Roaring Fire

YAY! We did it! We're warm again.

We did some rodding and ingenious 'blowing-flour-up-the-chimney with a leaf blower' while one of us watched from outside to see if it came out of the chimney.

In the process of running in and out to check the chimney, I noticed this beautiful tableau through the window.

It's nice to have a warm room - we vegged in front of the TV for a whole evening until we were sick of watching, a new experience for us.

Village Church

This is the spire of St Garmon's church in Llanfechain, a village nearby. The earliest known documentation of it is from 1254, making it 1,775 years old and it's still being used! It has a broach spire of slate and some wood shingles below.

It looks as if the jackdaws have found the time to build a nest behind the clock face.

Llanfechain is just 4 miles from Llanfyllin, both along the river Cain

Max's Scones

What do scones and cream have to do with Formula One racing? I bake scones only when my favorite driver wins.

Max has been struggling all season, but he continues on, ignoring the media circus, never giving up. Now he's pulled up so far that he is 2nd in the standings. Go Max, we want more scones!

Field Day

Dale and I spent a day collecting samples of invertebrates from 5 different sites on the river Cain with other volunteers and members of the Severn Rivers trust. 

Here we are getting our boots cleaned before stepping into the river. 

It was declared to be a wonderful day in November = cold, yes but more importantly, NO rain

Our feet stayed dry in wellies, but the coldness of the water still bled through! Our team leader brought a homemade date cake and a camping stove to provide warm drinks for when we 'luncheoned.'

When the collection methods were explained to us, we finally understood why it was called kick sampling. Whilst kicking up the sediments and water upstream of a net, we loosened and captured invertebrates disturbed by the kicking interference and they'd flow into the waiting net. I've been practicing kicking Dale's b@tt for years, so figured I'd be good at kicking up a storm of invertebrates for collection.

We learnt about many new local places, history and folklore by interacting with interesting locals throughout the day.

We weren't the only ones having a field day - looks like the Dems had a field day in the U.S. too 😍(in a different sense of course).

Red Blob

This is a tense day as we await midterm election results and fallout in the US. 

I was intrigued by this bright red blob on my garden walkway last week - was it a jelly mould, or the entrails of an animal eaten by another? Could it be something else? There was no blood or evidence of other body parts lying around, so internal organs didn't seem quite right.

Dale had seen something similar on the roof of our shed

We decided it was more than likely regurgitated cherries/berries. Google lens seemed to be on the same track: "Regurgitated or Excreted Animal Matter: Sometimes bright red or pulpy patches outdoors can be animal droppings or regurgitation (such as from an animal that has been eating certain berries or blood-containing food).

Fireplace Fail

We've been getting cold here, and we've been left out in the cold by the contracting company meant to install our heat pumps by the end of October. No matter many times we pester and contact them, the response is never promising nor informative. So we resorted to lighting the woodstove (miniature by US standards) over the weekend (it's about 40°F overnight, and warms up to almost 50°F inside during the day). Armed with the instruction manual, we followed directions to the letter. 

Ooh, it looks like we know what we're doing!

 But oh no! This happened

And soon the whole room was full of smoke - it huffed and puffed like an old steam engine. 

Ack! Nothing was coming out the chimney outside, so we had to shut it down, open every window and  run fans to direct the smoke outside. We sneezed, coughed and shivered while the cloying smoke cleared out.

So now the woodstove is sealed over with duct tape until we can get a chimney sweep to come and rectify what's wrong. I suppose the chimney's blocked ...

So much for having a backup!

Well Hung

Beef in the U.K. is 'matured' (dry aging) by hanging for a period of 21-30 days at a minimum. Longer hanging improves the flavor and tenderness of the meat fibres.

In the U.S. the hanging process usually lasts about 14 days.

And while we're at it, the price of a roast joint of beef starts around $6/lb, so yes the cheapest cuts here are similar to prices in the U.S. from my recollection. The pricier cuts are aged longer, and would be around $8/lb

False Ivy

 What is this? An artificial fabric flower woven into an English ivy (Hedera helix) plant on the outskirts of a parking lot. Why? Who does this? There were multiples on this plant.

The real flowers bloom between September and November, providing late season nourishment for pollinators. They've been attracting ivy bees and hoverflies for some weeks now.

Is Your Name Dale?

On a shopping trip to get groceries in Welshpool, 20 minutes drive from home, in the middle of the shampoo aisle, a woman we didn't recognize asked, out of the blue

"Is your name Dale?" 

Semi detached council-like houses in Welshpool

"Um, yes, how do we know you?"

"I sold you Isfryn. It was my Mom's house. I remember talking to you on the phone and recognized your accent while you two were talking to each other."

Boy, was that a surprise! We had not met the seller face to face, we'd only dealt through estate agents. What an interesting conversation that became in the middle of the store. She told us our house had been built in 1985, something we hadn't managed to pin down before. There was so much to share that it made for a very extended shopping expedition. She said she'd heard that Dale was involved in trying to get the broken bench near the well repaired (and she doesn't even live in our town!). What a small world.

We heard that she'd placed her parents' ashes in the pot of the cherry tree that had been standing in the middle of our lawn. Thankfully we hadn't ditched it (!), but had only moved the pot to the edge of the lawn so that it wouldn't be in the way of the lawnmowing efforts.

Interestingly, we had came across the local dog-groomer in town last week (we'd mistakenly committed to buying a yellow couch from him back in January) and he'd mentioned recently coming across the previous owner/seller of our property, and then we ran into each other, just 11 miles away! Small town living ... or rather small country living!

The Great Wallpaper Removal Begins

I knew from the moment we viewed our house online that the wallpaper would not be staying. We put it off as a winter project, seeing as there were so many outdoor/gardening projects that had to be tackled while the weather was warm enough.

This week, the stripping began in earnest - how pleasing! It's peeling off in big strips with very little effort, which is great.

Behind the plasticky/vinyl paper is a gluey brown paper that comes off very easily with a wet sponge, so not a lot of scraping is needed at all.

All 3 stages can be seen along this wall.

And yes, that awful carpet will have to go as well. This is the first of 7 rooms needing to be stripped.

Lonely Phone Booth

We passed this phone booth in the dark on a country road, looking picturesque enough to necessitate a stop. It looked so incongruous, out in the middle of nowhere.

Work Party

Dale and I helped out at our town's wetlands restoration effort over the weekend. The wetland was maintained and serviced by people doing community service in lieu of a prison sentence in the past, but new Health & Safety regulations terminated that involvement (working near water ... !) almost 2 years ago.

The reeds and invasive bulrushes have grown up and smothered/covered everything over so that islands within the network were no longer separate or visible. We managed to get 14 volunteers for a period of 3 hours to try and get it back to its original, intended state.

These two hardworking guys cleared and re-dug a drainage ditch bringing water down from the tarred car park. 

People brought strimmers (weed whackers), hedge cutters, loppers, wheelbarrows, rakes, scythes and pitchforks to carry out the work. The few people with waders did the deeper water tasks.

Our town mayor came and joined the work crew

Though we weren't able to finish clearing the entire area, we cleared about 75% of the problem spots. It was a good day for working outside (NO RAIN), and we were rewarded with donuts and drinks. It was a great connecting (and aerobic) activity.

The Welshabet

Whilst visiting the Pontcysyllte aqueduct last week, I saw a sign for Wrecsam/Wrexham, which got me thinking, 'does Welsh use an X?'

I then fell down the another rabbit hole (no surprise), discovering that Welsh has 29 letters in its alphabet, and that doesn't include K, Q, V, X, Z. Instead, it uses ll, dd, ff and so on, as additional, separate letters (digraphs, the combination of which alters the sound). For example, 'ff' makes the sound of an f while f on its own makes the same sound as a v. How exciting, and extraordinary! It starts to make some kind of sense after a while!

So, here is what I call the Welshabet, without the j which has been more recently approved as an addition (1987).

Welsh alphabet

To complicate matters a little, the location of some letters in a word changes how that letter is said - English speakers shouldn't complain! The word for hospital (ysbyty) contains all 3 different ways y is pronounced, all in one word. (Remember y is a useful vowel)

To say hospital, ysbyty, try this: usbuhttee

Elegant Kite

Red kite soaring high:

Feathers glinting 'gainst the sun

Tail calibrates flight.

Driving Theory

Yesterday we both passed our driving theory and hazard perception test on our first attempt. It was daunting to receive an email reminder a few days beforehand, stating that

"54 out of every 100 theory tests

were failed between July and September 2025"

Aargh, it was a long hard week of dull cramming for our test. We had to watch video clips of developing hazards and click as soon as we saw one. The sooner you clicked, the higher your score (1-5), but clicking in a constant pattern (just in case) would result in 0 points. To pass this section, we had to score an average of 3 in 15 clips, to achieve a total of 44 or more out of 75

Watching clips and waiting for hazards gave me the willies - the tension in my neck afterwards was intense! I guess I just don't play enough video games.

And then there were the road sign questions too ... on which we had to score 43/50 to pass - these always got me ... 

No motorized vehicles

The U.S. sign for no cycling (below) is very clear to me. In the U.K. a round sign with a red ring around it is prohibitive (something you must NOT do) even without a slash through it. There are obviously also country-specific colors and shapes that have to be assimilated.

The test setup was intense - we had to shut down phones and then put them in a locker, had to turn all our pockets inside out, remove watches, have ears checked for hidden devices, and sleeves rolled up to check for ? Crib notes?

Chirk: Aqueduct, Viaduct and Tunnel

We visited the canal aqueduct and train viaduct alongside each other in Chirk after our Teddy Bears lunch. 

What this setup lacks in height and length (compared to Pontcysyllte) is made up for with its lovely two-tiered effect.

These beautifully arched structures span two countries (England, Wales) across the brilliant green floodplain of the river Ceiriog below.

The Chirk tunnel on the Welsh side is a dark, covered canal 1,380 feet in length, designed for a single vessel only, with a towpath alongside.

The arching roof of the tunnel

 made for a very uncomfortable walk for Dale

It was so much fun!