Afternoon in Picton Castle gardens

We have taken a break from unpacking the contents of both Brian's houses and putting them into the cottage this afternoon. We did extremely well yesterday and the kitchen is now pretty ship shape, today we unpacked the clothes and did the bathroom, so the main things left to do are all the paperwork boxes, music scores, and connecting tv and hi fi. However as the aerial man won't be here till next week at the earliest there is no great rush for that.

So we took this sunny afternoon off and went to Picton Castle. I wanted to see the rhododendrons in flower, and although they were past their best, there were still enough of them out to make quite a spectacular show.
Here are some lovely red ones
This is taken from the inside of a bower made of woven (willow maybe?) like a little round tent.
More lovely flowers.

The top picture is Brian sitting beside the pond in the walled garden. It was really lovely. We had a very nice tea with carrot cake (me) and raspberry and coconut slice (Brian).

Tomorrow we will need to do more work, but today was very relaxing.

As you can tell perhaps, we have also got Brian's broadband connection up and running. This is a very good thing.

Wales May 2010

Hot sunny weekend

Boo and Trev came down this weekend. We had tickets to go see the Strictly Come Dancing Professionals show on the Saturday night, which we did, and it was brilliant. However the star of the weekend was the weather! It was fabulous. We had heat and sunshine all weekend. Here we are on the Sunday walking along the coast path towards the lighthouse.
However the other star of the weekend is Miss Muffet. Nic's friend Chloe had a Welsh pony mare who had to be put down on Wednesday and who left behind a 2 day old foal. Here is Miss Muffet taken on Saturday when she was 5 days old. Chloe is having to bottle feed her every 2 hours at the moment which is asking a lot of anyone. Luckily she lives on a farm so they have the space, but she also has 3 boys under 6 so is busy at the best of time. They are trying to teach her to drink from a bucket because it would be better not to be hand reared by people. She needs to know she is a horse. Although Chloe has another pony mare with a month old foal the little one is so young that they are too nervous to put her with them until she is older. So Chloe, Nic and Keely have gone off to see if they can get a small donkey to be a companion for her, because apparently donkeys are less likely to kick or bite.
Here she is again - unbelievably cute and so beautiful.
Here are Boo and Trev on Llantwit beach enjoying an ice lolly.

We also had a barbeque because this may be the only weekend we can do so.

It has been like a little holiday this weekend, absolutely wonderful.

Adventures near and afar

This weekend we went to Southampton to visit Kieran and Alice and we decided to go for a bluebell walk in the New Forest. I suspect that Mike would argue that it is neither new nor a forest. However it was new 900 years ago when it was created by William I and there is common grazing hence the heathland - but there are also wooded bits. What it doesn't have is many bluebells or waymarks on it's walks We were following a walk from a book, which is usually very reliable. It did warn us that it might be boggy but we thought that we'd be OK as it has been a dry spring. The walk started well as we encountered wild ponies and highland cows(!) on the common. Then when we entered the woods the path was blocked by a fallen tree. So we diverted out of the woods onto a clearing. We realised that it might be a bit muddy here as the ponies were up to their knees (or whatever that joint is called in a horse) in mud. Also the path was very unclear.The going was incredibly hard work. The woods were now behind a wire fence and Kieran suggested that the path actually should be on the wood side of the fence. We weren't all convinced but it was much drier that side so we all climbed over or scrambled under the fence. However after a while we saw a sign which informed us we were in a reserve for red deer and we realised we should be on the other side. So we all clambered or crawled under or over the fence again. We all saw a herd of red deer apart from Trev who was in mid clamber. We made progress using fallen trees as bridges without disappearing too deeply into the bog and then we found the path again. Hurray! After a while we came upon a field that was in the instructions. We had to walk miles around it to find a way over the brook that wasn't mentioned in the instruction. Then we saw a gate. We decided that this must definitely be the stile in the instructions and clambered over it. We came across a gravel path which seemed right. However I suspect we were meant to join it later as we had to cross a ford! It was at this stage that Trev announced we were only about half way around the walk. When we came to a road and Trev suggested we could cut out a large corner from the walk by staying on the road. The thought that the footpaths could be adventurous as the first half meant that we all agreed. It was actually great fun but we definitely felt we deserved an icecream at the end

We went to see Hairspray in the evening at the Mayflower theatre in Southampton. It's a fantastic Victorian theatre which miraculously escaped the blitz. The show was brilliant apart from the annoying women who came in late and stepped on Alice's foot to get to their seats and then kept talking. Grrr!
A fabulous weekend all round.
I have included some further pictures of Erin's travels. She has left Vietnam and is now in Cambodia. She wasn't able to download photos in Vietnam but had an excellent time there. She hasn't labelled many of these photos so it is partly guess work on my part.

When Toys Turn to the Dark Side

This may be a little obscure, expecially because I haven't blogged here in a long time. However I thought this might be a comical and slightly horrifying talking point. A friend of mine alerted me to this little treat from the world of advertising. It's so scary I felt I should share it to make the horror dilute and then I'll be able to sleep at night! Do you think anyone was tempted to buy it? Watch it if you DARE!!!

More anon xx