This weekend.....

I shall be mostly drinking......

Whilst Bec shall be quaffing....

:-)

The Shed Kittens

Was minding my own business playing the xbox this morning when mother darling knocked on the door. I was expecting her (I was being bribed with lunch to help cart stuff down the dump), but not this early.

She tells me I need to come and look at something, in a manner I initially find highly suspicous. I follow her over to Nan JR's flat and am shown the shed.

Lo and behold in the corner, nestling on top of an old bag, are 5 tiny kittens. Estimated at 10 days old, they're only just opening their eyes and aren't big enough to walk yet. I see one tabby mog in amongst the mewing bundles (who are mostly black and white) and immediately know precisely what Bec would want if she was here.

In the meantime figure I better phone the Blue Cross to figure out what on earth to do with them. As I'm on the way back over to my flat I meet Kelly, next door neighbour, who asks have we seen a bunch of kittens as she's seen Mother cat wailing.

Turns out she realised they were underneath her window nestling in a hedge last night. She phoned a Cat charity who said they'd send someone in the morning. However, during the night, ma had transported them across the road to my Nans shed, which has a broken lock and so is open all the time.

To cut the story short Kelly speaks to the Cat Protection people who say if we get hold of the mother and keep them all together, someone will be round shortly. Mother is sat underneath a car on the road and is easily tempted out by a plate of cat nosh. Kelly picks her up and she doesn't struggle at all, which suggests she isn't wild. She doesn't have a collar on. I wonder if her owners have kicked her out when they found she was pregnant. I hope not.

Cat protection woman is round within 20 minutes. Mother cat is in the shed which we've managed to shut with the whole family in there. I open the door slowly and grab mother before she shoots off, and she now puts up a right struggle to be put in the cage. I get away with only three scratches. I then move all the tools around to get to the furballs right at the back of the cage. All 5 are extracted- they're only so big they easily fit in the palm of my hand.

I took the chance to grab a couple of photos with the phone. The kittens were a wriggly bunch and because it was dark it was quite a long exposure- but a few have come out ok:

And here's all 5 of them in the box on the way off to somewhere safer than a shed :-)

Wales!

Found the link cable! There are squillions of photos on there, didn't realise we'd taken so many. Ok so maybe not that many but a good 60 odd. Not bad for a weekend, plus another 25 odd on my phone.

Anyways. Selected photos of that Celtic place out west as follows.

On way out there stopped off at a place called Lake Vrynwy, a vast reservior that provides bathing and washing options for a sizeable chunk of the midlands. It is now also a fairly major recreational place, with several birdwatch hides, fishing places, walks etc. We were just stopping off to stretch the M6 out of our legs and had a look around their sculpture park.

I then however found an assault course, which of course I had to have a go on. Bec couldn't resist it either despite her attempts at superior matureness.

We then made our way up to central Snowdonia, to a place we have come to know quite well, a B&B called Cae Du. We stopped off for fish and chips and as you would hope munched it by the sea.

The weather was high cloud and low wind the next day, ideal for hiking up mountains. We chose a veritable chunk of rock named Cadair Idris to hike up.

Cosseted southern shire legs stood up well to welsh mountain abuse. We went off dinner in Betws-y-Coed, going past Waterloo cottage. I have an album of photos from a holiday we had there in 2003 (I think), from which we have quite varied but most definitely entertaining memories.

We went for a walk along the river, where inbetween being attacked by mozzies I felt the need to skim some stones.

The next day we found legs were indeed a touch achey after climbing up and down 2900 feet of granite so we wandered off to Carneavon Castle, whereupon we discovered that narrow steep stone stairs do not provide welcome relief from whinging muscles.

Nevertheless we had a good look at most of the castle before meeting Gareth (Bec's brother, who is slowly morphing into a Baywatch surf extra) for some lunch (hmmmm big burger and chips).

We then headed to Beddgellert. This has old memories of as a child being taken along the old railway track on walks. The old railway track though has now become a new one again- it is being restored by the Welsh Highland Railway. This was a much more gentle walk alongside the river (whereupon I once again felt the need to skim some stones) although I was quite disappointed to find the old pitch black tunnel is now out of bounds.

We had a sumptious feast at Cae Du that night before reluctantly headingback down Sarf to the prospect of work. We stopped off at Vrnywy again on the way back, but this time hired some bikes. The lake perimeter is approx 12 miles, but all nicely flat, and was an enjoyable relaxed ride around.

Will endeavour to put more photos- have got loads to upload, inc a few quite funny ones not at all related to Wales - on albums on facebook or Slide ASAP.

Wales?

Well ok recovered the digital camera from the glovebox of parents car where we left it last week.

Now can't find the link cable to get the pics on the computer! Grrr.

Will put Wales pics on here when can find camera cable.

Humph.

River Lea floods

Apologies for not updating. Have either been at work or away, not leaving much time to do stuff on here. Anyway, coming soon will be photos of recent weekend in Snowdonia where for the first time that I can remember in a while we didn't get rained on.

This is in slight contrast to the glorious bank holiday weekend at the end of May! The photo I took on the previous post is a bit inadequate, really. I went down the following day and couldn't get anywhere near that bench. I took this one from as near as I was prepared to go, and you can just make out the bridge poking through. The River Lea is not exactly well known for flooding and nobody I spoke to could remember it up this high.

I went a bit further up river towards Wheathampstead. This one gives a bit of an idea of how wide the river had got. There should be a path underneath this lot


This is the river actually going over the road in Wheathampstead, something I've never seen it do. Most of the buildings to the left were flooded out unfortunately. There were two fire brigade pumps round the corner doing their best to keep it at bay




The morning after the day before. Things were a bit back to normal with all sorts wrapped around the bench and pillars.

The water a bit further upstream was sufficiently strong enough to uproot trees

Bec of course thought I was mad going off to take photos of all this (choosing to stay inside where it was warm and decidedly not raining) but the frustrated physical geographer in me found it irresistable!

Normal Weather Resumed

Well we did pick the right week to go to Devon. Weather has resumed its state of absolute miseryness. Coming back up from London town it was bucketing down yesterday evening. The river down the road was the highest I've seen it in a long while. Won't be sitting on this bench then.....:

Devon!

Right. Apologies for not doing much on here, but haven't been here all that much to do stuff. I abandoned Bec at the beginning of last week to meet up with colleagues from work who had hired a converted barn type place in deep Devon. This was not a training exercise or anything official at all, more on the lines of taking advantage of shifts to book it at an off peak time. Got my new phone with camera on it with which took a number of photos of the scenery and surroundings. Hadn't quite figured out how to use the camera properly then so some of the photos aren't the best.



There were about 14 of us down there. The place slept in total 18 as reflected by the enormous outside picnic table! It was called the old winery but whether there was a history of winemaking in the building I never found out.


Monday was spent recovering from the trip down. I went down on the bike and got rained on all the way to Salisbury. Saw stonehenge from the roadside but didn't stop to take photos as I was a bit fed up with the aforementioned rain. However by the time I got there things had dried and cheered up enough to have a barbecue and have a shandy or two (maybe).

Tuesday we went to a nearby activity centre (entertaining moment with satellite navigation and a whole load of cows en route) where we undertook an assault course. This was a messy muddy and very wet affair meaning I have no photos of it as I sensibly left the phone locked away somewhere warm and dry. There are however some very good photos of me (taken by someone else who had come up with some excuse or other not to partake), launching into a pit of muddy water with sufficient velocity to completely obscure myself when I land in it. It was quite an attritional affair and the belt on my trousers disintegrated, meaning I had to complete the course with a bodge job of a donated shoelace and ripped strips from my t-shirt.



The weather was by now scorching and we went back and checked out the pool, and pulled the table tennis outside onto the grass. For when this activity got too much we generally sat down, put the world to rights (as you might just expect a bunch of coppers to do) and check the fridge was working properly by collecting a beverage every so often.


Wednesday myself and a couple of others wandered down to the nearby town and after a very nice lunch (mmmm, steak sandwich) headed off on the Heritage coastal trail to Ladham Cove (suspect memory, but I think thats what it was called). I have learned something from being married to Bec and took suncream with me. I didn't burn, a couple of the other guys did!!! I came back later that day, which was earlier than most of the rest of them who came back on Thursday, in order that I could spend some time with Bec before going back to work.




Overall a nice couple of days with work people in a non-work environment a long way from London. It was a shame it wasn't a week later so Bec would've been on half term and could've come down (it wasn't an exclusively job do, people brought partners), it was a top place in very rural surroundings (complete with 100 decibel cockerels in nearby farms) that meant a very relaxing break from London grime and grind.