Food glorious food

Well the weather of late has been changeable to say the least and its been hard to plan our daily routine. First rain then wind, then wind and rain, ohh and then wind and sunshine. So today we decided go out and get the weekly shopping done, then once it's all stowed away in the RV, go out for lunch.
Well we've had a lot to celebrate, our 40th wedding anniversary (which was two weeks ago), Mothers day which is this Sunday and the fourth anniversary of our retirement from work which was today.

Cold and Windy

The old Shire

So after everything was stored away off we went to the Bell Inn in Haughton, you've heard me rave about the food in this place before. But as the gods decreed, it was not to be so, as there was a funeral booked in so we were out of luck. Next stop was the Shropshire Inn the other side of the village, well we waited at the counter and after being ignored by the staff for ten minutes as they obviously too busy to attend to customers, we turned around and departed. We decided to try the next village along on the way to Newport called Gnosal which was a mile or two down the road.

What luck! we stumbled on a cracking little place called 'The Gastronomy Shop', a small and I mean small shop come restaurant in Gnosal's High Street. The place is run by Peter & Sara Roberts everything on offer is local produce and home made. There was a carvery for £5.00 that included everything you could imagine that comes with a carvery (which naturally we indulged in) and the best Rhubarb crumble and custard that we've ever tasted.

You would think that we travel on our stomachs.... well you'd be right. So then it was back to the RV to let the food go down. We're trying not to spend too much time travelling about as Kay informed me that every day is not to be treated as a holiday and that we have to get into a normal living routine.

But as I look out of the windscreen at the horses frolicking and wild Highland cattle, the ducks, partridges, Guinea fowl, wild rabbits and Canada Gees. Who's she kidding!!!!

Kay's over the moon at the moment as we called in at Boots this morning and Kay had herself weighed, and was pleasantly surprised that she has only put on two pounds since January and that's after all  the eating out  we've done, the ice cream, cakes and chocolate.

Ohh....I've got to go, as I've just realised that I picked up two bags of Maltesers at Tescos and they're calling to me.

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Hit the saddle!!!!

The weekend saw the arrival of the Olympic Caravan Club and the Rally field was covered in flags and caravans, The club members were extremely well behaved and on the Sunday after they left the field was immaculate without a sign of litter or their previous occupancy.
On Saturday we were visited by our daughter Kristina and son-in -law Gav with the much awaited cycles that will enable Kay and I to get out and about with the added benefit of getting some exersize.
Unfortunately they couldn't stay long as they had to be back home in South Wales for the visit of some friends so after a short rest and a meal they departed home.

The weather has been cold and grey of late so we were unable to get the full use out of the cycles that we wanted, but yesterday the sun came out and off we went. We cycled off merrily down into the village of Haughton and off onto the Millennium Way.

Millennium Way

Millennium Way

The Millennium Way or Green Way is an old railway line that runs from Burton-on-Trent through Stafford to just outside Newport terminating at a small village called Outwoods. We traveled the section from Haughton to Gnosal and back a distance of about four miles, nothing strenuous but far enough to realize that next time we hit the saddle we should wear our cycling shorts with padded seat cushions.
Kay discovered a wandering dog that nearly had her falling off her cycle, a situation Kay found herself in the first time she went cycling, strange that it only ever happens to Kay? after much moaning about cramp in her legs and that the gears weren't right she did manage to complete the journey.
Next time we hope to venture as far as the canal just past Gnosal then down towpath to Church Eaton and return via the country lanes to Haughton, that should be interesting, hope the towpath is clear of any marauding dogs or Kay might add a swim to her ride.

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A New LPG Switch, a new Day

Yesterday it was warm and sunny so I decided to get some chores done, one of which was to clean down the roof of the RV and you guessed it! the moment I'm up there doing my thing with bucket and mop out comes her ladyship with the camera probably hoping to get a picture of me falling head over heels onto my backside.
Even Graham the farmer drove past in his Land Rover laughing and shouted what the hell was I trying to do and to be careful that I didn't break my neck

Whats he up to?

Cleaning the roof

I wish I had the camera with me this morning as I went for my daily shower, the sun had just broken over the horizon highlighting a thick mist that blanketed the fields warning that a really warm summer’s day would be in the offing and we were not disappointed.

We were both up early as we needed to be off down the A5 with the RV to visit LPG Autos to get the LPG switch replaced as the old broken one has been a pain for us of late. Chris the mechanic promptly fitted the new switch leaving the old one in situ as they are of a different size. I was not perturbed by him doing this as I can remove the old switch later, when I have some decent material to cover the hole it will leave.

New yellow old orange

They also tried to replace the temperature sensor as that may have been a problem but they failed as the replacement they had intended to use literally fell apart in his hand. As it worked out the temperature was now only showing a 5% difference between petrol and LPG instead of the 40% it had shown previously on the diagnostic computer so they decided to leave the original sensor in place. I paid up and thanked them for their help and off we drove.

Temp Sensor

We drove first down the A5 to the Gailey roundabout and then back the way we came passing the garage and all seemed to be working well, so I just honked the horn and carried on back to the Red Lion. The switch stayed on LPG all the way, so fingers crossed it looks as if the problems may have been solved (We Hope).

Arriving back at Red Lion we have set up in a new position, a position where previous RV’s have been located as this makes it so much easier to fill up with water and to dump waste. We also have the added benefit that the views are much nicer, you should see our garden.

The garden

The Neighbors

It was now like a summer’s day instead of spring, everyone had their tables and chairs out on the grass. We are so close to the animal’s enclosures that the cockerel brought his harem for a visit poking their beaks into the RV. The foal and the other horses came for a nosy as did the highland cattle, even the rabbits have bounded past and as I type the local goose is sticking his beak in.

We couldn’t have wished for a nicer day just let’s hope the good fortune keeps going our way.

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Back on the farm

We had a nice welcome back yesterday to our previous location the Red Lion Farm near Stafford from our neighbours Phil and Zita, as we set up our home here again for the next two weeks. Our trip down from Oswestry was without incident, apart from that damned LPG switch which is still playing up. We have booked the RV in for the LPG switch to be replaced by LPG Autos and fingers crossed this will put our fuel problems to rest, (I’m sure I just saw a pig fly past the window).

The weather has started to pick up, the suns out and the wind is warmer which means we can spend more time out of the RV, so today we nipped out to the small town of Newport which is just the other side of Gnosal off the A41.

Newport

It’s a pretty little town with a lot of that old world charm that seems lost on modern towns, the whole town is based on one high street except for the island that houses St Nicolas’s church, which is bound by High St on one side and the quaintly cobbled St Mary’s street on the other. The buttressed tower dates back to 1309 and is built of dark red sandstone.

Near the church is the Puleston Cross, a 14^th century Buttercross (that indicated the site of the towns market) which was moved from its original site that of the market to its present location in 1633.

The remains of the cross can just be seen sticking up out of the white pickup truck on the right of the photo

Photo by Brian Houghton

We have been looking at the Aqualate Hall and the Aqualate Mere as we have passed this location a few times and it looks an intriguing, with luck it might be open to the public if so I think a visit is on the cards.

There’s not a lot to write about at the moment but keep reading you never know with this life style what’s around the corner (literally).

Ohh I nearly forgot to tell you about ,The ghostly telephone bell..............

During our last night in Oswestry's C&CC site at precisely ten to two in the morning, we were awoken by the sound of a telephone bell ringing, you know the old type of tinkling bell sound. Well we searched high and low thinking that a travel alarm in one of the draws was going off, but as it only rang for a few seconds we had trouble locating it. It rang again at six in the morning and still we couldn't find it we emptied all the cupboards and looked under the bed but nothing.
We thought that possibly it was a snooze alarm going off in a neighboring caravan so thought no more of it and we departed for Red Lion. On our first night here it happened again, we started to think that we had a ghost making telephone calls in the RV. Then I noticed we have PIR sensor in the bedroom and when I made any sudden movement the sound happened again, I had thought that the PIR was wired to the alarm system, but it wasn't it was radio controlled and so had a battery. My sad brain cells suddenly kicked into action, of course when the battery runs down the sound was there to warn you of its state. So I replaced the battery and the sound stopped, problem solved no more ghostly telephones.

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Oh hum yet another day

As your reading this I don’t want you to think that all we do is to sit around and drink tea all day. Well not all the time anyway, now and again it’s a bottle of plonk not tea, like last night. Well I thought I at least deserved it, after another hard day of looking for little things to do around the RV while Kay had her feet up reading her book (it’s a hard life). 

Kay working hard

So this morning as the sun shone merrily through the RV’s blinds we decided another foray into the wilderness was on the cards. Well we needed to get out and get some fresh air, so off we went to visit Lake Vyrnwy in the Welsh mountains.

We headed off down the B3498 through the local village of Knockin and passed the quaintly named local store called “The Knockin Shop” (you can’t say these folk don’t have a sense of humour.)

We then passed through Measbrook , Llanmynach, Llansantffraid-yn-Mechain, Llanfechain,Llanfyllin, Trcrwyn and Abertridwr. (For our overseas readers Ll is pronounced with a mouth full of spittle to get that Lchll sound and the ch sounds like the ch at the end of Loch so if you are good at it you should have a lap full of spit by now.)

The scenery was glorious in the morning’s sun; everywhere was verdant green and lush. The winding and undulating roads soon had us mesmerised with the beautiful scenery and quaint little villages with those unpronounceable names. After a short while we were greeted by the site of the huge Victorian dam of Lake Vyrnwy. The lake is of course artificial and the drowning of the small village in its valley caused much controversy both then and still today, but Liverpool needed water and the good city elders though little of drowning a small Welsh village. Today some local Welsh politicians could do with a taste of that medicine.

Vyrnwy Dam

Vyrrnwy Dam

Kay on the Dam

Lake Vyrnwy

The water tower

At the Artisans café by the dam we joined a group of art students who no doubt were on a school day out. For a change they weren’t dressed in the usual art student uniform of brightly coloured everything, including hair and face, but sedately dressed in black track suits and trainers. We later passed them cycling around the lake and due to the narrowness of the lake side road had visions of showing them how to discover water colours from a submerged perspective.

History of the lake can be found here http://www.lake-vyrnwy.com/

Tower

We decided to drive around the lake as the thought of hiring one of those cycles like those young students (and possibly getting a hernia) was a bit too much like hard work.

It’s getting near to the end of our stay here at the Oswestry Camping and Caravan site we just hope that the dry weather holds out for our unplanned trip back to Red Lion Farm on Sunday where we will meet up with some old friends, Daisy the cow, Larry the Llama oh and Phil and Zita.

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What day is it?

I had to ask that very question this morning, as one day seems to just slip into the next. The weather had turned grey and misty but the temperature had risen so I suppose we shouldn’t complain. Yesterday in the dry and the sunshine I managed to complete loads of little jobs on the RV like getting rid of some rust and painting a bit of the step, then cleaning anything that was chrome to stop any further damage, (‘it’s a hard life isn’t it?’ says I to myself, trying to sound hard done by but failing miserably.)

So today we decided to treat ourselves to a little trip back down into Shrewsbury using the Oxon Park and Ride. I asked the bus driver ‘do you allow Welsh bus passes’ (well being so close to the border I thought I might just get away with it) to which he replied ‘Nope, if you are travelling into Wales or out of it yes, bit not within England’ (Ohh Bummer,  trying to be a cheap skate again.)

So I decided to take Kay on a little boat trip down the river Severn, now years ago I would have just grabbed a pair of oars and a rowing boat and taken to the water, but being a tad older I opted for the safer option, a river cruise.

The boat was called Sabrina the Goddess of the river, Hmm, a bit over the top me thinks, maybe it should have been named Loki the god of jokers (i.e. someone was taking the P*ss when they thought that name up). It wasn’t that bad, it was just that it was a dull day.

The boat sails every hour from the Welsh bridge to the English bridge and back (maybe I should have asked if I could have used my buss pass) it was a nice quiet trip for all four of us, well that’s how many of us where on the boat, excluding the two man crew. We had a nice trip from the one bridge and back to the other, the commentary from the crew’s tape machine was only on the return journey and it was a bit sparse but it whiled away an hour.

We then decided to stop for a break at an old tea house that we had spotted earlier called Poppies Tea rooms. This place is a little gem of an old Jacobean house built in 1617. It was an original timber framed house that was originally two separate houses now knocked into one (8 and 8a Milk street) two rooms were completely wainscoted with Jacobean oak panelling sadly only part of it remains today.

Poppy's Tea Rooms Milk Street

St Mary's church

We then took a stroll around the town and found would you believe it, Scrooges grave, in the back of St Chad’s church. Apparently the grave yard was used in the 1984 film of Dickens Christmas Carol with George C Scott and the tomb stone was left there after the filming finished. And there was me taking the Michael out of the Yanks for putting Forest Gump’s bench into a museum!

Scrooges Grave

The full stone

St Chad's Grave yard

St Marys Cottage

St Chads

Well we're back in the RV now and settling down for the night.

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Our 40th Wedding Anniversary

Today we decided to celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary by making a special day of it. Well we‘ve managed not to throttle each other after forty years, so it needed celebrating. Don’t ever think of attempting this lifestyle if you can’t stand each other’s company there’s nowhere to hide in an RV.

The sky was leaden gray and it threatened to rain so we prepared for the worst and donned our waterproof jackets. Off we went in the little toad to Llangollen a town Kay had always wanted to visit that was only a short hop up the A5.

Llangollen is a pleasant little town though we noticed that for a renowned tourist spot it really could do with some TLC in places. The Llangollen canal, the railway station, the old bridge with the river Dee thundering below all looked nice and picturesque.
We stopped for a bite to eat at the little Bistro on the bridges end and sat at a lovely table in a bay window that projected out above the river below. We only wanted a bacon bap and a cup of tea but what we got was a bacon bap meal with chips and salad with our tea, which to be honest was excellent and not too expensive. It appeared to us that the owner and staff where more eastern European than Welsh, still the service was good.

River Dee

Railway station

Kay on the bridge

Castle Dinas Bran

We then decided to visit a place that I had only visited once as a young boy with my parents some fifty years ago. I couldn’t remember much from those days, water and rocks sprang to mind. Still the rain appeared to be holding off, so off we went further up the A5 to Betws-Y-Coed and the Swallow Falls.

Betws-y-coed Church

Betws-y-coed station

At first the town looks open and empty until you realise that the main street is not just the front of the railway station as I did, the main street carries on up along the A5. Most of the shops appear to be either outdoor clothing suppliers or tourist and gift shops. The Church looks fantastic with its dramatic wooded backdrop and all the houses are built of that dark gray flint which gives the area a cold hard look, no doubt it looks warmer in the sunshine.

The rain started to fall but it didn’t dampen our spirits as we headed out of town to the Swallow Falls. I couldn’t remember much from my first visit but the falls were full of flood water and the thundering roar of it cascading over those jagged rocks certainly left an impression.

Swallow Falls

Kay at the Falls

What A Climb

now much older

'I'm not wet honest'

The journey back was a bit of a pain due to two old people. First was an old lady that wouldn’t go above 40 Mph and due to the areas winding roads a large jam soon formed up behind. Just as we were getting to the point where we thought we could overtake her, she was joined by an old man in his car who then proceeded to drive at 30Mph all this on a 60Mph highway. You soon realise why people get road rage, oh and the occasional idiot Vauxhall driver who thinks he’s Michael Schumacher.

We then decided to pay a visit to what was going to be our next caravan site, Newnes on the A495, the main road to Ellesmere. We were in for a shock, on the brochure the entrance looked wide and pleasant, in reality it lead up a narrow dirty farm track with no passing places, followed by a sharp turn up a steep rough dirt track hill that our RV and trailer would have great difficulty with. So we have phoned up and cancelled our stay with them. Oh and the showers appeared to be in a small wooden shed, we were not impressed.

On the way back we passed through the village of Whittington with only what can be described as a fairytale castle in its heart. So we stopped off for a cup of tea and took some photos. The castle is one of the old border fortresses and its history can be found at http://www.whittingtoncastle.co.uk/history/index.shtml.

Whittington Castle

Entrance

Stocks

All in all an eventful and memorable day, so now it’s time to get down to finding a new site that will cover the dates we had planned for the Newnes.

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Wind?.... What wind?

I’m sure someone upstairs is out to test our resolve, the wind started to blow and then it became stronger and stronger. We're situated just off the crest of a small hill on the site so there was nothing to block the force of the gusts. Last night Kay and I lay in our warm bed as the RV was buffeted and rocked by gusts of winds of 40mph and more. I had the same question every few minutes in my ear ‘we are safe in this aren’t we?’ Note to self! Check on the Internet, what is the strength of the mistral in Spain?

I loved it, as it took me back to the days when I used to camp in an old canvas tent as the wind rattled the fabric and I would hudle for warmth in on old army blanket (Those were the days (NOT).

It took me some time to convince Kay that it was a big machine and even though it had a huge flat area that it would take one hell of a gust of wind to even move us let alone tip us over.  I slept like a log but I think Kay’s sleep was more fitful

So this morning we just sat back and relaxed, well that’s what this lifestyle is all about. We eventually ventured out but only to visit Tesco’s to fill the toad with fuel and to top up our shopping list. On returning we had the good news that our tyres for the RV had arrived and we have made plans to go and have them fitted. We also used Skype video conferencing with our youngest daughter Kristina for the first time and that went really well, so hopefully we will set this up with our other daughter and our grandson, well it all helps to shrink the world.

The wind has started to abate so tonight Kay should at least get a good night’s sleep (fingers crossed).

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Shrewsbury

Today was an interesting but strenuous day. It was only a short hop down the A5 to the Oxon Park and Ride (Which happens to be right next to the Oxon Hall Caravan Park) then it was a short ride by bus into Shrewsbury’s town centre. 

This is a fabulous shopping town with loads of history, everywhere you looked there were old buildings and narrow lanes or Shuts as they are known. Be warned the town sits on a hill in a loop of the river Severn so your either walking up or down a hill whichever way you go.

Market Square

Old Market

Some of the Shuts have quaint names like Grope lane with fascinating Tudor Black and white buildings that lean over the narrow passage above your head and you half expect to see a pee pot being emptied out of the bedroom windows. At the bottom of Mardol street just before it emerges out onto the riverside, is the Kings Head public house, this old Tudor style house was dated to 1404 and appears as if it’s about to topple over it leans forward so much.

Kings Head

We visited Shrewsbury’s red Sandstone Castle that was founded by Roger De Montgomery in 1070 which holds the regimental museum of the Kings Shropshire Light Infantry where Kay found some valuable information on a relative who died in the First World War with this regiment in 1915. Unfortunately the weather was changeable with sun followed by sudden showers that had us both scuttling for cover.

Overlooking the castle is Laura’s tower that was built on the original Motte where the very first Norman castle stood. The whole area has loads of interesting history but I leave that to you to investigate as it really is a nice town to visit.

The Castle

Laura's Tower

Castle grounds

Castle entrance

We stayed in the town for lunch then took a bus ride back to the car and then it was off to get some fuel and a visit to an industrial site at Wem where I wanted to get a tow plate to extend the rear drop on my tow bar.

On the way to and from Wem we travelled through some more charming villages like Loppington, Nonely and Ruyton-XI-Town before heading back to our base at the Oswestry C&CC Site.

Tudor Arch

Riverside Sculpture

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