More wanderings

Last Thurs saw my lovely Jim making yet another trip to see me. This time we were blessed with some reasonably nice weather for a change, so we made the most of it and went on a couple of wanders.

For our first walk we decided to see if we could get as far as Moel Y Don, with my mobility scooter fully charged. Right from the very start our plan was thwarted by there being no footpath for me to go on, to get to the turning by Star. The road was also a no no as motorists were going so fast, we didn't think it would be safe enough. So we took the turning before the one we'd planned, a little country lane. The hedgerow was very interesting and being much lower than I would have been had I been walking, I spotted lots of interesting things I might have missed otherwise. Although we didn't have a clue where this road lead, it became pretty obvious it was a well used road. It eventually led to the A4080 which is the main road to Newborough, and guess what ...no footpaths again !! So I was forced to trundle along on the road facing on coming traffic. Luckily it was pretty uneventful, but there were a few times when I wondered about our wisdom of coming on this busy road. We got as far as Plas Newydd country house and gardens, and decided that I hadn't got enough battery power left for us to get to Moel y Don, which was a shame. So into Plas Newydd we went, unfortunately the house and grounds were closed that day, but the cafe was open !! So we grabbed a cup of tea and had the picnic we'd brought with us. After spending an hour or so taking photo's, we decided it was time to make our way home again.

On Jim's last day we decided to go to one of our favourite places, a little beach close to my home. This is a favourite place of ours, there's never anyone else there and I can manage to get my scooter actually on to the beach itself. We sit watching the boats, the birds and this time I even managed to catch the train going under the A55 which I've never seen before, sadly I also managed to catch a pylon in the photo too, but I thought it'd still be worth putting up to show you. On our way back home Jim spotted a beautiful big bracket fungi on a tree, that had to be worth taking a photo of to share with you. It was about a foot wide, and six inches deep.

All too soon it was time for Jim to go home again, it seems to get harder and harder to leave each other, something neither of us had banked on happening. But thanks to the power of the internet, we can talk every day online.

The train going under the A55



A lovely butterfly at Plas Newydd



A couple of autumnal photo's





Jim hunting for little treasures for our future art project.



Finally the beautiful bracket fungi.

Yet another busy week

Yet another busy week again !! A week today my friend Bee and her son came down from Liverpool again, bringing with her another friend Ricky and his son. Bee is convinced that she's lived on Anglesey in a previous life, as she feels so drawn to here.

Sunday I had a rare treat, my daughter and I went off to Mona car boot. Considering how lovely and sunny it was, I was surprised how few car booters there were. But I still managed to get a couple of bargains, from there it was off to Tregarth to pick up some much needed flower pots off a Freecycler. Everything was looking good, and we headed back home to carry on starting to sort out our new garden.

Then disaster struck !!! The front of my daughters exhaust fell apart, we managed to get the car into a quiet side road, the exhaust dragging noisily on the road. We knew that somehow we'd have to get the back end of the exhaust up off floor to get home, otherwise it might have pulled the whole thing off. Realising we had nothing suitable to hold it up, my daughter headed off to see a friend of ours Mike, who was working close by. Thank god for men who've got bits of wire handy !! Mike gamely got under the car and with a little help from us, he got the exhaust up off the road, so we could get home, albeit sounding like a tank !!

We knew another friend Coral was due to visit in her van in the next day or so, we hoped that she'd be able to tow the car to the garage we use. Coral arrived on the Monday and we decided that maybe it would be safer all round if my daughter drove her car to garage, with me and Coral following closely behind incase the wire broke or any other disaster happened. It didn't thank god !!

Early Tuesday morning, saw Coral and I heading up the A55 towards Valley to do a car boot with the last remaining things from Corals cottage she'd just given up, to live in her van. Once there we were shown where to park up, it must have been the coldest spot in the whole car boot. While all the other booters were bathed in the warm sun, our van and a guy next next to us sat in the freezing cold, with no hope of the sun moving round to warm our chilly bones. But we soldiered on and by the end of it pretty much most of Corals stuff was gone. The rest we intended to drop off at the tip on the way home.

Once we got back and we'd managed to thaw out, (which took some doing I can tell you ) I got a nice vegetarian stew and dumplings on the go. While that bubbled gently away, I started working on doing a blog for Coral, to showcase her greenwood carving workshops etc, which is part of her action plan to become self employed.

Wednesday dawned and knowing that Coral had to leave that night, to get home for an important appointment, we knew that this would be the last day we'd have a lift to get to the somewhat remote garage my daughters car was in. So we decided to go and check and see if any progress had been made on it, just as we pulled into the garage my daughters phone rang, it was the mechanic to say her car was ready ...good timing or what lol !! As always we were short of cash so were dreading how much it was going to cost, so we were delighted when we were told it'd only be £10, how many mechanics would weld an exhaust back together for that much ...not many I can tell you !!!

Next on the agenda was to drop my daughters car back home, and for us to go and pick up things needed to start getting Corals van sorted out for her to live in it. As we needed some wood, we thought it was worth going to the local tip and see if we could get any there. Our luck was in and we managed to get some, we also got the last post we'd need to put our fence up in the garden, a new set of car mats for my daughters car and a glass topped garden table to replace the plastic monstrosity we had. We'd have got loads more stuff, but the guy at the tip was getting a bit jittery saying that we were being watched by cctv !! In this day and age when most councils are trying to keep as much stuff out of the landfills as possible, it seems ridiculous to me that we can't recycle some of the very useful stuff people throw away ...bureaucracy gone mad I call it !!! Anyway ... the next thing to do was get everything out of Corals van so we could lay some carpet on the floor and believe it or not some on the roof too, hopefully this will insulate the van a bit on cold nights. Once we'd done as much as we could, it was off to the beach for sunset as Coral wanted some decent photo's of herself for her blog and also some fun poi pictures. I was quite pleased with the end results, what do you think ? All bar the 4th photo down are of my daughter though lol.

Two close shaves

On our way back from Llandudno yesterday, I thought it might be interesting to go a route different than the A55. It took us through a bit of countryside that we hadn't been through before. As it happens it lead to a road that my daughter recognised we'd been down before...that was a miracle on it's own, as my daughters memory is not the best lol. As we were driving along we both caught sight of an interesting piece of tree root on a bank at the side of the road. we screeched to a halt at the nearest pull in, and my daughter leaped out of the car camera in hand. What a beautiful piece of wood it was too, a root we think, the tree long gone. But it had the most amazing knots and gnarls in it which made it look really mystical, and we saw faces and alsorts in it. It must have been quite an impressive tree in it's time as the root was about 4ft wide and 6ft high. How I wish it wasn't attached to the earth, as it would have looked amazing in my hallway lol.

As we trundled on, we ended up going through Betws Co-ed, and I said to my daughter we could go and have a look at a forest park I like on the outskirts. We turned into the road that leads up to it and were faced with solid snow. Throwing caution to the wind, my daughter gamely tried to get her little car up the road we got about 10ft up it, before the car started slipping and sliding all over the place lol. Defeated, she went into reverse to get us out of there, the car started sliding from side to side on the ice under the snow, it was quite scary as she had little control over where it went, and there were small gulley's on both sides of the road, that would have been a nightmare to get out of. Luck was with us and we managed to get back on the main road again, both of us laughing with relief.

Once back on Anglesey, we headed for the beach near Plas Coch, to let our dog have his run. On our way back up the road, we spotted a lane we always said we'd go and explore, so off we went. The first part of the little lane was fine, but much longer than we thought it was. We came to a fork, one way looked like it led to a couple of isolated houses so we went the other way. That was a BIG mistake !! The lane ...well maybe calling it a lane is a bit of an exaggeration, dirt track might be a better description.

Anyway this track was getting very muddy and the ridge in the middle of the road where tractors had obviously gone, was scraping the bottom of my daughters car. We had no choice but to carry on as the track was so narrow. We reached a bend, where we could just about turn around. My daughter said shall we turn round or go on, foolishly we decided to go on .... a few feet further on and there was a loud noise of metal hitting rock, fearing the worst my daughter jumped out to see if her exhaust was still attached ( not for the first time recently !! ) it was, but worried about causing some actual damage as we reversed,I offered to get out in hopes that the car wouldn't be quite so low to the ground. Once I opened the car door and saw the sea of deep mud I regretted my offer, but with a bit of help from my daughter I managed to find somewhere to stand while she reversed off whatever we'd hit and turn the car round. Once out of that little scrape, we gingerly renegotiated the track back to firmer ground, laughingly saying we were going to be a bit more select at these little lanes we keep going down in hopes of finding something really interesting to photograph !!!

Photo's of the wood can be found on my photo blog.