Pub at Last

We finally made it to the pub (The Old New Inn) during opening hours - woohoo. There was only one other person there, and after a little while, he came over, sat down and introduced himself, saying it doesn't cost anything to be nice. The lovely old gentleman, wearing a collar and tie, told us he assembles and paints figures of knights, and loves going on cruises. He was quite taken with the Knights Templar, and thought Dale would make a good knight (little does he know!).

Fish and chips for me for dinner, steak and ale pie for Dale. Fair fare. My ale was from the local Branat valley we passed through on our scenic uplands trip recently. The pub is small and kind of tatty, but it means no airs and graces, right?

Our kitchen sink has been leaking, so we walked to the local hardware store for parts, but we didn't have any success in getting the washers we needed. I did succeed in knocking over some counter displays after some bull-in-a-china-shop manoeuvres, though.

We stopped in at the town butcher, too. There were no prices displayed, so we had to ask the price of each item we pointed to, asking for the British name of each cut. The young attendant was incredibly patient and helpful.

The setting sun cast lovely roof shadows for us on our walk home

Eryri Sights

We had a most stupendous trip to the bank at the beginning of the week, since part of the route took us through parts of Snowdonia National Park. The scenery is spectacular Welsh moorland for miles.

This is the view down the Tanat valley

Once over the summit, we pulled off onto a layby to send a text, and encountered a stranded motorist with a very severely ripped tyre. She was driving a rental car, and hadn't been able to swerve away from debris in the road because of oncoming traffic. Dale donned his suit of armor like any Welsh knight would, and helped get her back on the road.

Our bank is in the town of Bala, which sits on the shore of Wales' largest natural lake, Lake Tegid (or Llyn Tegid). We didn't have time to explore all the trails around it, but hope to return to cover some of the 3.7 mile long shore.

And then it was back up over Wales' second highest public road mountain pass through Eryri (Snowdonia National Park) to see new sights on the way home. A narrow little track was all we had to go on, making me think we'd end up at a farmyard, and not get back home. Motorcyclists seemed to enjoy the narrow twists and turns that accompany the breathtaking drops into the valley below. It sure made for an interesting drive.

The peat uplands stretch for miles,

and, of course, there are sheep and lambs everywhere.

Our route took us back home via Lake Vrynwy,

 which presented us with a great display of woodland bluebells. What a magnificent sight.

Ahhhh, another amazing day in Wales!

Sundries

Our lovely neighbors invited us over for dinner on Sunday - they went 'all out' and cooked 4 different curries with all sorts of accompaniments. And a lot of fun and laughter was served up too! They are so down-to-earth and real. Not only that, but ... wait for it ... they 'get' Dale's humor.

We decided to bring an old potting bench from the garden into our conservatory so we can eat out there and enjoy the view. It looks pretty rustic and unfinished, but is sturdy and will serve the purpose until our furniture arrives. Actually, I rather like it.

As it turns out, our container didn't make it onto the ship that sailed around May 7. It's still sitting in the dock at NJ ( the tracker Dale attached to it helped us figure this out). The scheduled journey of our container, once loaded onto the ship, will be as follows: After leaving NJ/NY it will head to Virginia and South Carolina before making for Southampton in England. After that, it'll be sent to Liverpool, and finally put on a big truck, and then our goods will be shuttled to our house via Luton van (box truck). In the meantime, I'm gardening when I should be giving the house a thorough clean while there's no furniture in it. We've since bought a lawnmower, a grill, a dishwasher, a microwave and a blender, items we couldn't ship because of the different voltage here. 

We went to a boot sale at the old Workhouse location in town over the weekend. It was pretty underwhelming as an event, but we got to see the old historic building that housed poor families, who were separated into different wings by age and gender, so families got split up to be housed there.

The cutouts of people at the windows was pretty effective

Our best source of weekly groceries is in Welshpool (12 miles away) or Oswestry in England (14 miles - lower taxes on alcohol purchases). It takes us quite a while to shop since we don't recognize the product labeling, and have to search for everything on our list and still have to go back for things we couldn't find. Going through the checkout at ALDI is mindblowingly fast, like playing a shoot-'em-up computer game - trying to keep up with packing items into the cart as they're scanned is on the verge of being stressful!

Critters!

I was delighted to find these three newts huddled under a concrete birdbath I moved during my gardening foray. I was sorry to have disturbed them, but they seemed too confused/cold/sluggish to move away and hide. We got a good look at them, but forgot to look at their undersides for spots.

This is probably the common smooth garden newt, Lissotriton vulgaris

These bramble leaves indicate the presence of a critter having been there, most likely the caterpillar of the golden dot moth (Stigmella aurella). The larvae are often referred to as leaf miners.

The last critter is a beautiful sketch by Rachael for Mother's day - the silver-studded blue, native to Wales, but declining due to habitat loss. I really hope to see one in real life soon