Tea Room Lunch

We had lunch with R&D at the Teddy Bears Tea Room in Chirk. It's a small, cosy (cluttered) establishment that is down to earth and homey. Just right!

It was a tad disconcerting to get the response "we have oatmilk" when I explained I have an allergy to soya. The lady in the kitchen called out, "we have soymilk," and then our server said they had gluten free bread. Oh dear!

I explained what they needed to look for and where, and was brought a delicious toasted egg & mayonnaise sandwich (using rapeseed oil), with a salad and some crisps, along with a coffee SANS soymilk. Some of the menu items were titled Daddy, or Momma, Bears Breakfast.

What is a tea room? It's a low-key 'restaurant' that serves light meals, cakes, scones and biscuits with tea and/or coffee. This little tea room also had a yarn shop attached, called The Shop Next Door!

Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

 At last! This is a World Heritage site we've been dying to see - the Pontcysyllte (Pont – ker – sulth – tay) Aqueduct. We joined our friends on this fantastic outing - having locals guide us to the best spots and parking areas was a superb way to enjoy this 220 year old structure over the river Dee.

The aqueduct is the highest canal way in the world (126' 8" tall). The 19 arch structure across the valley is wide enough for a single narrowboat with a towpath for horses to pull them along. The towpath is now used by pedestrians visiting the site.

The view over the trees, river and valley is amazing

Once across the valley, the canal widens to a passing and berthing width, and the pedestrian way is much broader, too.

The Traphont Cefn railway viaduct can be seen in the distance.

View of the 1,007' aqueduct from the stone road bridge

Such an ambitious and ingenious piece of engineering cannot help but fill one with awe. This magnificent structure has inspired Dale's design plans for our garden ...

Frond of Ferns

I'm thrilled to have a native hart's tongue fern (Asplenium scolopendrium) in my garden. It's unique in having an entire, undivided leaf, unlike other ferns in the U.K. 

We've spotted it growing in a number of other places too. In this next photo, the transverse lines down the whole length of the strap-shaped leaves, where the spores develop, can easily be seen from below.

Photo: D. Schultz

Another fern of note, not growing in my garden, but visible nearby on the sides of the pilgrim track to the well above our property, is the deer fern (also called hard fern: Blechnum spicant). I was so excited to discover that it's an ancient-woodland-indicator plant hard-fern.

         

This lovely fern guide has been so helpful

Difficult Delivery

Our posts and timber for our planned retaining wall arrived at the beginning of last week, but the driver insisted he couldn't come any closer to our house than the chapel down the road. He claimed he wouldn't be able to turn the corner to get out, from the position he'd got himself in (thus blocking Brook Street and New Road). After much fussing, and bad attitude, we accepted our delivery at the roadside, with the driver carelessly chucking sleepers down onto the asphalt on their ends.

As Dale says, we've had bigger trucks come through and up our lane very successfully, so we're not sure what his problem was. Dale directed the driver out of his difficult, traffic snarling position so that he could be on his way back to Liverpool, then we loaded the back of our car with some of the load, doing 2 or 3 trips back and forth up the lane, with the trunk open. Not a single snarled car showed any sign of annoyance or irritation - people here are used to having to deal with tight spaces and delayed progress.

Waiting for the driver-tantrum to be over, I took the opportunity to admire the chapel entrance.

I photographed this Persicaria species along the way.