welsh hills again

Well off I go! The rucksack is packed (and much heavier than I thought it would be). Having packed and repacked about four times I can think of nothing else to take out so off we go. Boots and socks are ready in the kitchen. This morning we drive down to Chepstow and walk the tiny amount of the trail out to Sedbury cliffs on the Severn River. Dinner with my brother and niece tonight and then tomorrow the long walk Northwards and homewards begins. At the moment my thought is that if we make the first four days to Hay on Wye, of book festival fame, we will probably be ok as they are long and hard days and we will not be at out fittest. If not, well I will see you sooner than the middle of June when we expect to be back again. I might ask Ian to blog one or two updates and hope to take loads of photographs. Wish me luck!

I realise that it has been over a fortnight since I last blogged - unheard of! You would think I would have all the time in the world now wouldn't you? You would be wrong. Last week I went down to see my parents which is pretty much an internet free zone. I am so lucky that they are relatively young, in their mid seventies, and relatively healthy. Talking yesterday to a friend whose mother has Alzheimers, I was reminded again of how very lucky indeed I am. I should celebrate that luck by spending time with them while I can. We whizzed around, went out for my father's birthday and I wished as I always do when I am there that I lived closer to them. I love my bit of Wales and their part of Devon but it would be great if there were not a five hour journey in between. I also had the great pleasure of meeting Paula who blogs at locks park farm and who lives not far from my family. What a lovely person, what a great house and what a magnificent polytunnel. I never knew there was a c

May is a time for wildflowers here. The primroses have gone, the wood anenomes are disappearing and the foxgloves have yet to come. But everywhere along verge sides and at the base of the hedgerows wildflowers are crowding out the grass. The wild cherry blossom and the blackthorn are fading but hawthorn, known also as may for the month of its flowering, is frothing along the hedges. Our hawthorn hedges here on the hill are still resolutely green, but for the sake of a couple of hundred feet (sorry, I know I should think of height in metric terms but it is a painful translation from feet to metres and doesn't mean anything in my head so I will old-fashionedly stick to feet today) the hawthorn trees at by the river in the bottom of the valley are just coming into bloom. Here is the first, the flowers flushed ever so faintly with pink. Walking today with a heavy pack (practice, practice for the Offa's Dyke, a little easier each time) I saw the impact of height on both plants and