A Trip to Whitesands (Porth Mawr????)

This is the road to Whitesands with Carn Llidi in the distance.  Below is Carn Llidi - familiar to some from my 'From a Mountain Top' essay in Class 1A.

The last of the bluebells are in the hedgerows.

Here's Mum outside my cousin Lola's place near Whitesands with Carn Llidi in the background.

The not so beautiful Whitesands carpark.

We walked to the end of Whitesands.  You can see why we loved playing there as kids.

This is Carn Llidi from the end of Whitesands.

Then we caught the Celtic Coaster bus back to St Davids via Porth Clais and St Justinians.  I haven't posted pictures before because I've just been overwhelmed with the beauty

When in KL, eat paella

It turns out that the hotel we are staying in in KL is part of a Spanish chain so Mum was able to have her first paella.  This also will be good training for when we are in Spain.  We had 1 lovely warm day in Kuala Lumpur and 2 lovely airconditioned nights - the consequence of arriving late at night and leaving early in the morning.  England was beautifully misty and rainy when we arrrived on Monday and to my great joy continued like this on Tuesday.  We had a walk along the Grand Union Canal and bossed a poor chap who was driving 2 barges down the canal on his own to look out for 3 little ducklings who'd got trapped in the lock chamber.  Today (Wednesday) Mum and I walked into Watford via a beautiful park to do essential things like buy an adaptor so that Australian electricals can be charged in UK.  Now I have to find out how to SMS Australia with my new simcard.  There was a time you didn't need to know these things.
[I have just discovered that Steve has posted a collage of photos of my departure from Wentworth / Mildura last Friday on the Our House blog.]

Cynthia, David, Rosemary and me

Not long now and we'll be together again.  Mum and I will be staying with Cynthia and her husband for a while before and after we go to St Davids.  I'm sure Mum and I will catch up with David while we're in England.  Then off to Spain to stay with Rosemary and the teddy bear...

The girl's a beach...

This is the photo of me as a child which I thinks captures the essence of me...

and here I am 50+ years on

captured by my darling friend, Bron, on our trip to Kangaroo Island at Easter.  Scary for the younger viewer perhaps but oh I am so happy to be me!!!!

'Portrait of the Brecon Beacons and surrounding areas'

It is raining gently here with a forecast maximum of 21C.  I heated up a croissant and returned to bed to read the above book by Edmund Mason (Robert Hale, London, 1975).  It belongs to my friend Leanne the Book.  When she first mentioned it to me I wasn't much interested cos it's not my bit of Wales but reading it is an absolute delight and I recommend it to anyone interested in Wales - geography, geology, archeology, myth and legend, history, travel, caving, etc etc.  The author hugely endeared himself to me when, describing the underground search for some lost cavers, he writes:  'Although I always had a great admiration for the Welsh miner, the voluntary effort of those men surpassed anything I could have imagined.'

For me, there are lovely elements to this photo:  the book itself, the fact that it became an interlibrary loan and the bookmark my friend Pasha Sasha brought me back from Turkey recently.

Daffodils for Welsh cousins

Martha Morgan makes many references to the wildflowers, including primroses and daffodils.  At the last email, my cousin David reported that there were not many daffodils out yet, so here are some for Frances, David, Mark, Paul and Cairo.  They are also to celebrate that there is a Curves gym in Haverfordwest, giving me more opportunity to explore.  Martha Morgan was imprisoned in Haverfordwest. Is the gaol still there?

So much to tell you but sadly not in Welsh...yet...

I spent a lovely Easter on Kangaroo Island with Corinne, Bronwyn and Heather.  For them it was a mere Easter break.  For me it was training for Wales.  Here's Bron and Heths and a Welsh-looking sea:

I have now read 3 of the Angel Mountain series.  The saga begins in the 1790s.  The heroine is Martha Morgan (note the MM - I'm sure I'm her reincarnated).  She was born in Brawdy with her early life in Haverfordwest.  She moves to Carn Inglis near Newport when she marries.  The storyline is wildly romantic but the detail of everyday life during those times, the foods eaten, the crops grown, the wildflowers, is spellbinding.
According to my Mum, it is 6 weeks until we fly out of Australia.  Of course, this is Icelandic volcano permitting.