welsh hills again

I look out this morning to the sun on the hills.  For years my view of these hills was from the other side, the East.  The hills are the Clwydian Range, running from Llangollen in the South up to the sea on the North coast of Wales.  Clwyd (pronounced Cloo-id) means gate in Welsh and the range is the natural gateway between England and Wales, although for many centuries Wales has included Flintshire, to the East of the range as well.  The hills are topped by a number of Bronze and Iron Age hillforts so my sense of them as a geographical barrier between England and Wales is perhaps an ancient one.  Certainly these days and for a very long time back into history those who live to the East of them would consider themselves just as Welsh as those who live to the West.  Nowadays we live just to the West.  I see the hills from our sitting room and bedroom, from  my study and from the garden.  I love these hills.  When we turn to begin to come ...

If this blog has a colour it is green, the soft lush green of Wales.  If it has a theme it is the garden and the landscape and the kitchen - growing things, cooking things, eating them with family and friends.  Sometimes I think the rhythms of my life now are so seasonal and repetitive that they are not very interesting to others but this is how it is, so green and gold and grey are the colours.  This is a fawn and brown, bleached gold and blue blog today.  We went to Fuerteventura.  The reasons were entirely pragmatic: flights out of Liverpool at civilised times of day; a warmer, brighter climate.  I don't know what I expected really.  I had never been to the Canaries.  If I don't have deep countryside or wilderness I like cities, great European cities like Paris or London or Rome.  It was a very short break away from the various responsibilities of family.  I hadn't done any of the usual stuff, hadn't read up the history, learnt a ...