One word? When seven would do…

of actually working here 🙂

We started this morning with some fruit picking – raspberries, jostaberries, gooseberries, tayberries and loganberries. I did some pinching off side shoots on tomatoe plants and then that was followed by cuprinol-ing the ends of some cut wood that John is planning to use as cordwood on a building he is putting up for his sister. It’s a real shame we have not got to spend more time with John actually, he knows loads about lots of subjects we are interested in.

We made that job stretch rather as we have realised our pace of work is way quicker than they are expecting here. And it was 1030am so we persuaded Scarlett to make us a cup of tea and we all listened to Popmaster 🙂

Our next task was to lop the willow growing at the top of a willow structure. Ideally it would be pruned and woven in in it’s dormant period in winter but some of the growth was so heavy it was preventing the light getting to lots of the other bits so it needed to come off. I held the ladder – when I wasn’t letting it go to take pictures 😉 and Ady lopped. We thinned one of the apple trees and then did some trimming edges of grass with the shears. Lisa asked me to come and help her with lunch which we ate early again today.

After lunch we thinned the rest of the apple trees, removing fruit where it would hamper growth and create smaller, rubbed against each other apples. We then pulled up some garlic and put it out to dry off in the polytunnel.

Our final task of the day was to remove some pipe lagging that had been put around some young apple trees that were getting ring bark damage from rabbits to protect them. The lagging was sweating though and holding moisture against the trunks which was doing them no good. A couple had the root stock sending out shoots rather than the grafted tree too so we took those off.

We retired to the static where Davies had two very spectacular nose bleeds, one lasting for ages. Lisa had one yesterday and Scarlett had obviously had a minor nose bleed in the night as she had blood around one nostril this morning so it must be the stormy pressure of the weather or something, but Davies has not had one for ages. We watched last weeks episode of Sorry I’ve Got No Head on iplayer but were most disappointed at the lack of Jasmine and Prudith 🙁

Dinner was bean soup. I know. Soup. With beans in it. To be fair it was actually quite nice soup and also contained carrots, potatoes, sugar snap peas and herbs from the garden so I ate all but the beans and then explained I really don’t like beans but Ady loves them and passed them across to him. I was left with a serious carb and protein deficit though and was most glad of Ady’s suggestion yesterday that we buy some cheese and crackers for just such moments, so enjoyed them a bit later with a cider :).

This morning was bottling mead. Oh how very Nic-proproiate 🙂

We started by gathering some empty wine bottles – Lisa and John have friend who have a campsite and gather wine bottles from their recycling to give to them to use. We soaked them in the bath (which I had to clean first! :shock:) to get all the labels off and give them a good clean.

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Then we made up sterilising solution and left them to soak in that while we went off to pick some raspberries.

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apparently I look like this when I pick raspberries – who knew?!

Then back to rinse the bottles. The level of water used and drained away in this exercise rather offended me. But I was in an easily offended mood anyway by having to wash the bath round in the first place…
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Next was bottling mead from 2009. As I claimed previous home brew experience and Lisa had a horror story of previous WWOOFers flooding her kitchen floor with wine I was nominated as bottom end of the hose while Ady was in charge of top end, so he got to ensure it stayed in the bucket and didn’t suck up sediment while I got to fill the bottles. Which meant by 1030am I had had several big mouthfuls of mead in order to start it moving from the bucket to the bottles – oh the hardship 😉

We bottled 14 bottles and had a half bottle left over which was put to one side to have with dinner tonight 🙂 Then we set up a production line of corking, labelling and sealing the labels
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That took us to midday-ish at which point Lisa declared we were having lunch early as Carina was going back to school this afternoon so we all ate together and Ady and I cleared up.

We have sort of set a precedent for always doing the washing up after lunch and dinner, which I don’t mind when we have been catered for but was slightly annoying yesterday when we actually did the cooking. It is also petty but irritating that we come in to find other washing up such as the kids breakfast and mid afternoon snack washing up piled there too now. I guess as they boil kettles to wash up it simply waits for a twice daily mammoth session and Lisa did thank Ady earlier today for all the washing up but it slightly grates on me. I was fairly pissed off about being asked to wash round their bath before we washed the wine bottles out this morning and there have been small but noticable incidents while we’re here of being ‘just WWOOFer’s which have put my back up. My issue I am sure rather than any deliberate slight and it is always a funny dynamic to have strangers living with you who are working for you but Davies observed today that here we are ‘WWOOFers rather than part of the family like we have been in other places’ so there is a definite feeling of divide.

Lisa was off out this afternoon though so she gave us some jobs to do -trimming round some beds that hadn’t been done with the strimmer or mower due to having water pipes and pots so needed doing with shears and picking strawberries / removing runners. All of which were minor jobs that we whizzed through and then lazed around.

We wandered down to Tescos for some milk and bread before dinner and then enjoyed an hour or so chatting to Lisa and John after dinner. Then Yannick their son came and asked Davies and Scarlett if they would play with him, which was nice as they have not really interacted with each other at all. He got Lisa to help him ask and she played with them too – some variation on hide and seek. We retired to the static for showers, some discussion about how our lives have changed which I recorded for the other blog but needs some more added to it and then some story before bed for Davies and Scarlett.

We have once again managed to not get to bed at any sort of sensible time due to playing with Ady’s phone and spending too long online. The lure of sofa and electricity proves strong…

Choices offered this morning were bottling honey or feeding plants (with wee dilution for the roots and seaweed extract for the leaves). I went for the honey bottling 😉 Actually Ady was quite happy to be volunteered for the feeding anyway as he’d not done that last week.

Davies came with me and Scarlett went with Ady. I’d been feeling like they had not got all they could from this host so had asked them to work more with us this week. Last week they spent a lot of time playing or keeping an eye on the ducks. I have a blog post in my head about them generally actually so I will save it and do it seperately.

Davies mostly took photos 🙂

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I had to skim the settled bits off the top of a bucket of honey that has been kept gently warmed for the last week to try and liquify it more. These are bits of wax, propolis, the odd bee leg or wing and bits of comb – all edible and infact what we’ve been eating the whole time we’ve been here but are not jarred for paying customers. Next the bucket went into a large container with a tap and then I filled jars. 34 jars in all :). Put lids on jars and then stickers on jars. A very enjoyable if rather sticky job. The honey pouring into the jars was very hypnotic, a bit like watching a lava lamp and of course it smelled heavenly 🙂

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Meanwhile Ady and Scarlett did the feeding in the polytunnel and then picked some raspberries for sale. I finished off the honey bottling and then Ady and I moved on to picking currants – black, white and red and learnt about tayberries and loganberries which I had heard the names of but didn’t know what they were, so was most surprised to spot what looked like double length raspberries!

Late lunch after we had destalked all the berries and put them into containers in the freezer (we did get a bowl to bring back for breakfast tomorrow though :)) which only left us with about an hour and a half of our afternoon shift.

We thinned carrots in the polytunnel first. Lisa nets them to protect from carrot fly, only ever pulls them when it’s raining (which it was doing here this afternoon, we missed the heatwave everywhere else although it was still quite muggy and could have done with a proper thunderstorm to clear the air) and fills the holes back in when carrots are pulled. Between covering all bases she seems to not have any carrot fly problems. We did loads of thinning – must have been well over 100 carrots, with at least three times that number still in there to come out at later stages. Lisa and I pulled, Ady took them over to Davies and Scarlett and they cut the leaves off to stop them growing and taking moisture from the carrots. Davies then graded them into comedy shapes, small or stunted and the straight, long and suitable for sale creating several piles.
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Which just left us enough time to thin out the grape vines which are growing in the polytunnel. Davies and Scarlett went to make us a cup of tea while Ady and I wobbled on stepladders with secateurs cutting off bunches of grapes.

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Which took us to finishing time 🙂 Lisa had asked us if we’d cook tonight and Ady had been planning a satay veg stirfry but when Lisa mentioned a butternut squash and the carrrots we’d been pulling up I remembered the winning Delia recipe Chris had recommended when we cooked for the Not Swingers last year and how delicious that was so we made a variation on that instead.

We used squash, potatoes and carrots for the veg as that was what we had, onions we pulled up last week and brown rice. For me it was slightly lacking depth of flavour as they didn’t have any cayenne or nutmeg for the cheese sauce and their organic stock was a bit tasteless so the rice didn’t have the richness I remembered from last time. I slightly fretted about the cheese sauce too as we used soya spread rather than butter, wholemeal flour rather than plain so it took a bit of whisking to blend but it all came together.

In the end it was a hit – Carena had seconds and Lisa had thirds – I reckon if I’d have cooked more it would have gone too! We washed up (we do after every lunch and dinner, TBH I thought it was a bit of a cheek to be washing up after having cooked really!) and then headed back to the static.

On the plus side we have Friday off 🙂 Lisa is going to an allotment meeting and will be out all day so said as it was our last day anyway (we’re leaving here on Saturday) we could take the day off – so hurrah!

Back at the static I read the kids a couple of chapters of story before they headed off to bed. Ady has now folllowed them and I am toying with another blogpost or getting an earlier night myself…

January 2004
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June 2011
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and somewhere at home I have one of Ady and I in August 1993!

Saturday Charity shop shopping in Bangor 🙂 We got up, breakfasted and then walked in. I reckon it was about 4 miles in to the actual city centre. Not a lovely walk, as roadside all the way, passing loads of big retail sheds but we did spot a lane leading off in an interesting fashion with a FOR SALE board mentioning 40 acres so we made a note of the estate agent.

In the town we looked at all the charity shops, picked up a few books, a couple of T shirts (one for Ady, one for me, one for Davies), a cuddly toy for Scarlett (she assures me she really did *need* another one ;)), Davies got a new sketch pad and pen from The Works, we got some cinder toffee to munch on, bought a couple of bags of chips to share for lunch, Ady upgraded his phone to a new HTC Desire S which he is very pleased with. We’d been debating not upgrading when his contract ran out but as he is on a pretty low monthly contract and we are both using most of our minute and text allowance at the moment staying in touch with family and friends we decided we may as well keep our contracts and so as he does love a new phone he upgraded. Mine isn’t due until September so I will wait and see whether I want to tie myself in to another 2 year contract or not nearer the time.

I got some dungarees for working in (Anna had a pair at Bryn Mawr and convinced me of the benefits of some sort of overalls for working in – no more ruined knees in my jeans (they all have mud / grass stains), no more pulling up falling down jeans all the time. Ady got a waterproof jacket as he didn’t have one and still has a coat damp from rain a week ago.

On the walk back we stopped at B&Q to get some storage boxes and Tesco to get food for dinner which meant the last mile of the walk was very laden down with boxes and bags – so aching arms and feet when we got in. Recovering from the walk coupled with Ady playing with his new phone meant it suddenly got very late and we didn’t eat dinner until 1130 (the kids had eaten earlier) so were not back at the van for bed until 1230am. I was really tired and the kids were too.

Sunday Nice to sleep til waking naturally, although it was slightly earlier than it may have been if the van had not been so hot! It was roasting in there – I think we’ll be sleeping with the vents open tonight.

I put the inside of the van back together(turning beds into seats and tables, closing up the kitchen end, putting everything in cupboards) ready to drive while Ady and the kids breakfasted and then Ady put the outside together (unplugged the hook up, wound up the levellers) and then we headed off to Anglesey. We drove to South Stack and had a wander round there, chatted to the ranger in the visitor tower and looked through binoculars at wildlife, had stuff pointed out to us and got various information before climbing up the hill and then down the steep cliff steps to try and spot puffins. I managed to spot some through the binoculars so the little group standing near us all got to follow my directions to spot them too 🙂

Davies saw them a bit further down but Scarlett didn’t manage to which we thought was going to be sad for her but she had another go later and managed to see probably the best example as she watched them on the ledge and then saw them fly off to dive, so she was really chuffed :). We also saw cormorants, guillemots, shearwaters, choughs, various gulls including kittiwakes – and a very panoramic and stunning view of the sea. Gorgeous chunk of landscape that. I’d told the kids to leave their consoles here today and spend the journey looking out of the window instead as they often while away the long drives on DS or PSP which is fine when they are mostly motorways but a shame when the scenery we are driving through is as amazing as it was today. This meant they saw loads and then when the road was a bit boring they both got out pens and paper and did drawings of Puffins – Scarlett had already got her spotter and bird books out to check details of the birds we saw today and tick loads of the things she saw off her lists :). I could almost be convinved by a table in a vehicle….

We left there and popped into a Morrisons for food supplies for tonight – Ady and I both looking like fat heroin addicts as the hogweed marks now look like trackmarks on the insides of our arms. We consoled ourselves that at least we looked like *healthy* druggies, not skinny ones who don’t eat!

We went next to LLan—-gogogoch, as we have photos of Ady and I stood on the station from nearly 18 years ago, and I think both kids at least once in the past, although neither of them could remember. We were talking today about them building memories of various places we have been and trying to get a mental map of the country with places they have stayed in. We do look at a map each time we travel and mark out interesting places so hopefully some of it is going in.

From there we drove to a lay by with a great view of the Menai and the Britannia bridges over the Menai Strait with Snowdon in the background which was all very beautiful. We decided to make the most of jhaving a campervan and made tea and coffee and saw on a wall drinking it which was very lovely. One of those perfect moments that will stay with us about this year :).

We drove over the Menai bridge and then back over it the other way just for fun, before going over the Britannia bridge again and back to the hosts. Lisa popped over to the static for a catch up chat about weekends which was nice – it’s felt like our first real weekend off at a host since we began really as we’ve actually been out, seen the local area, not worked or eaten with our hosts and just done our own thing, how I envisaged it would be when we first started.

I cooked dinner while Ady put the van back together, then we rang my Dad for a catch up chat, and proper Welsh saying of Llanfair….and to tell him about puffins. I read a couple of chapters of story to the kids and they went off to bed. Ady has already headed over there and I am waiting for the last few pictures to upload to flickr.

This morning after letting out the ducks we did some more sowing (carrots, rocket) and some transplating (cabbage, beetroot) and some weeding. I picked some strawberries and raspberries too.

That took us to lunchtime pretty much and then I hung some washing out – we asked if we could use the washing machine but Lisa (who is rather controlling) did stand over me while I loaded it 😆

Then Ady finished off some weeding – we have now done all the outside beds, so any further weeding will be in the polytunnel next week I guess. I was tasked with making lots of litres of bee syrup – a very strong sugar solution used to feed bees. They get a summer solution when new colonies are building up and an even stronger winter solution to keep them going over winter. I was making up 4kg of sugar to 3litres of water. I had a great routine going of boiling two kettles with 1.5l in each, opening and pouring the 4kg of sugar into the big fermentation bucket, adding the water once boiled, filling the kettles and getting them on again, stirring the solution until dissolved and then pouring into containers with a funnel. By the time I had come back in and opened and poured the sugar in again the kettles had boiled. I love jobs like that 🙂

Scarlett came and helped a bit, which did rather mess up my system but was worth it ;). By then it was nearly 330pm and Lisa went all spontaneous and said ‘oh it’s 330 and it’s Friday afternoon, just help Ady finish up weeding and then call it a day!’ 😆

It started to pour with rain soon afterwards and hasn’t stopped since. We had dinner – cheesy vegetable bake with potatoes, broccoli, carrots, peas – very nice and seconds for us which meant it was close to a decent portion ;). Ady got a lift with Lisa to Tescos for some meringues and cream to have with the strawberries and raspberries we were given. When he got back we had them and I rang Julie for a catch up chat – last time we talked about our news, this time we talked about theirs :).

We’ve had a late night in celebration of the fact we don’t have to get up in the morning and are now all heading back to the van together.

On Monday afternoon we did some strimming,
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by Tuesday evening both Ady and I had a series of itchy red marks on our necks and arms and assumed we’d been bitten by something, by last night they had started to blister and today they are still blistering and some have gone all weepy. It’s not dreadful, they are not sore or itchy any more and I think we have sufficiently few and sufficiently minor amounts to get away with them healing up and going away. But today when Ady went to do some more strimming Lisa said ‘oh be careful of this stuff, it’s hogweed and a previous WWOOFer had a nasty reaction to it, where the sap gets on your skin and makes it super sensitive to the sun so you get burns’. Ady remarked that that must be what I had then (his has not really blistered like mine has) and Lisa apologised for not warning us with the explanation that as she doesn’t ever do the strimming she had forgotten about it. I’m fairly cross about that really, I think it’s very irresponsible to know about a danger like that and subject someone to it without mentioning it. Googling has thrown up some real horror stories so I think we got off fairly lightly really.

So this morning was possibly the worst job you get at WWOOF hosts; cleaning out the animals. Here they only have chickens and ducks so it was scraping off the shit with a shovel, putting it in the compost heap and putting down fresh bedding in the duck house and the same in the chicken house. The chicken house also had the added delight of a load of stones the chickens had dug up with their scratching that needed to be used to fill some holes in the run. While Ady and I (mostly Ady in fairness ;)) did that Davies and Scarlett did some strawberry picking. Once we’d finished that Ady did some strimming (in long sleeves!) and I picked some peas and then did some feeding the tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers, peach and nectarine tree. Lisa was very cagily trying to ask me about whether previous hosts has used urine as a plant feed and what did I think about that idea. I said I was fine with it and she asked if I was up for some of that then, in the style of someone approaching me to join a cult. I did wonder if I was being invited to actually wee directly onto the beds myself so tenatively agreed and was shown the container full of wee (John’s) and the wee watering can, shown how to mix up a 10 to 1 dilution and feed the plants with it. I get all the best jobs, me 😉

I did wonder why I was set to work strimming killer weeds which resulted in blisters to my arms and neck with no prior asking but dealing with wee when I have had two children and therefore changed many hundreds of nappies might offend me…

Then it was lunch time 🙂

After lunch we did some weeding, planted out some squashes in the garden and in the polytunnel, broke up some cardboard boxes to mulch around some comfrey and then weeded a bed which was full of tomato plants which have self seeded from compost made from kitchen waste. Felt very odd and wrong to be pulling up tomatoes but Lisa could not be swayed by our suggestions of transplanting, selling them or even giving them away.

Then we sewed some swedes and some radishes and swapped over some protective netting for a lighter one with more growing space for the plants.

Dinner tonight was ‘Angelsey Eggs’ – a very nice hard boiled eggs base covered with mashed potatoes, leeks and cheese. Very delicious but not nearly enough. We had some interesting conversations over dinner about their experiences as WWOOF hosts and ours as WWOOFers though. Despite the lack of food and the whole hogweed incident I do like Lisa and John lots, they are interesting and have loads to teach us and seem to have fairly similar philosophies and ideas to us in many areas. This week has gone quick and I expect next week will do the same which is always the best sort of host really. We’ll definitely take away plenty of ideas from here.

Back at the static we had some cereal (kids) and Bombay mix (us) to tide us over 😉 The kids and Ady watched a film and I read a chapter of story to them before bed.

Horseshoe Pass
November 2011
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October 2003
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March 2004
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June 2011
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I liked the title so much I have littered the internet with it – twitter (both accounts), blogs (both blogs) and may start graffiti-ing it in places too – look out for a flashmob style sweep of the word in the Bangor area – I reckon I could re-write the lyrics to ‘Didn’t we have a lovely time the day we went to Bangor’ to accomodate it.

Today we started with a very new-Goddard breakfast which was delicious. We may never eat coco pops again 😉

Our first job was taking red and black currants off their stems and putting them into containers ready for freezing. We followed that with pulling up some onions and putting them in the polytunnel to dry.

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The kids were then on duck watch – there is one still escaping so the only real solution is to keep watching and work out how she is doing it. We suspect she is flying and are happy to teach Lisa and John how to clip their wings which is something they have never done before but we have had to do to our chickens over the years when they have got flighty. They had both collected a ‘pet’ snail each and were busy creating snail worlds out of rocks and garden detrius. Ady and I did some sowing of seeds and some planting on of various things in the greenhouse with Lisa and then back outside for some weeding of one of the raised beds. Once weeded we dug some trenches and sowed some carrot seeds. Lisa fills the trenches with seed compost to give the newly sewn seeds a fighting cahance. Judging by the success of the earlier sewing it seems to be a winning idea!

That about took us to lunchtime. I really like the lunches here – home baked bread, loads of home made chutneys, mustards, honey and spread, home grown salad leaves etc. In the middle of lunch Ian the tree pruning neighbour called in looking for John who was not here. He agreed to look at the peach, nectarine and fig trees in the polytunnel which Lisa was planning on having us thin as they are laden with fruit so Ady and scrambled along after them as our philosophy is to never miss a learning opportunity. Ian is a real character, very funny, eccentric and full of sarcastic asides. He’s invited us over for a look at his set up so we will have to sort that out as I reckon we could learn loads from an hour in his company.

This afternoon was mowing for Ady, some raspberry picking and then weeding for me. The kids continued on duck patrol.

We finished at 4pm and hung out in the static – we’re really appreciating the extra space to spread out in. We joined the hosts for dinner at 6pm and then I walked along to Tesco after dinner as we were out of loo rolls and felt odd about asking for more. Also the kids had requested apples and oranges and I quite liked the idea of some excerise as I’d sat down lots today and always enjoy an hour to myself here and there even if it is in Tescos.

I realised on the way back that it was about a year since we came up with this idea and a check back on the blog shows I blogged about the idea a year ago this very day!

We’ve had a really nice evening in the static, Scarlett had a shower, we listened to music, played on laptops, chatted, laughed, the kids put on a mime show, did some drawing…. just hung out really.

One of the very interesting things about WWOOFing is coming to realise that managing people is actually a very valuable skill. One which lots of people simply don’t possess. Being able to clearly explain what you want someone to do, giving the right level of guidance to ensure you have got the idea across without being patronising or dictatorial, giving the right level of autonomy to someone whilst ensuring the work is still actually done with the desired end result and then actually letting them to do it seems to be a bigger deal that we’d realised. That said, our current host Lisa is not bad at this at all, although she does have a habit of flitting from one job to the next and giving a long list of ‘things that need doing’ which always freaks Ady out as he feels like he should have completed all of them before she comes back whereas I assume she is almost thinking aloud and hoping between us we remember them all and it gives us a little choice to move between tasks as we wish. She is not working with us much which in some ways is a shame as it is always nice to be chatting and learning as we go – and have someone on hand for guidance when required but in another way is nice as we get to chat and move at our own pace.

This morning our first job was digging out some ragwort from various patches around the land. Ady and I had forks (although the ground here is so stony it is really hard to dig so I was pulling out by hand) and the kids had buckets for us to bung them in so they could transport them to the compost heap. The grass we cut yesterday was then piled on top and hopefully the heat of the composting grass will kill off any ragwort seeds to stop them spreading. That was all quite pleasant until it started to rain!

We were then shown a variety of tasks in the polytunnel – some weeding, some thinning peaches and nectarines, some pinching out tomatoes, some removing runners from strawberries and another outside job of grading some wood into two piles – one for firewood and another for building, then moving it to the relevant place. I don’t think we’ve had a host yet where carting wood around – either up or down a hill, hasn’t played a part!

I was really not in the mood for the wood so I did a little and then went to do some weeding in the polytunnel. Ady carried on with the wood and the kids came and did some weeding alongside me. We also moved a load of freezer stuff from one freezer to another – a slightly domestic type task for WWOOFers really but I suspect that happens a lot here as it is a fairly small growing operation and so when times are quiet I imagine WWOOFers are called on for various housework type tasks.

Then it was lunchtime – salad mostly from the garden, honey from their bees and home made bread, all very nice. They don’t seem to offer tea breaks here so this morning we broke for 15 minutes in our four hour long morning shift from 9am – 1pm and had a coffee ourselves. The afternoon shift is only 2 hours so that is fine but a mid morning cup of tea is essential in my opinion!

After lunch it was lovely and sunny and we spent a very nice couple of hours picking redcurrant and blackcurrants from the absolutely laden bushes. Very satisfying to have five full tubs of fruit at the end of that.

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We then headed off to Tescos, which is about a 15 minute walk away. We were all so retail therapy starved we spent about 90 minutes in there and walked up and down every single aisle 😆 I think we just needed to remind ourselves that our previous life did still exist if we wanted it!

We did look at our shopping on the conveyor belt and laugh at how much we had changed what we bought though – we were buying for breakfast and it was bran flakes, oat, dried fruit and yoghurt – all our favourite breakfast foods from the various hosts we’ve been to, along with some brown seeded bread to eat our hosts honey on. I think we’ll be making our own bread eventually but not practical in the van really.

We walked back and Lisa drove past us along the way so stopped to take our shopping for us. I rang my parents and they had collected the mifi and sent it on to Bryn Mawr so that is all in hand and should arrive with them tomorrow :). I also caught up with Julie later in the evening on the phone so all my social phonecalls are now made. I do have some paperwork to do for tax and other finances though which I really must get sorted this week thanks to a pile of letters Dad brought up with him last weekend.

Dinner was cabbage soup 😆 It was very nice cabbage soup and even Davies and Scarlett ate it all but it was just a bowl of cabbage soup, not even any bread. We did wonder if after we left they got out the real dinner for them to eat 😆 I think the truth is they can’t really afford to feed us, they have said that money is very tight and we are sorting our own breakfasts out. A bit of a cheek really as the deal with WWOOFing is all meals in exchange for work but they have given us a huge jar of honey which I know they would sell for over £10, fresh fruit every day and we have hook up and use of the whole static now (which I am currently sitting spread out on the sofa in as the others have gone to bed) so there is a touch of luxury to our stay here which compensates. Also they are interesting people and have lots to teach us about beekeeping and growing. I think they are slightly fazed by us as a family and not quite sure what to make of us.

Back in the van the kids watched a dvd on the laptop while I talked to Julie on the phone and we all had showers. We are thinking we will offer to cater for ourselves at the weekend as the static has a kitchen we can cook in and then we get a real break from being dictated to about mealtimes and can eat whatever we want without intruding on their family too much – the house is very tiny so we don’t really go any further in than the conservatory where we eat anyway.

We have caught a glimpse at the proposed job list for us which has interesting things like bottling mead, some other honey related stuff alongside garden tasks and fruit picking so all sounds pretty good. John also said it was a shame we were not here for a week longer as we could have attended a beekeeping training day he is running here the following weekend.

So in an attempt to turn the negative of extended stay at Bryn Mawr and missing out on the next planned host I asked my parents if they wanted to come up and join us for the end of the week during one of our rare phonecalls. Mum managed to take Thursday and Friday off so it was arranged they would travel up to Wales on the Thursday and go home on Sunday. After the hassle of their last visit to us in Devon when they spent a fortune on B&B and food I tried to find somewhere for us all to stay and be self catering – the ideal solution seemed to be a campsite with holiday cottages so I tracked one down in Llangollen, which we had decided was a good place to meet up – somewhere we all know and like, close to the various circuits of reminiscing places Dad would want to visit and not too far out of our route to the hosts we were due at on Sunday in Bangor either.

With limited internet access I tracked down Abbey Farm Caravan Park and asked Mum to ring and book us all in. She didn’t manage to get a cottage as they were all booked but she did book us in to the campsite. Retrospectively I should have spent some more time trying to find another alternative as it was pricey and not a very ‘us’ campsite really, but it did the job. Mum & Dad found a hotel right in the town and booked in there for the 3 nights.

We parked in the carpark when we arrived at 130am on Thursday morning, put the bed down, moved the kids up to their bunk and were in bed just before 3am, then booked in properly when the office opened at 9am, so we did at least save one nights campsite fees – and got to actually pull off the parking up and sleeping option we’d always consoled ourselves we have with a campervan :).

Once parked up and hooked up we stuck everything on charge and went for breakfast – the campsite had a tea room which did sell excellent breakfasts using their own meat and eggs from the farm. We followed that with showers and felt properly clean, fed and above all FREE! We had a drink in the van and sat outside in the sunshine for a while while the kids played together in the field, just trying to get our heads round not being at Bryn Mawr anymore before heading off to walk into LLangollen – about a half an hour walk, mostly along the towpath beside the canal.

We arrived in time to watch a steam train leaving, always good fun and then I rang my Mum to check on their progress as they had rung at 930am to say they were just about to leave Sussex. They were just a mile or so away so we went to look in the window of the taxidermist who has been there ever since I can remember and were checking out the various birds and mammals stuffed on display when my parents appeared. 🙂 Big hugs all round and then off to a cafe for some food and catch up chat.

It was very theraputic to share the whole story with some real people, along with eating yet more lovely food and to celebrate I treated us all to posh ice creams which we all had flakes / fudge sticks in. Scary to spend over a tenner on ice cream nonetheless!

Mum & Dad found a hotel and booked in and then we all went back to our campsite for a coffee / sit in the sunshine for an hour or so before heading to a nearby pub for dinner. A fairly early night all round with me falling asleep before anyone else as they were all watching Sorry I’ve Got No Head on iplayer :).

Friday Mum and Dad came along to us and we headed over the Horseshoe Pass to Llandegla, the village where Dad grew up. It’s changed even since the last time we visited with more new houses built and an hourly bus driving through the village. We stopped to talk to a lovely woman who now lives in one of the 3 houses Dad lived in as a boy, looked at the newly put up information board about the village which Dad was thrilled to see featured two pictures of his grandad – my great grandad, Davies and Scarlett’s great-great-grandad :). We looked in the church yard at the gravestones and took one of Dad’s grandparents, Dad walked along the rows telling me stories about all the various people buried there – and stamped on a few of people he had really hated 😆 We went inside the church which I’d not done before and then walked along the river bank to the well Dad used to play near as a boy and Scarlett and I paddled in the river. It was all very lovely 🙂

We left there and went for lunch in a pub Dad used to drink in (probably long before he was legally allowed to do so) and was owned by the family of one of his friends. Then we drove to Rhuthin and had a wander round there, looking round the castle and all enjoying showing Davies and Scarlett various sights – Dad grew up there, Mum & Dad visited there lots in their early days together as my grandparents were still living in the area and then Ady and I had various holidays in North Wales when we were first together, including at least one trip with my parents, so history spanning over 70 years.

Back to Mum & Dad’s hotel for a coffee and use of their bath for all of us 🙂 I didn’t get the relaxing bathtime experience I was sort of hoping for as Scarlett gatecrashed my bath and I didn’t have the heart to tell her to bugger off so shared it with her. Still, nice to be clean :). Davies then got in with Scarlett and they played with the aquajet jacuzzi feature for a bit then Ady got to have a bath on his own. We had dinner downstairs in the hotel which all of us thought was perfectly acceptable but Mum took exception to and was grumpy about. She had far too much to drink that evening and spent time monopolising Ady while Dad, the kids and I went to the bar, looked at fruit machines, chose some songs on the juke box and generally enjoyed being in a pub. We got a taxi back which the kids assure me was their first experience of taxi cabs (aside from black London cabs of course).

Saturday A later start for my parents due to my Mum’s excesses of the night before which gave me time to run two loads of washing and get it all dry in the campsite laundrette, tidy up our clothes cupboard and bag up a whole load of stuff for my parents to take back with them and do a quick bit of online stuff.

Mum & Dad arrived and we drove along to look up Dad’s cousin. His father was one of 14 children so there were loads of cousins on that side although Dad was a whole generation younger than a lot of them as there were many years between his oldest aunt / uncle and his youngest aunt / uncle. There are now only 3 of that generation of cousins still alive – Dad at 73, Glyn at 82 and Dorothy somewhere inbetween. Glyn still lives in a little Welsh village in the house his wife was born in and her mother before her was born in. Dorothy lives in Newcastle and Dad will come and visit her when we are up in that area in a month or so. He is not in touch with many of the next generation, although he still has contact with his favourite cousin’s three children who are scattered around the world. We all said hello to Glyn who Ady and I had met before about 15 years ago and was very taken with Davies and Scarlett – particularly Davies sharing the family name as he does :).

We visited a lake that Dad had nearly drowned on as a boy in a leaking boat – the woman there told us it was 75feet deep in the centre so his recalled story of panic and being out of his depth (he can’t swim) was pretty accurate!

We drove to Rhyl which was rather bleak and depressing and very run down and had half an hour on the beach which was lovely – Scarlett was bemoaning the lack of beaches so far this year so was appeased by that. Then back to the pub we’d eaten at the first night for want of a better option. Ady, the kids and I confessed to each other later than we had struggled with pub food a third night running and were rather in need of something more simple. I am looking forward to a dinner we have cooked ourselves at some point again…

Sunday morning we presented Ady with some ales and chocolate for Fathers Day, then walked along the canal path to Mum & Dad’s hotel for a fathers day greeting and farewell. We’d had some fairly heavy discussions over the weekend with them about coming in with us on a property so lots of digesting of all of that to do. It was lovely to see them, fab to be in such a special place to us all to do so too. We agreed that we felt rather reeling from such an intense weekend after such a crazy fortnight and are all still craving some actual downtime but are discussing missing our next host in favour of a few days quietly somewhere so we may get that soon.

We had a quick look around the town before wandering back along the path to the campsite via the bakers for a cake each. We packed Willow up, had showers and headed off again for the next host.

It was a smooth journey although we failed to find a supermarket along the way to stock up on our usual campervan essentials incase of rubbish food at hosts. We are not even a mile away from a 24 hour Tesco extra though so plenty on hand should we require it.

We were greeted by Lisa and given a guided tour of their land – really just a field attached to their house which they have been in for 7 years. They have 2 children – Corina aged 14 and Yannish aged nearly 13. Lisa is German and they all speak German, English and Welsh so a very mixed language spoken around the place. They have a cat, ducks and chickens which they sell the eggs of and loads and loads of bees which they sell the honey of. They grow a huge array of fruit and veg and do bottling, preserving, breadmaking, winemaking etc.

Shortly after we arrived so did a group of cyclists, having come 50 miles together on the first leg of their tour with Otesha (follow the link, too tired to explain it!) travelling in a self sufficent and low impact way bringing a message of sustainability and green living with them – fab people, fab project. 🙂

So we all ate together, in the garden – a combined meal from John and Lisa and the Otesha guys along with a bottle of wine and a bottle of mead from John and Lisa 🙂 Much interesting chatter over eating then suddenly it was after 10pm and so we retired for the evening.

Monday yay finally caught up – still photos to add mind you.

This morning we started with some repairs to the duck enclosure as ducks have been escaping. I sewed the netting together using bailer twine while Ady pegged the base in better with tent pegs. Scarlett worked with me and Davies with Ady – we’ve talked about the kids doing more at this host and the hosts are very on board with that – they flexischooled their kids through primary and are very into the idea of the kids learning alongside us. Then we swapped over. Lisa had made a big point about me not losing the needle as it was her only one and so on so Davies and I managed to drop it between us and never did find it. Fortunately it was a wool needle and I happened to have one in the van so I went and grabbed that and Lisa need never know it was actually my needle I gave back to her at the end of the morning 😉

The kids went off to do some strawberry picking next and then John appeared to ask if we wanted to go with him to do some beekeeping stuff. He said he rarely gets WWOOFers involved with the bees as the time he saves by having someone help is totally negated by the time he loses in having someone ‘help’! 😆 but as we’d shown such an interest in bees he was happy to show us some stuff – today he was swapping over some hives into travelling boxes as he has sold a couple of colonies.

So all four of us donned beesuits and gloves, Davies lit the smoker and we all went down to one of the various sites within the garden that have hives on. We opened two up and got to see all inside them, handle frames, do the smoking, spot the queens and have all our questions answered – fascinating stuff 🙂 I do love bees.

After that Ady did some strimming and the kids did some fruit picking while I finished off sewing the fence and then helped with lunch.

After lunch we did mowing and strimming, Ady and I swapping over to have a go at both. Strimming looks easy but is very heavy, very noisy and you get bits in your mouth! I had pins and needles in my fingers for ages afterwards. Mind you mowing up hills with a non self propelled mower is also no picnic 🙂 Two hours felt like quite a work out – very enjoyable in the sunshine though :).

We finished and sat down for a cup of tea and Lisa came back (she’d been out), we debated dinner and offered to help so went to shell some peas and chop some vegetables. We then had about half an hour in the van before dinner was ready. It was nice sitting and chatting with John and Lisa who seem really nice. We are working 9am-4pm Monday to Friday which seem reasonable hours although we don’t appear to get a tea break which we have been used to. We are self catering for breakfast but lunch and dinner are provided and the food is lovely so far (if vegetarian ;)). I think this will be a nice relaxing host with showers and electric and clearly set out times for working.

After dinner we helped clear up and then watched the Otesha team perform their play for us in the polytunnel which was great fun – really enjoyed it 🙂 I do love the diverse range of people we are meeting this year. We decided to call it a night at that point so I read a couple of chapters of story to the kids and have finally caught up on both blogs and emails and flickring. Hurrah!

I’m writing about the last host for the WW blog and we all felt the need to write a rather less public good, bad and learnt too so I’ll stick it here. I didn’t record that much of what was hard at the time and actually now we are out the other side and it’s all in perspective I guess none of it was dreadful but there certainly were aspects we all struggled with lots.

Davies:
Bad: Didn’t feel like I spent much time with Daddy because one of the boys there also liked Daddy and Daddy was the dog and the boy was the flea!
Good: We had some nice walks and I got to have a go at shooting the air rifle
Learnt: How to use the air rifle, any sort of land or terrain can be used for keeping pigs on; they can go on all sorts of conditions.

Scarlett:
Bad: The children were strange and quite a few ducklings died there and the cats kept catching voles which was sad.
Good: There were lots of animals – cows, pigs, chickens and chicks, geese, ducks, cats and a dog.
Learnt: I really enjoyed trying new foods, including various wild foods like comfrey leaves (deep fried), sorrel and pennyroyal.

Ady:
Bad: The feeling of being trapped, although we were safe I felt very vulnerable
Good: As always with the extreme experiences you learn so much about what you would not do yourself – both from what the hosts actually tell you about mistakes they have made and from what you observe, and the same applies to the things you would try and replicate
Learnt: Animal management is very important; seperating male and female pigs and cows is imperative if you don’t want huge groups of livestock.

Me – I did a bit of a debrief to some online friends already so will c&p that rather than type it all out again:
We learnt loads there, enjoyed some aspects of the extreme lifestyle but it was
also super challenging in lots of ways;
They had 3 boys (aged 11, 7 and 5) and they were REALLY hard work – very strange
kids, a really bad advertisement for isolated home ed kids and D&S struggled
with them lots. Hell I struggled with them lots! Even worse they, particularly
the older one, really attached themselves to Ady and Davies found that very
tough – it brought lots of father / son relationship stuff to the surface that I
have been aware of for years but suspect neither of them had really realised
previously. I *think* they are better as a result but that was tough for all of
us, not least me trying to help them work through it.

The standard of living was pretty much as low as it gets; dogs, cats and even
chickens roaming about in the shed they used as a kitchen, no real washing
facilities (for hands, plates, anything really) which twitched all of Ady’s
hygiene buttons, the kids (and actually the adults) had NO table manners –
plates were *licked* clean at the end of each meal. No shower or bath facilities
really, compost loos which were real fly havens in the heat.

The remoteness was crazy – they live at the end of a 2 mile long track off what
is barely a proper road in the first place – the nearest shop is a petrol
station four miles away, the nearest actual town is 17 miles – they only really
leave once a week or so to get basic supplies – remember we didn’t have an
operation vehicle so we were totally trapped. I did go out once with the host to
get some supermarket supplies and see other people briefly.

The lack of communication with the outside world was really challenging. I
walked up the hill each day to a place where there was patchy mobile phone
signal to check my voicemail to ensure I hadn’t had anyone trying to contact me
for emergency reasons. I had to go no mail on all my lists as my laptop crashed
trying to download about a 1000 emails (including loads from fp when you had
that mad weekend of chatting loads!) but it really did feel like our lifeline to
the outside world had been severed.

The dynamics of the host family were really disturbing – the woman was treated
like some sort of idiotic slave by the bloke and so the 3 boys were also
beginning to act the same way towards her. I spent some time with her telling
her how great I thought she was but she had suffered with PND and other
depression over the years and was just rather downtrodden and used to having her
‘failings’ regularly pointed out to her. Tough to witness and I didn’t always
manage to bite my tongue.

And finally the van – it had a few issues before we arrived which we knew needed
looking at fairly soon but the water pump gave up the ghost on the track up to
their land so we arrived with an inoperational vehicle really. We have breakdown
cover but timing will always be an issue on using that as taking the van away
renders us homeless! The host said he could look at it and probably fix it so we
spent the whole of the first 10 days waiting for him to do that and mentioning
it every so often and getting more anxious. Eventually he looked at it on the
last Thursday – we were due to leave on the Sunday – and sure enough it needed a
part removing and being sent off for reconditioning. He did that, it was sent
off, we had to cancel the next host we were due to and I decided to make a
positive out of that by arranging for my parents to come up and spend a few days
with us at the end of the week, as much to ensure we actually did HAVE to leave
at some point than anything else because I was starting to believe we may end up
trapped there forever! It finally came back on the following Wednesday, the host
did all the work and we drove away at quarter to midnight. Arrived at the
campsite we had booked at 130am, parked in their carpark and got a couple of
hours sleep before finally checking in at 9am when they opened the next morning.
A cooked breakfast in the tearoom and hot showers afterwards had never felt so
welcome!

Definitely our biggest challenge yet that one, glad it’s over but glad we did it!

But know I must otherwise it will be forgotten and swallowed up in the mists of time.

So on Wednesday I was in the depths of despair after my hillside sobbing of the night before. It was pissing with rain and I refused to put waterproofs on out of some fit of childish curlishness and so was soaked within about ten minutes of weeding. I then conceded that waterproofs were probably preferable to pnemonia so headed back to Willow to get changed and encountered a soggy and rather sad Scarlett who said she felt rubbish and wanted her mummy. That was more than sufficient excuse for me to go back and tell them I needed to stay with Tarly instead of do weeding in the rain so I got changed into dry clothes and spent the rest of the day huddled in the van with Davies and Scarlett eating sherbert lemons and reading Enid Blyton, which (forgive me modern medicine peddlars) seems to be to be the very best cure for such ailments.

Ady brought some lunch in to us which meant we got to carry on sitting in the van and then the much awaited phonecall finally came to say the water pump had arrrived back so Ady and Alan headed off to collect it.

There followed possibly the most tense few hours of my life so far as we waited for them to get back, waited for Alan to drink his tea, waited for the water pump to be fitted and so on. They got back at 6pm, we had tea and doughnuts and I guess Alan was working on it by 7pm. He had said 2 hours so I expected to be done by 9pm, 10pm at worst and driving down that hillside in daylight (daylight til nearly 11pm up here).

Wrong!

8pm came and went. The water pump went on ok.

9pm came and went. It turned out the electric fan (nicked off a car Alan had skulking about) didn’t fit using the bracket Alan had made as he had not allowed for the water pump being in the way.

10pm came and went. At 930pm I was up the hill ringing my Mum who had started to worry about not having heard from us and rung and left a message on Anna’s mobile, which rather blew our cover on my story about us needing to leave on Wednesday as my parents would be arriving at the campsite, when she left their landline number.

11pm came and went. Alan started welding a new bracket for the fan. Then he installed a switch on the dashboard. Then he realised he needed some ‘spade connectors’ so Ady (by now chief torch holder) and he walked down the hill to the wrecked car to see if that had any. It didn’t. So they walked back up the hill to a trailer to see if that had any. It did. So they removed them from that. Which despite the ease of the sentence was not straightforward 😉

1145pm – I had long since given up hope of seeing friends of family again. I had resigned myself to living there forever and submitting to their strange and curious ways when all was declared complete. Willow started up, hugs were exchanged, promises to stay in touch issued and we began the long road down the hill and away. It takes nearly half an hour to negotiate their track including five gates, many cows who fail to moooove out of the way of the van and some very non Willow friendly terrain but we finally closed the last gate behind us, watched a badger (remote control obviously) scuttle across the road infront of us and hit the open road.

The kids fell asleep and despite not having had dinner by the time we reached the campsite at about 130am we shoved them up into their beds, parked in the carpark, put the bed down and crawled into our sleeping bags at about 3am.

A mad journey but 100% worth it for that feeling before we even opened our eyes on Thursday morning that we were no longer at Bryn Mawr. 🙂

Weeding today. Lots and lots of weeding.

Winges first I guess;
The water pump is still not back. Ady and I spent the entire morning on tenterhooks waiting for Alan’s phone to ring to say ‘it’s here, come and get it’ but it didn’t. After lunch (which we didn’t eat until nearly 3pm) Alan finally rang them and was told ‘nothing today, maybe tomorrow’. I am very, very much hoping for tomorrow as my tether is so far past the end it is but a dim and distant memory. I’m not sure which is the toughest bit of the situation really – the frustration at it not having been dealt with sooner, the powerlessness of not being the one with the phone contact with anyone or the simply not knowing – as I said to Ady earlier I could cope with another ten days if I only knew that it would be another ten days.

Three and the Mifi. In lieu of payment for several hours work on the van, bits from a wrecked car Alan has with a fan he is rigging up to work on Willow and so on we offered to buy them a Mifi as they have a serious internet connection issue here and the Mifi works well and suits their needs. I ordered it, paid for it and when the website had in big letters ‘ensure you use the address the card is registered to for contact address’ I put in our house fully expecting a delivery address option to pop up on the next screen. Except it didn’t – instead I got the ‘thank you for your order, it will be despatched soon’ message instead. I checked my emails for the confirmation, got a phone number and order reference and ran up the hill to ring them. I spent about half an hour on a premium rate number listening to various ‘for x press 1’ options (Marcus, I hated you at that point!) before I finally got through to a person who said he couldn’t change the delivery address and also couldn’t cancel the order as it was already in progress. I said it had been only ten minutes so it couldn’t possibly have left yet and he corrected me that actually it had been 22 minutes so I asked for a supervisor. That supervisor couldn’t help me so I asked for another one (all on the premium rate number) and finally got someone who listened very patiently but was also unable to help me despite me pointing out the item was still actually sat on a shelf in their warehouse and had not left the building yet. Heads, brick walls and complete lack of customer service from the customer service department were all very much in evidence. I eventually conceded defeat, hung up and sat on the hillside and sobbed for about 20 minutes 🙁

Scarlett would appear to have The Cold. I thought we’d all had it as she had a quiet day way back in our first week and has been sniffly ever since but she was croupy in the early hours of this morning and how has a barking cough which she sat on my lap interspersing with sobs and pleas to ‘make it stop Mummy’ at 11pm when I was trying to drown my sorrows with a glass of luke warm white wine and a stomach so growly with hunger I was eating bombay mix and not even picking out the lentils. See how low I have stooped? Lentils and a needy, coughing child. It doesn’t get much bleaker really 😉

Weeding. I may have previously mentioned my lack of passion for weeding. I know it needs doing, I understand the reasoning behind it; I just don’t want to spend all day every day doing it really.

But along comes Nic with her Nic-ness and Nics up the whole day with a healthy dose of Nicisms.

I am married to Ady. Who is bloody great at listening to me, pretending to be me for a brief time and being all positive and optimistic (he did need to go and lie down afterwards, it took a lot out of him ;)) giving me a big cuddle, reassuring me it will all be alright and offering up solutions. Finding me a bottle of wine and furnishing me with bombay mix to snaffle.

My Mum does a fine line of swinging into action when she is really needed. For all my loathing needy children she seems to thrive on them (shame she got me really ;)) so when I confessed to sobbing on a hillside she took over the whole mifi thing and is going round to the tenants tomorrow to make sure that if it turns up there they hold it for her until after the weekend.

Getting the mifi proved a real winner with Alan – I reckon £70 is a bloody bargain for the hours of work and running around he’s putting into Willow but he is very grateful and has swung into action tonight fitting the new fan and will hopefully be on the case tomorrow with ringing to chase the water pump. He has offered either use of their car or to run us to teh booked campsite tomorrow if the waterpump is not here and sorted. So not what I want as the solution but at least we have an out for the weekend even if the waterpump doesn’t turn up I guess.

I think that’s all.

I don’t do crying often and self pity even less but wheb I had my brief foray into it today various lovely, lovely people helped me come out of the other side very quickly indeed.

Today was all about the weeding. Weeding around potatoes. It was quite nice in the sometimes sunshine but mostly overclouded but dry weather sitting on the hillside plucking out the weeds and grass from between the potato plants. Ady and I worked alongside each other all day with occassional working alongside us from Alan, Anna or Sam and we listened to the radio and made up song related challenges for each other; ‘name five songs with sun in the title’ ‘five songs with rain in the title’ etc. (anyone want to see if they can guess the ones I came up with?)
Anna was listening to us from afar and laughed and said ‘I can just imagine you two in your seventies sitting there playing pop quizzes with each other’ 😆 I was quick to point out that we’ll not both be in our seventies at the same time 😉

There is tentative good news on the van – the water pump was sent off to the reconditioning man today and should hopefully be back tomorrow – not sure what time mind you. We’re working on the basis we’ll have it back here either late tomorrow or early Wednesday and be off on Wednesday sometime but I am very aware it may be more like Thursday.

Mum has got Thursday and Friday off work so they are coming up to Wales on Thursday morning for a few nights. I found a campsite with some holiday cottages on site so she is booking us all in there for the weekend – us in Willow and them in a cottage which I think will be a good arrangement for us all. Looking forward to seeing them, it somehow seems like it’s been forever since they came to see us in Devon.

I was feeling in a stroppy and intolerant mood this morning and snapped at Sam when he gave two order type requests to people over lunchtime without saying please on either occassion. I drew his attention to the fact that for a very wordy young man he seemed to lack that particular word from his vocabulary rather often. He blushed 😉 Today is his last day, I have found working alongside him rather challenging at times and think he has ever such a lot to learn – I guess WWOOFing will give him that and put him firmly in his place which will be no bad thing. I was also feeling a bit blue this morning, rather trapped here and when Alan started having a big moan about Anna it really upset me. There is a huge amount of domestic unrest here which always disturbs me and it’s felt a lot like being a kid living with my parents hearing both of them so pissed off with the other one that they are prepared to share tales of woe and slag each other off to virtual strangers like us. I am also really riled by the way Anna is treated generally by Alan and the boys; like some sort of idiot slave. One of the unforeseen downsides of WWOOFing I guess; living with other people and feeling rather powerless / unwilling to get dragged into the issues within their own relationships and domestic arrangements. Ady and I were talking about it and agreeing what a cautionary tale the dynamics here are for living in a remote and isolated location.

Abi and Caitlin came over to show off Abi’s birthday present she got at the weekend – a big stunt kite so we all had a go at flying that. Davies proved to have a real knack for it and now wants one for his birthday – a perfect gift given the tiny bag it folds down into :).

Dinner was good – home made burgers (using their pig meat, herbs and greens and eggs), chips (from potatoes dug up today) and greens from the garden washed down with some of Alan’s home brewed beer. They certainly have taught us loads about self sufficiency and given me stacks of ideas for stuff like that. They also use lots of alternative and herbal remedies, Anna particulary is very knowledgable about hedge-witch type stuff.

Back to the van for a couple of chapters of Enid Blyton and hopefully our last nights sleep without a clear idea of how many more we’ll be spending here.

A lovely lie in this morning, made even better as it was pouring with rain and howling a gale outside. Sleeping in Willow in crappy weather is still a real joy as we all compare it to bad camping weather rather than bad house weather. Living in the van is definitely not proving to be an issue yet, I imagine WWOOFing without our own space would be far harder, both logistically and because we need to be able to retreat and be just us and Willow allows us to do that properly, not to mention being a comfortable and homely place to be.

We decided that rain would mean we’d spend the day in Willow as hanging out in the tearoom with three crazy kids bouncing off walls was a less than appetising thought so we put the bed away and set the table up. The kindle is playing up, the bottom of the screen is all funny intermittently so I spent some time downloading and installing a software update. Some searching online shows it to be a fairly common issue and it will need replacing so as soon as we are at an address for any length of time I will get that sorted. Will miss it lots though 🙁

The kids enjoyed some DS time and I had a reply from our planned host who we would have been arriving with today. She had sounded really nice from the off when I was exchanging emails with her arranging to stay way back in December so we are quite disappointed not to be going to her but have no real room for change in this section of our schedule. She remained true to form and sent an email back saying she had done a huge food shop in preparation of our arriving and if we still wanted to come she would come and pick us up and we would fit in the house for the week and she could bring us back to collect the van when it was fixed. Oh how tempting! With regret I emailed back to say as attractive as the offer was we felt rather obliged to stay here and carry on helping out in exhange for our host fixing our van but if it gets sorted early enough in the week we will come as planned and have a shorter stay. We’ll have to see how that pans out really as Mum & Dad are planning to come up on the basis of us being free next weekend but I am sure if we are meant to cross paths with this host something will happen to make it so, like another host will have to cancel on us or something. I think if the water pump was not somewhere else we would have been sorely tempted to take her up on her offer and head off there today though.

We went in for lunch and Ady stayed to help pluck and prepare two cockerels that had been killed this morning for dinner – we’d seen Anna walk by with one under her arm and an axe in her hand earlier, then Alan with the other a short time later so knew they were on the agenda 🙂 Ady also helped chop some firewood and generally made himself useful. I was feeling rather less sociable and spent a couple of hours in the van with Davies and Scarlett reading through the black lines on the kindle screen and scoffing sherbert lemons 🙂

We found a bottle of cider in the van so brought it over to dinner to share with everyone along with a jelly which Scarlett made for pudding. Dinner was potatoes dug up here this afternoon, greens picked here and the chickens so totally self sufficient and very delicious washed down with cider 🙂

So a nice day, with a proper escape route on offer if we need / want it, a nice dinner and some enjoyable time hanging out in the van laughing and chatting.

This morning we’d agreed to help bring some firewood down from a high up point on the land so were hanging about waiting for instruction and sitting on a picnic bench. It actually needed moving so we all did that together and then decided to test it’s new citing for view-ability. It’s stunning here 🙂

The gorgeous blue skies had turned grey and we sat out a hail storm on the bench – very cold. Later discovered it had been snowing at the top of Snowdon, which is only a few miles away.

We had tea and biscuits indoors and the weather had cleared enough to tackle the wood gathering. We all went up riding on the trailer attached to the tractor which Sam had a go at driving and then helped load logs on the back as Alan chainsawed them up. Sam was being pathetic in his lifting – he’s really pissed me off today. Tolerance levels wearing dangerously thin with him on my (and Anna’s) part now. Just as well he leaves on Tuesday – I think I can cope with the last 48 hours, but another part of me is itching to say something…

Back down the hill we retired to the van for an hour or so as lunch was not ready and the generator was on to bake the bread and run the washing machines so we were charging everything up in the van. Lunch was called at about 3pm but the weather was so lovely again by then we just made a sandwich and took it back outside to the picnic bench again.

Davies wanted to go for a walk but often when we try to slip away one or more of the boys will want to come with us so we were trying to do it covertly which is pretty difficult when there are four of us ;). We ended up sitting in the sunshine with everyone else instead. Davies and Scarlett got their sketchbooks out and Davies did some drawing, we also played a game with a dice where you had to throw a different number for each component part of a drawing – we started with beetles, then butterflies, the cats and then ducks. That was quite fun :).

We lazed around and Anna brought out a cake she had made with Tom (the youngest lad) at tea time. By then it was pig feeding time so Ady and Scarlett helped with that while Davies and I hung out the laundry that had finished and then we did manage to slip away for our walk across the field the other side of their land where we’d not ventured before. That was a nice hour or so with plenty more view-gazing 🙂

We returned and Ady and I both helped Anna with some wood chopping for the woodburner tonight, then went in to the tea room while all the kids went to watch a film (George of the Jungle). I helped with some peeling and chopping and Anna cooked while we all listened to some of Alan’s old tapes from the 80s. Sam really irritated me this evening and was then rude about Anna who disappeared at dinnertime and was obviously upset about something.

After dinner Scarlett and I had a brief walk to look at the moon, particularly bright and beautiful tonight 🙂 before retiring to Willow where Davies joined us for a couple of chapters of story while Ady helped clear up in the kitchen. Tomorrow’s plan is not very much at all and I am intending to sleep in and hoping the kids will too – it’s gone 9pm before we eat most nights, gone 10pm before we are in the van and gone 11pm before they are asleep – not dreadful or too dissimilar from when we were at home in terms of them actually being asleep but not a great routine really. It feels very much like biding time now as we should be leaving tomorrow to go to the next hosts.

A bit note form as dashed off each evening in a word doc. Quite possibly with repeptitive bits and in need of some editing and some adding in of pics, but better here rather than just in a word doc.

Tuesday

An epic journey as we left J&J’s and made it down the lane, only to stop at Morrisons petrol station and have our attention drawn to the fact Willow was gushing water from the radiator. We pulled into the carpark for a closer look and decided we would be wise to get her to a garage while she could still be driven there so drove around to the garage Jan and Jonathan had recommended and tried to book her in. They said they wouldn’t be able to look at her until the following day and even then it may be longer if parts were needed so we went outside ‘to agonise’ over the decision. After some debate we decided losing water would be a more serious issue than losing oil so we had better ring our hosts to explain we’d be a day or two later and see if we could beg a bed (or tent pitch space) from J&J back up the hill. We drove Willow up the very steep mini hill into the garage and then stood agonising further as the water leak seemed to have totally stopped and on inspection the radiator was still fairly full of water.

The mechanic said he would have a quick look for us and after some discussion we decided it was not serious enough to delay the next leg of the journey after all and that the water had probably been Ady slightly overfilling it than anything more sinister. This was most fortunate as finances dictate we are in the lull between everything having been paid and nothing having come in to our bank account until we get this months rent. I was holding dear to my mantra of ‘it’ll be fine’ and still believing we would encounter someone along the way who can help us fix the fixable broken bits and our ongoing backup plan of getting recovered back to Sussex where we can collect my sharan and load that up with tent etc to continue at least the summer leg of the adventure is always in the back of my mind rather than expensive repair work.

So we topped up with oil and headed off. The journey was uneventful, we stopped once to top up with oil again, Davies was feeling rough which I diagnosed as not enough food, water or sleep for the weekend so he was rather pale and floppy, we were all anxious about the van and our usual slight worry about the next host had kicked in along with a healthy dose of friend-sickness. Other than that we found the place fine, had moments of doubt when going up a very steep lane as to whether it actually was the right path or not.

Hill climbed we were greeted by a dreadlocked man and three boys dotted about ambush style peeking out at us from various viewpoints. Alan and his sons Robin (11), Pip (7) and Tom (5). We introduced ourselves and were taken off for a bit of a tour of the land. They have 77 acres here on a Welsh hillside, the land is fairly steep but nothing to Steward Wood standards. They have been here nearly 4 years and bought it at auction for £200K. It was a sheep farm and on the land stands the remains of a longhouse centuries old and a few outbuildings and ruins of buildings. Alan and his partner Anna are here with their 3 boys, and Alan’s sister Abi and her daughter Caitlin (14) live in a mobile home. They are off grid but run a diesel generator every evening for a few hours to charge up batteries, run lights, power an electric oven and keep a chest freezer operational, do a load of washing and anything else required. The main cooking is done on a wood burner than Alan made (he is very handy, woodwork, metalwork, engineering, mechanics, machinery etc.). Water is from a well with a basic filter for drinking water. Loos are compost, there is a shower in Abi’s mobile home (not sure how it’s powered). They have (many) chickens, ducks and geese, pigs (lots) and highland cattle (four cows and two calves at current, one born the day before we arrived) aswell as two dogs and three cats.

Alan sleeps in a tent, Anna and the two younger boys share one caravan and Robin the oldest has his own, cooking and general living takes place in a communal area. There are two more caravans for WWOOFers but we are in Willow obviously. Thanks to the generator we are able to get hook up for a couple of hours each evening which means we have light at bedtime and are able to charge anything up we need (phones, cameras, laptop etc.). Unfortunately there is no signal for anything; mobile phone, Mifi, kindle so we’re very isolated indeed!

Tour of the land over we sited Willow who was leaking oil and water again, met Anna who had arrived home and had cups of tea, some bread and made each others acquaintance properly. Then I helped with some peeling and chopping of vegetables for dinner (burger and chips) while Alan and Ady took a look at Willow. Alan has said he will try and get her sorted for us which will be fantastic.

Dinner eaten and over I took the kids back to Willow to bed. Alan and Anna tend to eat at Goddard o’clock ;).

Wednesday

830am start (well a few minutes before to scramble into clothes and head over to the tearoom for breakfast of oats, bran, coconut, raisins, dates, sugar, milk or yoghurt and large mugs of tea. A fairly leisurely beginning to the day with work starting at 930am. It is listed as a six hour day here but it seems to be spaced over about 9 hours with lots of long breaks.

Davies and Scarlett spent the day playing with the boys – Scarlett has particularly teamed up with Pip and they have been playing with play mobile animals together very happily. Davies has spent some time with Robin and some with all of the kids together and some time alone. I think he is feeling a bit bereft of his friends after such a fab weekend and still not fully recovered from not enough food, drink or sleep although he is catching up on all of those.

The boys are all very spectrummy with rather poor social skills, heavy obsessions about various things (weapons mostly it seems) and a stilted way of talking with very little eye contact and no concept of personal space. They are pretty noisy and manners generally seem to be a little lacking. There is an odd dynamic between Alan and Anna too with them dwelling in separate places but definitely still a couple. They spend a lot of time moaning about or undermining each other and there is a real point of friction over Home Education generally and approach specifically. Alan says he resents having to spend so much time teaching them and that if they don’t put more effort into school work they will have to go to school but also says he hated school, whereas Anna is far more into autonomy and letting them learn naturally. They are all incredibly knowledgable about the land, the animals and the way everything operates around them and have definite passions and interests.

We worked on clearing stones from the vegetable growing area. Some of the land has been rotovated in preparation for sowing and that had loads of stones risen to the surface, other beds have already got stuff growing in them so just needed stones cleared from the edges. The stones will be used for building – the smaller ones for filling holes in the road and track and the larger ones for walls and eventual house building for the planned earthship style dwelling. It was fairly enjoyable work actually; meaningful and rewarding, tough enough with bending, stretching and lifting to feel we’d done a days work and with stunning views around us, a perfect overcast but dry and not too windy weather for such pursuits and the chance to chat lots to each other for Ady and I and some time spent chatting to Anna too.

We had tea break and long lunch break and then finished around 5pm. Another WWOOFer has arrived; Sam, just out of uni and on his first WWOOFing host here. He is here for 2 weeks before moving down south for a few months over the summer and seems nice enough if likely to struggle with everything here. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

Dinner was pasta and vegetable sauce – Sam is a vegetarian L after which the kids and I retired to the van while Ady helped wash up and finished chatting for the evening.

Thursday
More stone picking this morning, but with Sam and Anna both helping we had cleared a large area in about 90 minutes so that task has been declared done. We had a tea break which got extended by a fair way until it was not long left before lunch. We spent about an hour before lunch looking at the orchard where they had planted various fruit trees last year. We were checking some grafted apple trees to see whether the graft had taken or not. They bought suitable root stock for the ground here and the planned height etc. of the orchard trees and then grafted on apples that grow well in this region in terms of climate, weather etc. they have been covered with tubes and now needed checking. If the graft had taken (only about 15 out of a 100 had) then you cut off the root stock tree just above the graft so the grafted tree would become the eventual tree trunk. This was a fiddly but most enjoyable job and Anna is very good at explaining how things were done, why and so on.

We broke for lunch which got extended way into the afternoon as it was so nice we took out post lunch cup of tea outside and sat chatting for ages. We finished off with a walk around the perimeter of Alan and Anna’s land, a few more grafted apple trees to check, and a tiny amount of final prep of a raised bed and planting a couple of courgettes.

A couple of blokes had arrived that Alan had been talking to about buying some shipping containers from, arrived to see if delivering them up their lane would be an option – it wouldn’t! But they stayed for chats and tea and were very taken with all the kids. When they left Ady and the kids went off to use our gun for a bit of target practise while I stayed and chatted to Anna and helped prepare dinner. The others then watched a second installment of Lord of the Rings which the kids here are very into and insisting Ady watch before dinner.

Davies is struggling rather here, he has not really clicked with the kids (which I understand, I am struggling with them rather) and the oldest one in particular is very demanding of Ady’s attention which Davies finds a bit hard. I’ve tried to address this with Ady but it’s hard to get the time to speak about things quietly and without an audience. I’m very happy here as Anna and Alan are very interesting people with a lot of knowledge and skills to share although I am very hungry as the food is far from my ideal – won’t do me any harm though!

Friday
More stone collecting in the morning. Poor Sam had gotten sunburned yesterday so was glowing pink from beneath a layer of sun cream today, topped off with Anna’s straw hat and sunglasses he looked like a character from Doctor Who. He is struggling lots and keeps having to go and lie down. It turns out 21 year olds who have just come out of uni are far less able physically than overweight 37 year olds which makes me feel smug 😉

Ady made it his mission to dig out a huge great stone which will probably become a corner stone of the house when it gets built and Alan and Anna think he should chisel his initials into J Cool to think that he’s dug up something that may go into a home to stay for hundreds of years.

Lunch was a lengthy affair with cups of tea taken outside afterwards to sit in the garden while we chatted. It’s a very leisurely pace here with plenty of stops for cups of tea and talking and very interesting subject matter. Ady is almost always the first one to his feet keen to get working again – I keep trying to tell him not to but sitting still just doesn’t come naturally to him 😉

Alan had been mowing the grass in the bottom field (with tractor attachment) and putting it into a trailer so the kids all clambered in the trailer and filled containers with cut grass to Ady and Anna while Alan weeded and Sam and I spread cut grass around the strawberries to be a mulch. It will suppress weeds, act as a compost as the grass rots down and the dried out grass will nicely cushion the emerging and ripening fruit as straw is traditionally used to do with strawberries. All very permaculture 😉

Alan was telling me about an idea for putting a coil of water pipe through a composting heap of grass to heat water and collect energy – he knows loads about alternative energies and is very interesting to talk to. His long term aims for this land are fantastic ideas – I have no idea whether they will ever come to fruition but he is a great contact and mine of information and inspiration.

We cooked outside over the fire in the evening – burgers, smashed potatoes, salad leaves (picked fresh out of the garden just before we ate) and a jug of their home made blackberry wine. All very lovely J Before dinner we’d toasted marshmallows as the fire got going. We sat out until dark and then we traipsed over to Abi’s static to have a shower in her little bathroom which was very lovely having not had one since leaving Jan and Jonathan’s.

Saturday

A lie in as we were not actually working today. I’d been feeling rough as the evening wore on yesterday and spent the night sniffing and having to blow my nose and woken this morning with a proper cold. I don’t feel dreadful, just a bit feeble and blocked up. We decided to go for a walk up to the top of the land but unfortunately Robin, the oldest boy who has taken a real shine to Ady tagged along with us. He totally obsessed with Ady and will practically shove the rest of us out of the way so he can walk next to him or sit next to him and talks over anyone else trying to have a conversation with him. Scarlett can play him right back at this game but Davies finds it very hard, particularly as there is an element of same age boy competition at large. Davies’ first line of defence in any circumstances is withdrawal so he is being quietly upset and taking himself off which of course leaves Robin all the more space to hang around Ady. This coupled with not feeling well anyway and therefore not being terribly resilient and oversensitive is making him quite miserable.

Eventually Robin did disappear, Ady and Davies walked back to the van for supplies of water and my antihistimine pill which I’d forgotten to take and he went with them and then stayed to make something to show off to Ady at lunchtime.

We enjoyed lazing around in the sunshine lapping up the stunning views. At the very top of their land you can see Snowdon, there is a panoramic view of the hillsides all around, utterly unspoilt and virtually uninhabited aside from sheep, cows and wildlife. Just gorgeous J.

Back for lunch and then an afternoon spent chatting in the garden. Ady chopped some firewood and I helped with dinner, peeling and chopping and gathering some purple sprouting broccoli. Alan has been out all day so I’ve spent lots of time talking to Anna who is gentle, peaceful and very talented in many ways including making jewellery, cooking over an open fire, carving and whittling and other forgotten craft skills. She says she can lend me the tools to have a go at spoon carving which will be great J. We talked about communities and living with other people, parenting, education and loads more. All very interesting stuf.

Dinner was leftover mashed potatoes from last night made into tuna fishcakes, pasta and vegetables. All very healthy (although Davies is not being very adventurous with eating this week and tends to have plain pasta or plain rice or plain potatoes most nights L ) and pretty small portions which will certainly be doing Ady and I good.

We wandered off for a walk at dusk hoping to see badgers as there is a huge badger sett on the land but we didn’t see anything – possibly we were too noisy or upwind of them, or maybe they are simply not true ;).

Back at the van we had a chapter of The Island of Adventure, which we picked up as part of a set of the Adventure books (Enid Blyton) and was one of my favourites as a child.

Sunday
I spent large amounts of the day making a spoon J something I’ve wanted to do for ages and Anna kindly gave me some pointers on and tools to do it with. So I got to use the carving axe, the saw horse, draw knife, a hammer and carving chisel and made a fairly good first attempt at a spoon. I spent quite a lot of the time closeted away in the workshop where swallows were swooping in and out over my head, various cats came and kept me company (and kept distracting me by coming for cuddles and fusses, I do heart cats), a big buzzy bee kept coming in and out and at one point I looked round to see three chickens sat behind me too. All very Snow White 😉 It’s probably the longest time I’ve had to myself since we started WWOOFing and I really enjoyed the headspace a task like that gave me.

I’m not really sure what Ady and the kids got up to. Davies was feeling better and being much more his usual self although he is still very quiet and self contained. I know Ady spent some time showing Sam how to chop firewood and I showed Sam (and the boys here) my fire steel and how to light a fire using it. Scarlett got upset about one of the cats catching a vole so we had a chat about how nature dictates they do so, what the impact of them not doing so would be and an improptu pyramid maths lesson which I had a full audience for as I worked my way up to a litter of nine babies every three weeks and those nine babies having nine babies three weeks later and so on to show how the world would be over run with voles. Anna then looked up voles in an encylopedia and it turns out they are not quite so prolific as mice with smaller litters and less breeding season but it was interesting nonetheless and cheered Scarlett up. It also cured the rather eye rolling reaction of everyone else to her getting upset by me saying I was proud of her for caring that a life had been lost and that I hoped she never lost that compassion too.

In the evening Ady and Davies went to watch Lord of the Rings; the boys here are fairly obsessed with it and they have all been watching half an hour or so of the films each night since we arrived together. Scarlett watched the first film but decided she doesn’t want to watch anymore so her and I hung out together instead. I have not watched any of them ;). I was feeling pretty lousy by then so we went and laid in Willow and I read aloud to her from her Little Book of Whittling which has various little tips and anecdotes and bit of random information and is quite charming. I also picked up a few spoon making tips from it. Dinner was delicious – vegetable fritters, pork chops (from a pig from here), rice and a sweet and sour sauce. The food here is mainly nice; a help-yourself of tubs of oats, bran flakes, desiccated coconut, raisins, dates, bananas, sugar, milk and yoghurt for breakfast. Home made bread for lunch with a selection of cheese, sometimes tuna, always home made chutneys, pickled vegetables and eggs and a dinner always based on rice or pasta in the evening. They eat at Goddard o’clock which I know Sam is finding hard. Dinners are sometimes delicious and sometimes something I really struggle to eat so I try to eat well at breakfast and lunch and am often hungry at bedtime but despite having a supply of biscuits and other snacks in the van I am trying to get through without, knowing that I will appreciate my favourite foods all the more next time I have them for having been without. We have had a bit of alcohol a couple of times; home brewed wine, a beer once or twice and the odd tot of Baileys in our bedtime hot chocolate but I am really not missing it too much or even really thinking about it.

After dinner I read a couple of chapters of Island of Adventure to the kids and then went to sleep myself as I was wiped out and my arm was aching from the spoon making.

Monday
Back to work 😉
We did weeding and grass mulching in the strawberry fields all day. Ady and I worked alongside each other and chatted lots, reminiscing about various hosts, picking highlights, favourite meals, worst moments, memories we’ll treasure forever etc. We were amazed to work out we’ve been away from our house for 16 weeks now.

Davies and Scarlett have been doing lots of metal work here – there is loads of material and tools for the kids to use and the boys here are very skilled in both wood and metal work. Scarlett is mostly hammering metal and has made lots of little things that need explaining to know what they are 😉 Davies spent lots of today making a sword with some help from Alan.

Atfer work I spent some more time on my spoon and have now finished it ready for sanding. Defintely something I would like to do more of.

Dinner tonight was a bit of a trial – pork chops that are very spare rib style, plain rice, steamed veg and a pasta bake. The only thing I really liked was the pasta bake and with 10 people eating it was no more than a spoonful each. The dinner table etiquette is rather challenging with lots of eating with fingers, picking up plates and bowls to lick them clean and kids talking with mouths full which is enough to put me off my food even if I was liking it. Add to that cats and dogs and sometimes chickens wacndering around under the table and it’s a better diet regime than Doctor Atkins could have dreamt up 😉

I think this host will be in the league of Evergreen in lots of ways; Davies has struggled, the food is difficult and some of the jobs are a bit boring but the company of Anna makes up for it and we are learning loads and fine tuning our future plans with loads of input and ideas from Anna and Alan.

Tuesday

In the morning we started mulching some onions and then after morning teabreak Anna took Sam and I with her into town. She needed to do things like buy pig feed, diesel and food shopping, I wanted to get a few bits and have a look round Welshpool and I think Sam mostly liked the idea of a bit of a skive ;). Ady stayed behind with Alan and all the kids and spent the day mulching the onions. He said he really enjoyed it, sitting on the hillside in the sunshine, doing a fairly mindless task and just thinking and watching jets fly past.

I enjoyed wandering round the charity shops with Alan and Anna and stocking up on junk food at Morrisons.

In the evening we had a ‘party’ to celebrate Abi turning 50 which comprised of lots of salty snacks bought by me, a jelly dug out of our van and pizza (home made, brown bread base, passata, onion and garlic, grated cheese, topped with mozarella bought by me) and chips. And beer J and finished with jelly and ice cream and cake. It was fun J

Wednesday
A full day of weeding and mulching. In the sunshine and showers. We consoled ourselves with our new mantra – better a rainy day on a Welsh mountainside than a sunny day in an office J Actually it was fine, lots of singing, laughing and chatting with it only getting horrid towards the very end when the wind and rain had penetrated through my waterproof layers and I was getting really cold. A warm shower at Abi’s sorted that out though.

Alan has dismantled Willow’s engine which is currently sitting alongside the van – eek! The automatic transmission fluid leak appears to have been nothing more than poorly fitted loose pipes which have now been tightened up – all that fuss and angst! But the leaking water which poured out of the radiator at Morrisons in Meltham and again when we arrived here is looking like our water pump has gone L This is apparently not too drastic and Alan reckons there is somewhere local that will have one, and may even also have a replacement fan for the engine too which is the other thing we knew needed sorting out, so fingers crossed we will have that sorted tomorrow or Friday ready to head off on Sunday to the next host. I’m feeling quite twitchy about the fact we currently can’t drive off as it’s something I am always consoling myself with being able to do at any time if we decide we want to leave somewhere but it’s looking like we may well have found the host we suspected would turn up that could sort Willow out for us J

I spent some time chatting to Anna this evening and told her how great I think she is as I feel she gets a rough deal here and she is a very interesting and inspirational woman who is totally undervalued by her family and herself. She was very touched J

Dinner was super late tonight and Ady has just managed to knock a full mug of hot chocolate flying in Willow creating a half hour clean up mission which he is clearly torn between enjoying and feeling very cross at himself over 😉

Thursday

Today we’ve done lots of weeding round garlic and a bit of mulching round garlic. Alan has spent time on the phone trying to track down a water pump for Willow. We are hopeful (very fingers crossed) one can be found ready to be collected tomorrow afternoon and fitted on Saturday so we can leave on Sunday. If the worst happens and we need to delay leaving at least we have found someone who can do the work and the bit should be easily found if not manageable in 24 hours.

The kids have really clicked now with the boys here (although I still find them hard work) and are playing as a five some. This afternoon they all watched How To Train Your Dragon together and games are a mish mash of films they have watched together with lots of sword fighting. Although the boys are very violent minded with their games I have not yet witnessed any actual violence towards each other in all the time we’ve been here which is quite refreshing. Maybe they are growing on me a bit… 😉

Sam has been doing some scything and made his palm raw. He really is very pathetic, very pompous and rather irritating a lot of the time, but a great sport about being teased and gives lots of material to tease him with ;). Anna has made me laugh loads today, she is clearly enjoying having us here and despite massive differences in lifestyle, past history and much of our outlooks we have clicked with each other and she feels like a friend. I’ve probably shared more details about myself and learnt more about her than at any other host so far.

This afternoon we dismantled and moved a cloche, setting it up in a different field, furrowed rows along the bed to plant brassicas and then sowed seeds before covering the cloche with a net and pegging it down. All five adults sat in the tea room chatting while the kids were watching a film and it was really nice and sociable with lots of laughing. It’s amazing how quickly you develop shared catchphrases and in jokes when you live this intensely with other people. Sam considers himself a writer and goes and squirrels himself away in his caravan to write in his journal about each day – just as I am doing 😉 I know we are all featuring heavily and am slightly curious as to what he actually makes of us all. Ady is behaving as a complete caricature of himself so will be easily recognisable if the book makes it into print 😆

Dinner was really early so the kids had time to play outside afterwards (finished by 9pm instead of not eating until about 930 most nights) and then in for a couple of chapters of story. Ady and I caught up with last nights Apprentice on iplayer and I’ve just about finished this before my laptop runs out of battery.

Friday

The morning started with Davies and I hearing a reference on the radio to Dolly the sheep (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_%28sheep%29) and me explaining who Dolly was and why she was famous. This led to various conversations on and off over the course of the day about cloning, the ethics of it, cloning of plants, vegetables, animals and humans, how we decide what is and isn’t okay based on morals and ethics rather than ability to do something. More on religion (which we’ve talked about a fair bit this week with Sam the other WWOOFer and Alan and Anna the hosts and more.

First thing we finished mulching the garlic and then spent some time mulching an empty bed ready to be rotovated in. That was fun as it involved standing in the back of the trailer lobbing grass over the side J. At teabreak time we learnt that it was not looking so promising we would get the replacement water pump for Willow and after lunch we discovered that no, we had not been able to get one sourced but a local bloke could recondition it for us. This was decided to be the best option so the race was on to take the water pump off and send it off with Abi who was going past the garage on her way out for the weekend. The bloke should be able to have it done for Tuesday or Wednesday.

I am very twitchy about the whole thing really; none of us really want to stay here that long and it is all rather vague and patchy as to when it will be back, how much it will cost etc. but Alan clearly knows what he is talking about and is sorting out the fan, some dodgy hoses and what seems to be the issue with the transmission fluid too so it would seem a worthwhile sacrifice to stay a few extra days and get Willow properly sorted ready for the onward journey. It means we will probably cancel our next host as that is only supposed to be a week anyway and as soon as Willow is sorted we will leave here and find a campsite for the remaining nights until we are due at the next host a week on Sunday. I’m hoping my parents might be able to come up and spend some time with us at the end of next week on that basis which should make up for missing a host and being rather trapped here longer than we’d ideally have liked.

Before lunch we used four massive panels of logs to create an enormous compost bin – about ten foot square and ten foot high. Alan has an eventual plan to create a hot water system with a coiled metal pipe n the middle of a compost heap so the heat produced of composting material warms the water in the coiled pipe for showering / bathing. This is the first prototype. Lots of lifting heavy wood and banging in nails.

After lunch while Ady was helping Alan dismantle Willow I was doing some weeding with Anna and learning more about herbs and their properties – today was pennyroyal, lovage, fennel. Anna is very knowledgable about all sorts of natural things. We finished the working day with a cup of tea and then we walked up the hill to get signal to ring my parents, then the kids and Ady all watched a film together while I helped prepare dinner.

After dinner Davies and I went for a walk and talk and a bit of a heart to heart. He said some lovely things about my parenting, some very insightful stuff about his relationships with me and with Ady and some observations about some of his friends parents. I love that boy so very much, I am very lucky to be his Mummy. We are all learning a lot about each other this year, relationships will definitely change as a result of it.

Ooh, it’s been a while 🙂

I’ve been keeping a brief outline of each day at our current hosts so I don’t forget what’s been happening but had not written anything about our weekend at J&J’s before that and it’s all now merged into one long friend-fest really. So a couple of bits that stand out:

The Journeys.
Both ways were very straightforward actually, with stops only to top up with automatic transmission fluid every 50 miles or so. We got up the hill which we’d fretted we might not and it was very lovely to be able to ‘go home’ each night from J&J’s to sleep in the van – I do love Willow 🙂

Travelling away again was equally as straightforward although punctuated both ends with water leaks which have added all sorts of complications now. Leaving J&J’s took us a different route over the peaks though which was just stunning, breathtaking views that had us feeling like birds flying free rather than sitting in an old campervan. I really do love that part of the world and the landscape and drama and acres of sky.

The Friends

I love my friends so much 🙂 I love the ease of slipping into roles like a pair of comfortable jeans, that everyone knows us so well and we can just be ourselves. I love sitting for hours drinking tea, or wine and eating cake and just chatting. I love the in jokes – Babs and her trousers, James and his jokes, Marcus-moments, cuddling Michelle, Helen’s raised eyebrows, Jonathan’s crazy music and all of the other many things that make us the wonderful group we are. I loved the evenings laughing at you tube clips, I adored the Charades Go Pop evening, the blokes dismantling Willow and ringing the bell, the singing round the piano, I just love you all really 🙂 🙂

The Kids and the talent show

I love the kids too, many of which are almost becomming friends too in their own ways. I love spotting how they are growing, watching them blossom and bloom and become such fantastic individuals. I feel so proud of them all and so fortunate to have such wonderful friends and peers for Davies and Scarlett and such a great next generation around us. The talent show is just always so lovely – the real show stopping genuine talent of the kids who have musical ability or vocal talent and the confidence and joy from the others whether they sing a zombie song, roll around crazy laughing or stand up and tell random jokes :).

The walks

More chance to enjoy the gorgeous scenery, learn about birds, animals, flowers and nature from Jan. To see the catch, watch the girls paddling, roll down the hill and feel I have earned my piece of cake afterwards by a good long walk.

This year we managed to be first to arrive and last to leave which afforded us the real luxury of some time with just J, J, C, M and J which is always super-lovely and their extended hospitality was as always so very generous and gratefully enjoyed. Thank you so much, we love being able to share your wonderful home 🙂 xxx