welsh hills again

I expect heat in summer.  That is daft really.  I don't live in the South of France or Italy, I live in North Wales, but somehow an adolescence spent in New Zealand where the sky is reliably blue for months and the natural colour of everyone's skin is a light tan has left me with an expectation that in summer the sun will shine and I will eat breakfast outside and walk in bare feet and seek the shade.  The last few summers have been so wet and grey and cold as to be non existent.  I don't think I had realised quite how much the absence of sun had got to me until the temperature soared and the sun was hot on my skin and every morning I woke to sunshine and warm wind.  I find I have relaxed deep down inside myself.  The brightness of the light has made me smile.  Walking around with bare feet has made me feel young again although the green valley is bleaching with the sun. Our house is great when it is really hot.  The old stone walls create a ...

Built a wall, whipped home and whipped out again down to Devon. This is the wall high up below Tryfan with National Trust warden Dewi on top of it, placing the coping stones.  On the last morning I worked with another ranger lower down in the valley.  Iolo was a silent man until you started to talk to him about dry stone walls!  I know enough now to have a go at repairing ours, if only I could find it behind the nettles and buttercups, hogweed and bind weed.  Might have to be an autumn project when all the weed dies down! I have been trying to sum up my experience of the dry stone walling holiday which is hard as it was a week of extremes.  On the one hand, I loved it.  The company was good, the walling was fascinating, being bumped out of my comfort zone and into the sort of communal experience I haven't had for years was interesting and probably good for me.  On the other hand, I discovered I was considerably less fit than I was a few years ag...

Rain, slow, soft rain.  Mist obscuring the valley, the ridge of Pen y Cloddiau vanished into solid grey.  Dense grey cloud behind the oak tree.  No sky, no view, no climbing hills.  A small enclosed world of rain and grey. A blackbird sings from the roof of the bakehouse.  A bullfinch sits in the hawthorn hedge, its breast a startling rose pink flash against the green.  I walk out into the meadow. Fine soft heads of grasses bowed down with the rain brush my legs.  Roses drip petals and raindrops.  Foxgloves stand tall.  In the meadow poppies bend their brilliant heads under the weight of water. The scent of honeysuckle rises up by the hedge and drowns me.  Just for a moment, I let go of the wish for sun and summer and lie back in the water, into a dream of grey and green.