, which seems to have gone CRAZY all of a sudden.

I’m sorry for the lack of blogging, but we have a lot of staff changes going on at work which means I’m super busy and Josh and I have been making the most of this beautiful Spring weather in the evenings. (I have lots of Spring related photos to post soon.)

In the mean-time, I will give you a quick update of my past three weeks in my holiday highlights;

1. I got to spend lots of time with my family, and caught up with a few old friends. We ate A LOT of good food.

 

2. The weather was AMAZING in Abersoch. We played on the beach, got a tan, and I wore my flip-flops for the first time this year.

3. Even though team games scare me a bit – I ended up being the last person on my team to still be ‘in’ while playing rounders, and then I managed to get a rounder! I was happy not to disgrace myself.

I also remembered that I LOVE murder in the dark! Mwahaha.

 

4. I learnt how to play poker. Always a valuable life skill.

 

5. Um…I feel like there should be a five.

I love my husband. The End.

(some of these photos were taken by Naomi)

You have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME?!?!?!

Regular readers will know that I don’t like snow. Well, not to drive in at least.

We’re off to Devon on our holidays tomorrow. Last time we went down, at Christmas we had, what I like to affectionately call ‘THE WORST EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE’. We hit heavy snow going over the mountains and I couldn’t even see the road. We either had to push on in blizzard conditions, or just stop and wait it out in the dark in the middle of the mountains and hope we could get out in the morning.

Since we’ve been back in Aber (for the last THREE MONTHS), there has been no snow to play in…not even a hint of snow.

But I just checked the forecast for tomorrow…

I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Snow

Dear Snow,

Today I am feeling annoyed about you. Actually, to be exact, I’m annoyed about you falling in Britain.
We so rarely meet you over here and so I’m sure you love the excited reception you receive when you decide to make an appearance.

However, call me a scrooge if you want, but British people are DELUDED if they really think that they want you around for a white Christmas. We sing about you, gaze up at the iron grey skys in anticipation and go glassy eyed when we image curling up in front of the fire, unwrapping presents with you falling gently outside.

Haven’t people worked out by now that most of Britain can’t cope with snow. You only have to be around for a matter of hours and we go into meltdown (ha ha, get it…). Couple that with a time that most people are on the move to see family and friends and you have a disaster in the making.

But then I suppose it’s not really your fault. WHY can’t we actually be prepared for you for once? Why does a few centimetres have to equal “travel chaos” or “snow disruption for thousands” as the media are cheerfully declaring today. Other countries manage with you on the ground for months at a time and it just becomes normal.

For now I’ve got my eye on the forecast with anticipation, hoping for clearer weather soon so that all my family will be able to travel safely down to Devon next week so we can have a houseful of fourteen. I can’t wait!

Pretty please can you stop falling for the next few days. If you feel like snowing us in when all my family are down in Devon then that’s fine, but please wait until then!

With love from Rachel

Pembrokeshire in Pictures

Here are some photos from our brief time in Pembrokeshire. There aren’t many, and most of them aren’t very good because it was SOOOOO cold and windy and I couldn’t bear to take my gloves off to handle the camera!

Along the coast path near Porthgain

Stormy Seas….did I mention it was COLD?!

Josh lives the rural dream