One word? When seven would do…

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

We had a cooked breakfast this morning before wandering into town to see what Market Day was all about. It turned out to be not about very much really with a stall selling cheese, another selling imported clothing from Nepal, one selling cakes and a second hand bookstall that had loads of ladybird books marked as ‘rare’ on sale for between £5 and £7!

We went to the post office, partially as we’d not been in there before, partially to get some cash out as we had none and partially to shelter from the rain that had just started and was coming down fairly heavily! It’s been very ‘April’ today with lots of bursts of sunshine and showers, fairly cold and quite windy. Then we walked along to see where the recycling point was the next door neighbour had told me about and walked on across some fields to a lake with some sygnets, goslings and coot chicks. We got quite extensively rained on there too and took cover under a tree until it was safe to walk on.

We finished the circuitous route the neighbour had told me about just in time before another shower and as it was cold and nasty outside we decided a movie and popcorn was in order :). Ady spent some time fiddling with his tablet and the kids and I watched a couple of episodes of Sorry I’ve got no head on iplayer. I think Ady felt guilty afterwards as Davies had been asking for some time with him today and he realised he’d run out of time which was a shame. Computers definitely eat into your day and the kids have seen far too much of me from behind a screen but I think I am better / more practised at remaining at least semi engaged and putting it down often enough to spend time on other stuff.

Davies said to me earlier today ‘I’m glad I’m me’ and expanded on that to say he was really happy being who he is and that he really loves his life. Even if that was only a fleeting feeling (and I really hope it wasn’t) it was still lovely to hear. So fab that he is happy with himself and who he is rather than wishing to be someone else and so great that he is loving his life; both in realising how happy he is to be doing what we’re doing and that we have got the gamble right so far in setting off on our adventure.

Later this afternoon we did some tidying up and packing stuff into the van ready to leave tomorrow so there is slightly less to do in the morning – not for us the luxury of stuffing things in the car to unpack and sort out the other end ;). Then in a gap in the rain we walked down to the recycling point with some glass, cardboard and tin recycling that had failed to be collected today (not sure why) and a couple of pairs of jeans that Tarly had outgrown and wanted to put in the clothesbank (think the only smaller girls we’ll be seeing this weekend are not jeans wearing types) and then got fish and chips on the way back to eat out of the paper.

Scarlett said that fish and chips seems to be our standard ‘last night meal’ and we remembered that we’d had fish and chips on our last night in the house and our last night staying with Mum & Dad before we left. We agreed that felt like such a long, long time ago now.

After dinner we rang my Dad and the kids and I all had long chats with him. He said he and my Mum had been saying they didn’t think we’d ever come back to live in our house and I agreed we probably wouldn’t. We talked for a bit about what our longer term plans might be and tossed some ideas about. They are hoping to come up and see us while we’re in Wales so hopefully we can talk at greater length about stuff then. I think it will be much easier face to face rather than on the phone. Jill rang while we were chatting but she didn’t leave a message. I was all talked out so didn’t ring her back, I presume she just rang for a chat rather than anything more interesting.

Our hosts for next week have not yet confirmed with us which I am slightly twitchy about as we are meant to be arriving there on Tuesday. I have emailed and rung and left a message so have fingers firmly crossed they contact me tomorrow one way or another. I have confirmation from the next hosts so am at least not stressing about that.

Spent a lot of today thinking how much Marcus, Michelle and Chloe would enjoy this place; a holiday cottage for three in a village which is a living museum, right up their (historytastic) street 🙂

Another lie in this morning – I could get used to this sleeping in a bed business – albeit still in my sleeping bag so I don’t have to wash, dry and iron bed linen before we go. We were trapped in today until Ady’s tablet came back by courier so had nominated it gardening day.

After Popmaster obviously 😉

We’d bought a W&G bread roll making kit at the supermarket so the kids did that with some creative (and delicious) results while Ady and I did weeding.

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We clipped hedges and weeded beds and aside from a small amount still to be bagged up we have finished. I’m sure Lesley will be pleased, it looks markedly different to when we arrived on Monday :).

Back in for lunch of said bread rolls, some local cheese and some nice apples and carrots bought at the local supermarket.
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We sat around for an hour of so after lunch, enjoying the novelty of a sofa and a TV 😉 then the parcel arrived so we were able to go out for a walk. The little museum in town was open this afternoon so we headed there first. It’s tiny, in a house leading from room to room with all local relics and exhibits and information. Some really interesting stuff; my favourite being a school log book from a newly opened school in 1865; beautiful handwriting, typical teacher 😉 Lots of bemoaning the attendance dropping at haymaking time and the excellent one liner from 23rd February ‘thrashed the stupidity out of J Evans’
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😆 😆

My Dad would love it here, it is as close as I have probably ever been to a glimpse into his childhood (and no, he was not around in 1865 but I get the feeling not a lot changed here in North Wales for many years).

We then took the walk up to the castle ruins; very steep indeed. We had to pause at a bench mid-hike
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The views were stunning though and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We found ourselves watching a smallholding down below us with sheep, chickens, a sheep dog and various outbuildings for about half an hour, deciding what was going on between the animals and the people we could see moving around down there, people watching from above with a slant towards the life we’d love to have 🙂

We had time for some hill rolling / sliding and silliness with the camera before walking back down the hill again.

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Back to the cottage where Ady did the kids tea and I finished off in the garden, chatting to the neighbours.

Bed for the kids, Apprentice and dinner for us. Tomorrow is market day here in Montgomery and I need to do some work on our zone two planning; we have at least 3 friends / family who are planning on finding us during the next couple of months so we need to be able to tell them where we are.

First of all a lie in, what bliss 🙂 when compiling a list of small things I won’t miss when our year is up one will be having to fit in around Ady and my incompatible sleeping habits. He hates having to stay up til I am ready for bed / I hate having to go to bed early because he is tired and the reverse happens in the morning. Last night he got to go to bed when he wanted and I got to stay up, this morning we got to do it in reverse, just lovely 🙂

We spent the first couple of hours doing stuff like drinking lots of tea / coffee, chatting about how the first three months has gone, doing a blog post on WW about the last host and starting to compile lists of what we still want to learn more about, what we’d like on our own land and an in depth discussion about breeds of dog and what purpose various breeds have and how you can determine that from their physical features.

Davies asked me to show him how to draw 3d shapes so we did that for a while which led to talking about symmetry and parallel lines, naming some shapes and then on to looking at angles. We are in the perfect place to do angle and parallel line spotting so we did some of that for a while.
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It made me realise I was a bit rusty on some of the stuff so I must remember to remedy that with a bit of brushing up on such skills ready for next time a question is asked of me 😉

We went for a wander into the town which is quite an amazing little place – there is a trail around the town of wall plaques giving all sorts of information about the history of the place and the individual buildings (good info on this BBC site about the place) so we read those and went into Bunners, an old fashioned hardware store that pretty much sells *everything*. The museum is open tomorrow and Thursday afternoons so we will make it along for a look at that too to learn some more about the town.

We popped into the deli and bought some cheese, a slice of cake (which was big enough for the four of us to share) and a couple of sugar mice to bring home for lunch. We called into the garage to see if they had the stop leak fluid for Willow we needed too. They didn’t but recommended somewhere in Welshpool that did.

Home for lunch which we ate in the garden and then sat chatting out there in the sunshine. Ady made some phonecalls to try and sort Willow out. We found a place in Huddersfield that specialises in automatic transmissions but after a long debate between the four of us we decided we’ll just keep topping her up and hoping for the best rather than spend a load of money. This is subject to review and depends very heavily on how she does getting to Jan and Jonathan’s on Friday. We then looked on ebay and amazon and rang the garage in Welshpool which not only had the stuff about a fiver cheaper when we explained our predicament offered to drop it off later this evening on the mechanic’s way home. Hard to think how you can better service like that really! 🙂

I sat and did some weeding as the tiny front garden is almost completely overgrown with ground elder and we said to Lesley we’d do some gardening while we’re here. I did one of the beds and we’re planning to get the rest done tomorrow, trim the hedges and generally tidy the garden up, then have Thursday off as it’s market day here which we want to go along to.

Ady, Davies and Scarlett played some card games and then Scarlett came inside with me and we did a jigsaw – I love puzzles, almost worth having a table for ;).

Ady cooked lasagne and I rang Julie for a catch up chat; she and the children have been away to Germany for 10 days or so so we both had plenty to talk about. Scarlett got a chat with Maisie too (Jack was already asleep) which she was really chuffed about; she’s missing Maisie and even bought her a present the other day to post to her.

Davies and Scarlett took ages to get to sleep again, you’d think they’d be bored of each other by now but the lure of sleeping next to each other *without* us in same room (van) seems to have elevated it to novelty sleepover status again so they were still chatting at 11pm nearly 2 hours after they went to bed.

I guess we’re on holiday 🙂

We left Jane & Rob’s this morning, pretty much dead on our intended time of 10am. Ady had done a quick google on his phone for directions and we’d been thinking it was about 100miles so it was a bit of a shock to put it in the satnav and have 197 miles pop up!

The first 100 miles were really straightforward though and we stopped for lunch at Tewkesbury services having made good time. After lunch however Willlow got very slippy of clutch and in the end we had to pull over and put more auto transmission fluid in which solves the problem but as we’re getting through a bottle every 150 miles something rather more pressing needs attending to. We have a plan though and in the meantime Ady is going to lie awake worrying about it and I am going to airily pretend it’s nothing to worry about and one of us will be right at least ;).

Scarlett is fine and happy again today, wants to carry on and last night was clearly just a blip. The answer to most of her woes is ‘more sleep’ but sometimes that is a hard medicine to administer.

We stopped at Harry Tuffins, a very small chain of independant supermarkets, just five miles away from where we’re staying. Super cheap, voucher for money off the petrol we needed anyway and we got everything we need for this week.

Then we found the cottage, it’s a lovely little two bedroomed cottage with loads of quaint features and lots of history. We’re here because we used to work with Lesley, the owner, when we were in Manchester and have sporadically stayed in touch with her over the years. I once gave her a very good reference for a job which was utterly deserved but I suspect has always left her feeling like she owes me a favour. When she heard about our plans for the year she offered this cottage if we were ever in the area and needed some down time from the van and it is the perfect springboard location to get to Jan and Jonathan’s for the weekend. Lesley happened to be between bookings and away on holiday herself so we are acting as her really, spending some time here to ensure the previous guests have left it tidy, doing a tiny bit of weeding and tidying in the little front garden (which is about as big as Willow!) and making sure it is left nice for the next guests.

It is a little snug and only really meant for 2-3 people but as we live in a van and are used to very little room this is feeling positively spacious! Davies has a bed, Scarlett has an air bed and Ady and I get a four poster – rather downmarket-ly we’re sleeping in our sleeping bags though so we don’t have to get the bedding washed, dried and ironed before we leave on Friday ready for the next guests 🙂

It was so nice to arrive somewhere and not have to introduce ourselves, worry about being fed lentils and have NOTHING we have to do for the next four days. It feels totally different to being at Jill’s as we have all the same luxuries but none of the obligation to do anything; either work or socially :).

So we’ve eaten pizza, watched films, had showers, eveyrone else is in bed and I don’t have to be, tomorrow everyone else can get up and I don’t have to 🙂 Bliss.

Our plans for the week include exploring the town we’re in, going to the market on Thursday, doing the little bit of gardening and some wood splitting for Lesley and very little else :).

Our last day here.

First thing we carried on in the orchard where we were working yesterday and did some more nettle clearing then Jane called us to come and watch Rob finish off shearing one of the sheep. They have four ewes and four lambs here, two of the ewes and two lambs are going to a friend’s orchard for some grazing so they were shearing the ewes today before they went. Jane gave a running commentary while Rob sheared, they do it by hand and it takes them about 40 minutes per sheep, once sheared they also clip their feet. Once done we took off any grubby or poo encrused bits and then rolled the fleece up. It was really interesting and Jane was able to tell us loads of stuff she had learnt at various smallholders association courses on shearing.

Over coffee we got chatting about goats and sheep and pros and cons of both and I learnt that milking sheep is a pretty viable option and had a quick look at a really interesting book about dairy sheep. Rather frustratingly I realise as we finish our week here how very useful prolonged time spent with this host would be as they have so very much experience in things we are interested in 🙁 An invitation to return again has been forthcoming though so we may end up taking them up on that and returning to learn more at some point.

We carried on with the orchard until lunchtime (more lentil soup, I so won’t miss that!!) and then after lunch we spent some time clearing the nettles out of the chicken run and helped move across a small chicken house for a hen who has gone broody and they are hoping might hatch some eggs for them.

Then we got a go at shearing! Ady and I were both pretty hopeless actually, Ady because he was so paranoid about catching the sheep’s skin, me because I was so paranoid about clipping my own fingers! Would love to spend more time and have another go though 🙂

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After that we helped put in some fence posts for a future project of screening off the polytunnel from the house when they get the panels to actually do it with. The posts were already here though and the kids had painted them yesterday so they were ready to go and we were willing to do the necessary hole making and post banging so we did. Which pretty much brought us to finishing time.

Dinner was delayed by all the sheep action so we came back to the van for a while and then went in for dinner. It being our last night Anne and Roy, Jane’s parents were joining us so we were 10 for dinner – Jane had done the veg and pudding, Anne had cooked some pheasants, all of which was delicious. It felt a bit like Christmas 🙂 We all had cider or wine too which felt rather festive and sat and chatted.

By about 930ish it was starting to get dark so we came back to the van and I read the rest of the story to the kids. Unfortunately that took us to nearly 11pm and it being a Morpurgo Scarlett was touched by the story to the point of tears at which point she started to think of other sad things and ended up pretty upset about missing our chickens. This is something she does every couple of weeks; always at bedtime, always when she is very tired or sad about something else. I try to handle it with a combination of love and patience and not pandering to what is obviously not really a big deal for her as it would have her sad all day every day rather than just when she has time to dwell. I don’t want her to remember this year as the one she missed the chickens but in rational daylight moments she is utterly fine and even when upset insists she doesn’t want to stop WWOOFing, she’d just like to be able to visit the chickens.

Ady is super worried about Willow and fretting she won’t make the journey to Shrewsbury tomorrow so fingers crossed he is wrong and my airy ‘it’ll all be fine’ attitude is the correct one!

This morning we had various tasks to do; the kids did some painting fence posts with bitumen paint so they don’t rot when they are sunk into the ground, Ady and I did some collecting wood and grading it into piles, stacking some and putting some in another pile for further cutting, barrowed some bags of wood chippings ready to go into the polytunnel at a future date and did plenty of chatting to Rob who we were working with today.

Jane was working this afternoon and Rob was going along to a jumble sale. Ady had decided he was going to get us invited along so did a whole number on how we’d never been to a jumble sale before, asking questions about it until Rob had a lightbulb moment and said ‘I know, why don’t you come with me?’ it was hilarious. We spent the rest of the morning coming up with alternative names for a jumble sale, the kids prefered one was jumbo sale – will there be real elephants to buy? 😆 😆

After lunch (more lentils, I abstained) we went to the humble bale and went crazy for under a fiver. Davies got a little wooden ship which he’s turned into the Black Pearl with various lego accessories for 20p, a set of wildlife coasters for the van and a couple of other bits, Scarlett (rather predictably) bought about 3 soft toys and a couple of animal books, a t shirt and a couple of pairs of trousers, I got 2 t shirts and a jumper and a couple of books, Ady got two towels to replace the two we’d left at Evergreen Farm by mistake, army surplus jumpers for all four of us and several more books. Nothing was over 20pence per item 🙂 Hurrah for jungle sails!

This afternoon Davies and Scarlett went off to play while Ady and I hung out in the orchard pulling up nettles. I have nettle stings on both arms which are still tingly now but it was a lovely way to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon nonetheless, chatting and laughing and talking about things that have happened over the last three months that have already become part of our story of this year. There are so very many highlights to this year but I know that an overiding memory for me will be all the times Ady and I have been helpless with laughter at some shared silliness or very private joke (usually at the expense of our hosts, rather cruelly I suppose!) which just reminds me of our very early days together before we were anyone’s Mummy and Daddy and had to pretend to be grown ups. Even lovelier is that the kids are often around to share it and we have so many of these moments all four of us have shared now. It all feels a bit like one of those coming of age road trip teen movies where everyone discovers who they are or something 😆

We went in for dinner and then Davies and I watched Doctor Who with Jane, Rob and their son Brendon while Ady and Scarlett (who still claims to be scared of Doctor Who) went off for a wildlife spotting walk and a shower, Davies and I then had showers and we all retired to the van to ring my parents who we’ve not spoken to in over a week.

We read a fair chunk of Born to Run (Morpurgo) at bedtime and then Ady and I played with Skype for a bit and watched some youtube clips and listened to some music. Last day here tomorrow and then we’re off to house sit for a friend which will be all but a holiday (we’re doing a tiny bit of gardening in exchange for 4 nights in the cottage but hardly arduous) which we’re all looking forward to :).

Which is a phrase rather wasted on my blog readers as it’s an in-joke with a couple of workmates from the library, none of whom read this, but it came to me this evening while watching Davies and Scarlett and made me smile recalling an evening out with those work mates so I decided any two word phrase which recalls a happy memory and makes me smile is worthy of being a blog title. Oh how self indulgent I am 🙂

Today we were with Peter, due to pick us up at 930am. I think all of us, Peter included didn’t really expect that to happen and sure enough it was long after 10am when he actually arrived. I woke to Ady putting the radio on and the confusion of the Candyman and ‘Happy Friday’ stuff when I’d have sworn it was only about Tuesday today. So we breakfasted, got dressed and Scarlett and I were sitting in the sun chatting and looking at a rather gorgeous book I picked up at the charity shop yesterday for 75p

Peter came and had a look at our van, chatted solar panels and alternative energy with us for a while and then we got in his car and drove down to his field. He’d brought his dogs with him this time so we did a big circuit of the field to walk the dogs and check on the trees we planted earlier in the week. Then Ady and Davies cut the comfrey ready to be dried out while Peter, Scarlett and I laid a load of black matting, old carpet and black plastic in various areas in preparation for various things; a wildlife pond site to be dug out in the autumn, a pathway between two beds and a bed to be dug over and sowed in the autumn too.

We stopped regularly; for lunch, for tea breaks, to look at a nest of baby voles and baby shrews in one of the old carpets (two seperate litters in two different areas, so cute, all curled up, blind and bald), Peter gave Davies some knot tying lessons, Peter and I dashed out to the nearby shop for a bottle of coke for us all to drink so we could cut it up to make little guards to go round the trunks of some young fruit trees and we had lots and lots of conversations about parenting, education, musical instruments, times tables, Tescos and various other interesting stuff.

Back to their house for dinner where we had more interesting conversations with his wife and son too. Davies and Scarlett spent some time in the garden and made up a play / puppet show using some of Deb (Peter’s wife)’s forest school resources and stuffed woodland creatures. Peter, Ady and I went out to watch and it turned into an audience participation, improvised event which was both very clever and very funny. Peter wants photos and / or a video clip of it he enjoyed it so much 🙂 It’s always as well when you’ve been gobby and ranty about your style of parenting / educating if your kids manage to come across as a perfect example of why you are right ;).

Peter dropped us back, shook Ady’s hand, gave me a hug, wished us well on the rest of our adventure and invited us back anytime :). Tomorrow and Sunday we’re working with Jane & Rob here where we are actually parked. Not starting til 930am though and hopefully not working too hard ;).

Had a bit of a lie in this morning although living in a van the size of a boxroom with three other people means no one gets to lie in much. Ady did some van tidying, the kids sat in the sunshine watching the sheep and I had some laptop time then we packed up and drove to Street, a nearby town that has an outlet shopping village place too. After a couple of false starts on boots I decided I really needed some decent workboots and there happens to be a Dickies outlet at this place so we headed there.

We parked up and had a wander round the high street first, sent Ady’s tablet back (it rather terminally crashed the other evening and so after a phonecall to the seller yesterday it’s gone back to be replaced) at the post office, did a circuit of the charity shops, got lunch at the bakers and then got me some boots from Dickies – I got these ones reduced to £50 which I thought was pretty good. Hopefully there will end my boot saga for the year.

Willow was playing up again with the clutch slipping so we looked online and found a Halfords nearby and limped there for supplies of fluid and self sealing liquid for it. She seems okay now so fingers crossed for the next big leg of the journey next week. While we were in Wells we wandered round the charity shops there too and also popped into a little games shop where Davies found a psp Wall:E game he’d been after and I spotted Plants Vs Zombies now out for DS so the kids went half each on that to share.

We left there and headed to Jill’s as we’d arranged to see her for a proper goodbye. We had a really nice few hours with her (her and I sunk a couple of bottles of wine) chatting and eating dinner before leaving before it was too dark to get Willow resettled back at the hosts.

Davies and Scarlett went up to bed, Ady and I watched Apprentice on iplayer and then some clips from Sorry I’ve got no Head – we are all loving the ‘thousand pounds’ ladies clips from that and watching them on youtube, it’s our new family catchphrase :).

Yesterday evening my face was starting to feel a bit rough and today I woke with it puffy and red. It’s not particularly itchy which I imagine is thanks to the daily antihistimines I am taking, still a bit of a nightmare though and fingers firmly crossed it does not escalate further.

Yesterday I blogged over on WW as my photoblog. I don’t think I have much to add to that really. Peter is nice, reminds me a lot of Ady’s brother Chris. I liked him and particularly liked his style of WWOOF hosting which involved drinking lots of tea, sitting around chatting lots, listening to us and particularly the kids like he was really interested in us and seeming to view his host status as quite a responsibility and ensure he really was teaching us something and that it was interesting and relevant to us. We’re with him again on Friday when he is planning on letting Davies do some tractor driving and teaching us more about comfrey as that is something we are particularly interested in and he knows rather a lot about.

We were invited to a folk evening but it would have been a late night and the kids were already yawning at lunchtime so we decided to give it a miss.

Today we didn’t need to start until 930am and were first given a very comprehensive tour of the land here, including an orchard, little wild garden that used to be kept for beekeeping and large area of trees that I hadn’t even realised was here. We had a tea break after that so it was well after 1130am before we were actually doing any ‘work’. We did just over an hour before lunch of clearing a load of dead wood, cut brambles and nettles and other garden rubbish from a hedge that has been part laid but allowed to grow over in preparation for some planting of hedgerow stuff like hawthorn. Not terribly exciting or educational, a bit scratchy (we were given gloves to wear though) but quite nice all the same as it was outdoors, active enough to feel you’d done something, but hardly hard labour and we were all four together but left to our own devices. The kids mostly helped in the morning trundling up and down the hill with wheelbarrows.

Lunch was lentil soup (eww!! I seriously never will like them, they are horrid! I do manage not to gag or even screw my face up too much but I certainly wasn’t going back for a second bowl) but there was bread and cheese to fill up on fortunately.

After lunch we returned to the hedge clearing but let the kids play. They spent hours clearing leaves under a load of beech trees and using sticks, leaves and other stuff to create a whole little world all powered by alternative energy. It was ace 🙂

We worked til about 5pm, then spent some time clearing up and chatting to Jane’s mum, Anne who came over to tell us how grateful they are for our help and what a great job we’re doing, chat to D & S a bit and talk to me about beekeeping. Then we walked to the local shop, about 10 minutes away for a few supplies – a bottle of wine, some sweets for the kids, a loaf of bread, some milk etc. They are more than happy to supply us with everything here but I am aware the kids (and even I) are not eating all that is on offer and would rather have the option of a sneaky sandwich back at the van to fill us up if needs be.

We’re really glad we have our time here interspersed with time with Peter too; we’re off tomorrow, then with Peter on Friday which only leaves Saturday and Sunday here. I suspect we will be doing more hedge clearing and then they are planning to shear their sheep, which they do with hand shears / clippers on Sunday so we should get involved in that which will be interesting.

Moving on day again 🙂

But first I was covering the office as Jill was off buying furniture and Shirley was off volunteering at the TIC. I was tasked with ‘making new friends on twitter and facebook’ and given usernames and passwords for both accounts, so I spent a happy couple of hours following and friending and liking in hopes of reciprocal following and friending and liking to bolster Jill’s numbers. Not entirely sure it will actually translate as remotely profitable but if it raises her profile and gives her more online presence in such places I guess it brings her in line with other such businesses.

I also sat in on the VAT inspection that was going on, just by virtue of being in the room but I actually was able to answer some of the queries about the business 🙂 I’ll be being listed as an asset! 😉

Meanwhile Ady and the kids packed the van up and did a few last jobs such as watering plants and then it was time for us to head off. We’re only 7 miles away from Glastonbury at what I guess you’d class as a smallholding – 3-4 acres of land on an old quarry site, with 3 generations living in two adjoining houses – Jane and Rob, Jane’s parents and Jane & Rob’s two teenage children (a third is away at uni) who have been here for about 25 years. They currently have 4 sheep and 4 lambs, about 10 chickens and 3 cats. They sometimes have pigs reared from weaners to slaughter-ready and have at times had a bigger flock of sheep. They grow fruit and veg in a polytunnel, various raised beds and fruit cages and have lots of soft fruit and orchard type trees, woodland they coppice and pollard for wood burning and land used for grazing. There is a very small CL site for about 5 tents / caravans with basic facilities of water and chemical loo disposal (although we are able to run our hook up into the shed for power too). I’m not sure what Rob does although I assume he also works but Jane does some teaching on growing and cooking and preserving your own food locally. They have been WWOOFers themselves in the past and seem nice people. The two kids at home, aged 13 and 17 are lovely, really chatty, friendly, articulate teens.

We arrived at about 2pm, parked the van and then had a tour around the house and land before being put to work for a couple of hours moving some firewood around. There was a large pile in the back garden and several large heaps in what they refer to as ‘the top acre’ – up the hill and through several gates, all of which needed wheelbarrowing to the house, sorting into size and putting for further chopping if too large, bonfire burning if too skinny to bother with, wood burner pile for Jane and Rob if medium sized or Jane’s parents if very small. Davies and I proved better and building woodpiles than Scarlett and Ady who were hampered by Scarlett’s enthusiasm over technique and Ady’s lack of grasping the jenga style building of the woodpiles 😆

At about 530pm their daugthter, Catherine arrived home and took Davies and Scarlett off to introduce them to the chickens and play on the swing while Ady and I did the last couple of barrowloads of wood, then it was teatime. We met Brendon, their son over dinner – beetroot soup, home made bread, salads of peppers and feta cheese, tuna and sweetcorn and green leaves from the garden. It was all pretty nice despite the lack of meat although D&S mostly just ate the bread.

We chatted over dinner and they appear to be nice, normal people. We are working with the co-host tomorrow, which should be interesting as he is the actual person I corresponded with initially – through him we ended up at Paddington Farm and of course indirectly Jill at Middlewick so he has unwittingly shaped a lot of our experiences so far, so it will be good to finally meet him. We have been given bread, butter, milk and cereal to breakfast in the van all week as it is rather chaotic in the house trying to get the kids off to school so we are better off in here having a more leisurely start (which suits us just fine) and then we will be fed lunch and dinner by whichever host we are working with. Tomorrow there is the offer of an evening out in Glastonbury at a folk music evening which we may or may not take them up on depending on what the work is like and our mood at the end of the day.

otherwise my advancing years may mean I struggled to recall a three day catch up 😉

Friday Ady’s birthday 🙂 Everyone was up early – some more reluctantly than others given it was our only day off this week – for present opening. We’d got gimmicky gifts such as a screwdriver with multiple heads (one of the most frustrating parts of WWOOFing so far is the lack of tools hosts seem to have. We have lost count of the amount of times we have headed back to our van to grab work gloves / screwdrivers / wrench from our very limited little toolkit), a box of chocolates, a bag of posh coffee, some home made cards from the kids and the two main gifts; a new Pompey top and a tablet with keyboard case.

Unfortunately for all my trying I had failed in some areas; I’d managed to buy posh coffee beans rather than ground coffee, the Pompey top had a small hole in the back (looks like it has had a security tag badly removed or been caught with a sharp knife while opening boxes or something) and the tablet didn’t have the UK adaptor included as promised. Grr. The top we debated best options on and decided as we have no official address or ability to send it back easily we would keep it and I’d stick a stitch or two in it to prevent further damage, the coffee beans we will hang on to until we reach a host with a grinder or Ady gets desperate enough for coffee to take to them with a steel toecapped boot and as we are currently staying at holiday cottages in one of the UKs biggest tourist destinations for international visitors they have a box full of travel adaptors so we were able to nick one from there.

We then spent an hour or so moving all our stuff across from Springfield to Tor View as the cottages are all fully booked this weekend and we were back in the little cottage for our last three nights. It was having a new kitchen and appliances installed though so we shoved our stuff in the bedroom and our food in the Function Room kitchen and headed off out. Jill caught us and bunged us another wad of cash for food for the rest of the week insisting we go out for lunch :). We walked up the Tor via the old oak trees Gog and Magog, following a different route than we’ve ever walked before which was quicker but much steeper. We did comment that we managed it far better than we would have done 3 months ago and were all still capable of speech during the climb. We also climbed the Tor fairly speedily with no need for a mid point break which I had certainly needed the last time we came up it.

We paused at the top to admire the view before trundling down the other side, a route we’ve never taken before, bringing us out in Glastonbury town centre next to the Chalice Well. This was one of the places we had failed to visit last time we were here and thought we really should have managed so we had decided to do it this time. We bought a plastic bottle each for the kids and walked round all the areas including the lions head where you can drink the healing water, the bathing pool you can walk in, the angel seat in the peace garden to sit in, the well to look down, the candle shrine area to think of people who have passed over etc.

So we all had a paddle, froze our feet, walked around the very gorgeous gardens, talked about how this would be something we’d all remember forever and then walked into town for lunch. After some debate we went to the fish & chip shop recommended by Heather and with all sorts of brown signage as Award Winning. We’d been before and it had been closed so we had meant to go back this time, some people sitting in the window waved at us as we peered in and then chatted to us and said they were about to leave if we wanted their seats so we decided that was enough of a sign and went in to sit down and eat.

Lunch was very expensive (the pint of beer and mini bottle of wine may have contributed to that 😉 ) but nice and birthday-ish, then we wandered round a bit more before heading back to Middlewick. The kitchen was all but installed but as it was a brand new oven it needed to be lit and running for 45 minutes before first use according to the instructions so we ended up cooking in the great big, seats 50 people function room instead. Jill came to eat with us and helped prepare and cook, then Shirley came over after dinner to watch a film with us – Inception on the bigger screen in there. We had birthday cake with candles and singing for Ady and then Scarlett fell asleep on my lap. I decided the film was not worth any more minutes of my life so I took both kids back to the cottage to bed about 1130pm, Ady went back and he and Shirley watched the film all the way through (Jill gave up soon after I did) but they both agreed the next day it had not been worth it! 🙂

Saturday first thing Ady and I went to clean up in the function room, sweep up and hoover the floor, run the dishwasher with all the crockery and cutlery and generally get it ready for the guests using it that evening – a block booking taking most of the cottages for a hen night.

We had a fairly bitty rest of the day doing various finishing off type jobs. To be honest this week we have been rather under employed which has been sort of nice in terms of recovering from a very different last week but slightly frustrating in terms of knowing we could probably be being more useful if properly directed. Later in the afternoon we drove to a nearby Sainsburys so Ady could get a memory card for his tablet so he can use the camera, then we came back and while Davies and I watched Doctor Who, Scarlett and Ady went for a swim.

Jill had declined our offer of dinner as she said she can’t keep up with our drinking – wuss! so we veered between watching Britains Got Talent and Eurovision and christened the new oven.

Sunday was finishing up the last few tasks we’d been given. The first was weeding and watering two large flowerbeds on either side of the driveway which was actually a very nice job to be doing on a sunny Sunday morning, particularly when I spent over an hour on the phone chatting to a friend while I worked 🙂

Davies and Scarlett came down and hung out with us too and it was all very lovely with some interesting chats about life, the universe and everthing. Ady said that he knew I was feeling I had less time with the kids but actually he now does have more time as he gets these little half hour snippets of time with them even during days we are not with them, plus he always gets to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with them every day which never happened before.

We moved some pallets ready to have wood stacked on them and then retired to the cottage for tea and biscuits. Jill appeared and we had a chat and arranged to nip out to a local hardware store for some motoring bits for Willow so Jill gave us a shopping list for the cottages too and we headed off to get all that before coming back for lunch.

Our afternoon was very laid back as we moved a trailer and put some stuff in the skip then headed over to Paddington Farm to try and find Michael and Tanya (our hosts from ages ago) but they were not there. We did chat to a couple of people staying there at the moment living in vans, one of which was a very very cool mobile library conversion with wood burner and everything :).

On the way back we were waylayed by Cassie and Sam who live in the cottage between Paddington and Middlewick and invited in for coffee. We have chatted to them lots before and bumped into Sam in Morrisons on our first day back here but never really managed a proper getting to know each other conversation so it was great to spend an hour with them and really dig a bit deeper. Their house is amazing, a real old fashioned farm cottage that was falling down and they have simply rejuvenated with ‘freegan’ stuff reclaimed from various places. Their kitchen is a random selection of free standing furniture, the living space an eclectic mix of sofas, upstairs an art studio of Sam’s paintings, their bedroom and a study and bathroom, The kids were entranced by it, all crazy fairy lights and funky furniture. We had a really interesting chat about us and where we go next and some of their ideas about communities and communal living, which seem to lie very close to our current ways of thinking. Interesting stuff… we exchanged contact details so will hopefully stay in touch with each other.

Back at the cottages Scarlett and I went swimming while Ady and Davies had some time together and got the dinner on then Jill arrived to join us for dinner and chats, followed by Shirley for after dinner coffee / hot chocolate.

It’s been good to be back here, we have enjoyed being with Jill and Shirley again and it’s great to forge links further with them and other locals here. We have learnt yet more and I suspect we will end up again here at some future point. Life throws some funny old twists and turns and people in our path.

I do have further observations and stuff to say about here but I’m really tired and tomorrow is changeover day where we get to say goodbye to here and hello to brand new hosts again so I need to go to bed and get sleep to prepare for such adventures!

This morning I was manning the office again, Shirley was on day off, Jill was volunteering at the local Tourist Info Office and Amanda the office manager was at her son’s school for a leaving ceremony.

I was tasked with ‘doing stuff on ‘Twitter and Facebook’ so I uploaded some pictures onto the facebook site for Middlewick but in trying to then comment on it as me I managed to log out and couldn’t log back in again. I did some twittering and then got distracted by a fellow WWOOFers blog. I ran out of steam then as a social network marketeer so I settled instead for writing lots of positive reviews about the four cottages we have stayed in here on various review sites – all honest, I do think they are lovely cottages in beautiful surroundings with friendly and helpful staff 🙂

Ady joined me for coffee mid morning, he was doing gardening. The kids came and sat with me in the office for an hour or so too and we chatted. I’ve really enjoyed their company again this week; we’ve been a bit ‘back to normal’ with them asking interesting questions (such as ‘does water float’ and ‘how do you get grass seed, I’ve never seen grass flowers on a lawn?’). Interestingly we realised today that despite being ten weeks into our WWOOFing adventure only two of the places we have stayed at so far have been actual WWOOFing hosts, the rest have been accidental or friends of WWOOF hosts, even next weeks host isn’t actually in the WWOOFing book, I guess that is likely to remain the case this year though, the week after next we are turning a friends holiday cottage around for her between proper guests as she is away in France and it happened to fit in well with our travel arrangements.

Amanda arrived and Jill came back soon after with donuts for everyone so we caught up with her, confirmed we can have tomorrow off and discussed what she wanted us to do this afternoon. Then we had lunch and spent an hour or so cleaning the cottage we’re in, making up the spare beds and getting clean towels and bedding ready to change over in the morning as we’re moving out of this cottage and back into a smaller one for our last few nights as it is fully booked here again with a hen weekend arriving tomorrow afternoon.

Ady went back to finish his gardening, he’s mowed the lawn and clipped some hedges, cleared all the areas around the public footpaths that run through the land and generally tidied up. It’s been another week of quite hard work for him this week, he says he feels his age (which gets another year bigger tomorrow!). The kids and I meanwhile headed to the swimming pool – they had been tasked with scrubbing the steps into the pool while I was cleaning windows. I did my bit but they were struggling as the dirt seems to be unmoveable. I helped but I’m still not sure we made much difference. We did enjoy about 2 hours in the pool though, all to ourselves which was nice :).

Back at the cottage Ady cooked the kids tea while I had a go at cutting my hair – it had gotten to the long and scruffy looking stage which is hard enough to deal with at home let alone in a campervan when I can’t guarantee I can wash it daily so I was just tying it up all the time which is always my cue to chop it 🙂 We were planning to read a Roald Dahl book we’d found in the library but all got distracted by an animal programme instead which had quite a bit on the dolphins in the Moray Firth and Chanonry Point. The kids made cards for Ady, Davies wanted to write a poem but had left it rather late, he did manage ‘you are my Daddy, I know you’re not a baddy’ though 🙂 which I’m sure Ady will be most touched by 😉

The kids went to bed, I cooked our dinner and now I need to stick the dishwasher and washing machine on as we don’t have either in the little cottage, lay out Ady’s presents and head to bed myself.

I had a really bad nights sleep, awake twice with a bad tummy, at least twice with nightmares and at least once finding myself squashed halfway down the bed wondering why my feet were hanging so far off the end. Clearly I’m out of practise at being in an actual bed 😉

This morning Ady carried on with some bramble and overgrown-ness clearing while I went to find Jill to be given tasks. I got caught with Jude- the previous owner, who is living here for another few weeks as her horses are in quarentine until they all fly home to Canada together. She is interesting but quite challenging and is quite taken with Davies and Scarlett while asking countless questions about them and Home Ed. She was fascinated last time we were here by us and continues to seem drawn to us and quite how it all works out, clearly puzzled by us not caring about things she seems hung up on, like Scarlett’s unbrushed hair for example ;).

I found Jill and was tasked with checking all the salt and pepper pots in the unoccupied cottages, cleaning them, filling them and replacing them if they were crappy. I had to return moved furniture to it’s proper locations in a couple of cottages after they had the carpets cleaned and then sort out the huge quantity of cutlery in the function room. All of which I did, sneezing as I went thanks to the pepper. Ady and I met for coffee and popmaster at 1030am and Ady rang the letting agents to chase them over the rent we still had not had. He got mildly stroppy and by lunchtime the rent had appeared, coincidence?! 😉

We took quite a long lunchbreak as we didn’t have a great deal to be getting on with and knew we’d be helping lots with Pizza Night this evening. I did an hour or so weeding in some flower beds while Ady finished off what he was doing. The kids have helped lots today; done some weeding of carrot seedlings, some planting on of various things and put some bulbs in, watered plants, spent time with the chickens and also played in the cottage and watched a film.

I lit the pizza oven which was going really well until I left it to wander off and chat to Ady and it went from a very well burning fire to a heap of smouldering logs, unfortunately just as Shirley came over to check on it’s progress, so I got to feel like a silly little schoolgirl while she took over and re-lit it – grr. We called wine o’clock at that point though so my grring didn’t last long. We made pizzas including a fab heart shaped one for me from Scarlett 🙂 and then dealt with some arriving guests and a panic over whether there are enough Z beds here to cope with the bookings. Jill was just about to click BUY on an online bed when I, certain I had seen one in a cupboard in a cottage went to check and came back victorious that I was right – Ha! That trumped keeping the fire burning in the pizza oven when I was right over the owner and the general manager about how many beds and where they are 😆

We had late arrivals to pizza night in the shape of a group of six from Slovakia, with varying degrees of English, which made for a rowdy and enjoyable evening. We tidied up and came in to watch You’re Fired, having missed the main Apprentice show – and probably the whole of the rest of the series given we won’t be near a TV again for a while.

It’s a funny old life this; back when I used to sit in the house, spend my days chatting with friends or hanging out online I had utter confidence in the kids gaining an education. Now I am travelling the country, exposing them to a different lifestyle every couple of weeks with a huge array of new experiences on hand every single day I am questionning if they are learning! I guess the issue is that when we were together all the time I knew they were curious about the world by the questions they asked, the answers I gave, the programmes on TV I had half an eye on alongside them as they watched, the days out I planned and new ideas I introduced them to. I am so used to our autonomous approach I am able to defend it without even really thinking; pulling examples from the last 24 hours of learning in action like rabbits from a hat without any need to dig deep. Somehow this feels slightly more contrived – I could certainly lay out an impressive list of ‘new experiences’ the kids have had, places they have seen, people they have met but I’d struggle to pinpoint what is child led about it, what is a natural consequence of simply living. I suppose in order to demostrate this as an education I’d almost need to consider it structured, planned, formal – which certainly in terms of the four of us as a family it is – I spent as long planning this as we’ll be doing it, there were indeed spreadsheets, maps, long, long, long lists and plenty of forethought, unlike my approach to Home Ed. That’s not to say it doesn’t have room for being flexible and seeing what crops up along the way which is much more our Home Ed style but for all the crazy living in a campervan-ness of it there is also the sniff of a workbook somwwhere ;).

It may be guilty conscience, it may be a need to salve my own fretting or (as I’d like to imagine) it may be my deep and intuative connection with my offspring that has led me towards spending some time with them, having some deeper chats and opening my eyes to observe a bit more. I started today planning to do the photoblog but realised this is totally the wrong place to do so; it’s not WWOOFing, it’s not even what we are predominantly doing this year – it’s working, both of us all but full time and mostly away from the kids. I did task them with taking pictures to illustrate what they are learning and they did take some which showed Davies’ current project which is writing and drawing a pirate story, Scarlett feeding and communing with Jill’s chickens, both of them sitting on the quad bike but I would struggle to put words alongside them, so I won’t try and next week when we’re back to WWOOFing proper I will have another go.

I am concluding that this year is one of those best viewed in retrospect learning opportunities, that it will be the experience as a whole, the journey AND the destination, the having done it and completed and achieved it that will be what impresses on their CV rather than the being in the middle of it, that it is only at the end we will be able to conclude what was gained. I guess it’s a bit like Home Ed itself – I know in choosing not to send Davies and Scarlett to school I will have made them different, changed the course of their lives, altered things that can never be changed back, it’s just that we may never know quite what they are because we never did live the alternative, the parallel path.

It feels a bit like being in Big Brother sometimes, all my predictions about how each of us might cope, might change, might falter, seeing if they come true, working out which were simply personality quirks that will remain regardless of the circumstances and which were a result of one lifestyle and are simply not there in another. A diary room would be an interesting addition to Willow ;).

Anyway today the kids and I all slept in which was blissful and clearly much needed. I had a small number of tasks I wanted to complete and so did Ady and we both managed them all. I finished the library off, took some toothbrush holders down off the wall in our cottage and finally remembered to take a dishwasher tablet over to the function room to wash all the crockery and cutlery from breakfast on Sunday. The kids got themselves breakfast, tidied their room and took some photos. Ady finished off the job he was doing of clearing some overgrown stuff around a greenhouse.

We then all took some stuff out of Willow so we could go and collect Jill and Maggie from the station. We allowed way more time than needed and arrived with a good ten minutes to spare so sat in the car park to wait. On the way we drove past Worthy Farm, venue for the festival so I pointed that out to Ady and the kids, hard to picture just what it will be like here in a matter of weeks now.

Jill and Maggie collected we drove into Shepton Mallet which has indeed been killed by the big retail park, despite best efforts and the TV show the town centre remains a ghost town while Tescos, New Look, Boots etc just out of town is thriving. Jill bought us lunch and then we headed to Happy Landings, an animal sanctuary where she was hoping to get some more chickens but they were all reserved. They are looking for staff there, a couple of live-in positions which Jill had noticed and rung me about after we left here last time so I chatted to them about that but they are not right for us.

Back at the cottages the kids settled down to watch a film while Ady and I dug out several boxes of games from the garage. I then spent time cleaning them all down and checking that all the pieces were there. We played a couple just to road test them and then took them to the library which is now stocking games and looking really good. 🙂

Ady and I headed to Morrisons for food supplies for the rest of the week and left the kids at the cottage watching a film. Back at the cottages Ady and the kids went for a swim while I got dinner sorted – lasagne all round. The kids ate first then headed off to bed while we ate and watched The Apprentice.

This morning Ady was up first to open the pool, the rest of us at a more leisurely pace. I am definitely enjoying not *having* to go to bed at a certain time because Ady needs to and he is enjoying not *having* to stay up because I want to ;). My main task for today was covering the office from 930-230 because Jill gives two half days a week of her time to volunteer in the local tourist information office which was threatened with closure due to lack of council funding but thanks to the local businesses realising the value of having the resource has been saved by a rota of people prepared to man it. Of course Jill is not here, having gone back to London for a couple of nights (she is back tomorrow, we collect her from the station at lunchtime) so Shirley was covering her instead, which meant I needed to cover Shirley. We gave Davies and Scarlett the option of going with one or other parent each and they both chose Ady. I’m choosing to believe that is because he had a quad bike on offer 😉

So while I sat at the desk, printed off some signs, wrote some copy for the website, reworded some sections of the welcome pack information folders that go in each cottage and printed some new ones off, worked out a pets policy for the dog friendly cottages, took various phonecalls including a couple of potential bookings, arranged for someone from The Rough Guide to Britain book to come and look round tomorrow, dealt with the photograher, signed for a parcel, spoke to Jill on the phone three times and found train times for her, researched just what a ‘quart’ is in liquid measurement so Shirley could dilute some drain cleaner properly and did a spot of blogging too ” alt=”” />
(genuine expression, not posed, he caught me unawares. And those muffins, not mine!)
Ady and the kids moved a whole heap of cleared brambles, branches and garden waste from one area to another ready to burn when it’s not quite so dry and forest-fires are not on the news every day, using the quad bike and trailer. They graduated from this:
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to this:” alt=”” />
with Davies doing almost all of the driving, he took me for a ride and he really has it mastered, steering, braking, changing gear, ensuring he leaves enough room to turn with the trailer on the back and everything. Very impressed 🙂

Ady brought me a cup of tea and the radio into the office so we could listen to Popmaster :). They all had lunch and I succumbed to one of those muffins as I was stuck in the office.

Shirley came back and by the time I had been driven on the quad bike and had a go myself it was nearly 4pm and I’d not had lunch yet so I decided to walk down into Glastonbury and get bits like birthday cake candles for Ady. I also thought it would do Davies and Scarlett good to either come with me or be split up – I offered both the chance and Davies chose the lure of some one to one time with me, while Scarlett was still starry eyed about quad bike rides so that worked perfectly :).

Davies and I had a lovely time together, walking into town, wandering round the charity shops and the CoOp for the few bits I wanted then walking back again. We had some interesting chats, caught up with each other a bit and I got treated to some of the Davies-wisdom that so cheers me up. I love his thought processes and ability to frame things so positively :). Despite a fairly rough week or so he is very up about the whole adventure and considers himself so very fortunate to have this opportunity and chance to do something so adventurous and different. I adore how happy he is in himself and how secure he is in being different, hope he continues to feel that way :).

Back at Middlewick Ady and Scarlett were on their last quad bike run so Davies joined them for that and then they all put the quad away, locked up sheds and generally closed down and put away all the tools etc. Ady wasn’t up for a swim so he stayed behind for a peaceful bath and getting the kids dinner on while Davies, Scarlett and I had half an hour in the pool.

The kids had tea while I had a bath and then I came down with the intention of chasing them off to bed for an early night but Davies was engrossed in something on the TV and Tarly was looking at an animal book and drawing so they ended up staying up til 10pm anyway. Which meant that with putting the chickens to bed and stopping to have a drink and chat with Shirley when she dropped the pool key in to us that we didn’t actually have our dinner until pretty late – old habits die hard eh?!