MOVING OUT OF TOWCESTER (pronounced Toaster!)

 11 August 2025 

Our eldest son and family had six weeks to exit the UK for warmer climes. He had five days off work before departure while his wife had one month off work before departure. That’s not a lot of time.

The two removals blokes (let’s call them Eric and Bob) that came to Balmoral Close on Fern’s last day in England were swift, efficient and extremely tolerant in a house full of milling people. 

Besides the owners, their two beyond excited kids aged 14 months (Ro) and 3.5 years (Grey) and their equally excited barky blue roan Cocker Spaniel Jasper, were me, the-in-laws Sue and Dave plus their forlorn Cavalier King Charles spaniel Lucy with a sensitive tummy, and a stream of punters appearing at the door to take the pickings being frantically given away or sold for next to nothing. 

It was, of course, a boiling hot day, sultry and oppressive as only England can be in summer. No escape from it to air-conditioned coolth; not a breath of a breeze. The mottled shade in the garden helped a little but it was still as sweaty AF.

I took Jasper out for a little walk while Sue and Dave took the kids to the park from 0900 where they simmered slowly until1100. 

By the time they returned to the house literally puce, there were no beds, chairs nor sofas to sit on (understandably, Bob and Eric were doing their job) but outside were two rickety garden chairs on which various adults played musical chairs throughout the day while bossing up the extraordinarily active kids. 

When Steph arrived to help along with her two also very excited boys aka my other grandkids Phoenix (3) and Gryffin (2), they all went a little stir crazy.

While Steph threw stuff into the back of her car as only an ex-rugby player can (including a chiminea and an office chair), the four cousins zigzagged about on wobbly legs or ran in and out, up and down the empty house, Sue and myself trying to keep tabs on all. 

They painted an outside wall (thankfully with water), then when Steph produced a little picnic it ended up scattered and crushed on the lawn. Rowen found the raisins, put a few in her mouth then threw the rest into the grass whereupon Lucy made a beeline for them – toxic to dogs apparently. I snatched up as many as I could, legs stiff as boards by this time after constantly heaving myself up and down off the grass or chair and following small children.

A naked Grey (it is just his thing) escaped a couple of times into the street, stopping buyers and passers-by momentarily in their tracks as he pranced and jiggled about. 

“My underpants are all packed,” said Grey.  Nice one. Auntie Steph donated a spare pair of Phoenix’s which he grudgingly put on.

Jasper ran frenetically in and out of the house too, desperately trying to fathom his current situation, then did a tactical ochre-coloured stress chunder in-between Greg’s weightlifting equipment that had just been sold to the potential new tenant – of no consequence really, just an observation! 

Thankfully the dog snatchers aka pet transporters at around 1130 crated him up, bunged him into the back of a van and sped off to Heathrow as his tearful owners waved au revior.

When an opportunity arose to do something less exhausting than child minding like cleaning out the fridge (it was to stay in the house), I snapped it up. Yes a professional cleaning company was coming to do a “deep clean” but there is a limit. Let’s hope they also tackled the oven. 

Tons of cleaning products, dry food stuff and Gill’s red wellies found new homes with the South Africans next door. The lady of the house was happy to take anything as her parents, currently living with them, were in the throes of buying their own house - so the items came in very handy.

Dave was helping Greg empty the loft and garage and do multiple rubbish skip runs; Fern was vacuuming, scrubbing and sorting the kitchen and bathroom – what to chuck, give away or keep?

Having sold their Ford Puma vehicle on Wednesday, Greg used our orange Honda Jazz right up until this very last day. The final run to the skip was done by 2pm after which he, with Dave following in his own car, drove to Northampton to sell the Jazz at We Buy Any Car. 

As ever it wasn’t plain sailing - the man he was to meet to negotiate a price was not there. “He’s at lunch.” The receptionist was unapologetic.

“You have got to be joking!” 

But she wasn’t. More stress; more delay. Eventually the man returned and after some skillful haggling learned in the Middle East Greg finally wrangled a good price considering the limited time available. 

By 3.30pm Fern and Grey had to get ready for the airport. It was still relentlessly boiling so all emotions were at peak level. The in-laws too were on their last legs, Dave about to blow a fuse so Greg chose not to or forgot to ask him to do ‘one more trip’ to drop his paraphernalia at The Saracens Head in Towcester where we were staying that night.

They departed for Birmingham Airport around 4.30pm, deposited the two pink passengers then Sue, Dave and Lucy drove for just under four hours to their Yorkshire home. Phew!

Greg, Ro and I were supposed to finish cleaning up but were all too tired to think, so soon afterwards headed for the Saracens Head on foot through the park. 

Greg dragged a heavy suitcase with dodgy wheels (aren’t they all?) plus carried a huge awkwardly shaped Isofix child car seat, baby bag and flight suitcase while pushing baby Ro in her buggy. 

I had other bags and something for the clothing charity box en route. We felt like refugees, plodding through Towcester exhausted, covered in sweat, dust, grass, whatever sticky things kids find to smear on one plus armed to the teeth with baggage. 

It was a logistical feat getting all paraphernalia through swing fire doors and up the Saracens stairs to Greg and Ro’s room – only one flight thankfully. Bonus was a big bed and an enormous bathroom.

I lay down very briefly in my room further down the corridor, then met Greg downstairs at 6pm for a swift beer and food as his mate Andy was coming by to say cheers. Rowen was a wriggling nightmare, but I managed to scoff down fish and chips while Greg gobbled a burger. Andy also wrestled with Ro for a while, and she didn’t scream at him.

Back to the rooms, I fell asleep way too early so annoyingly woke at 0300. 

Around 0630 I crept into their room to babysit a sleeping Ro (Praise be!) while Greg ran back to the house to finish up and bring back more items for the flight. How is it going to be possible?! 

Anyway once done he set off through the park whereupon another suitcase’s wheels broke and again he was dragging belongings behind him – but it was all too much now and, as mad as a snake, he returned to the house and called Andy who kindly whipped by in his car and gave him a lift to the hotel. 

Ro woke at 0815, accepted Gogo’s presence sullenly but thank the aligned stars silently; Greg returned around 0845, we dashed down for breakfast, juggled child and eating, she threw everything within reach onto the floor, I picked it all up once Greg and Ro went upstairs to pack, taxi arrived at 0930, driver got irritated as Greg put Ro and I in the car then disappeared – he ran down the road to drop off the house keys at Towcester Homes, their estate agents…..

We miraculously reached BHX airport in plenty of time.  Of course there was a seething mass but the check-in lanes were clear and the ticket woman took a shine to Greg (she ignored me completely) and somehow all the luggage sailed off with no extra charges, we were fast tracked through, no idea why (we took the Isofix monstrosity with a sticking-out arm to the oversize baggage department first), Greg got a good front row window seat (bulkhead) on the top deck while I was below on the lower deck so of no help to anyone on the flight after all! 

No matter for he was well looked after by Emirates staff, had space for Ro to troll about in, plus a friendly Korean fellow passenger beside him, although according to sources the man had brushed his teeth with shit that morning.

[I had a relaxing flight - watched The Penguin Lessons, a superb movie based on Tom Michell's book about his life as a British teacher who went to Argentina to teach and later rescued an oil-soaked penguin.]

That’s the end of the moving out story, but I will add a PS: 

The week before Greg and Fern departed they had to show numerous people around the house (it was discovered that the family who initially agreed to rent it had defaulted on payments on previous lets - good call those agents) so on each occasion it was GET THE KIDS TF outta here so that Fern could tidy up – so sometimes we walked, went to a forest; sometimes when I wasn’t there, Greg just drove around with the blighters in the back until the potential tenants had left…. 

OMG surely there is an easier way??

Here’s hoping their next imminent move is not going to be quite so hectic!

Oh a PPS about the sofa saga a week prior: their old but serviceable grey sofa was destined for Steph and Trent’s house in Granville Street. She sold their red paint-stained squishy sofa online for £25 and some dude with a van came to transport it to its new owner. 

When he finally arrived at 9pm, being about four hours late, he received a brief ticking off from Steph who then realised she was actually rather thankful that he had arrived at all. She and Trent plus dad Robin and the van man shoved, pushed and pulled and it finally squeezed through all doorways and passages onto the street. Fab!

Next day Steph went to pick up one half of the grey sofa, managing somehow to squeeze it into the back of her car. However, getting it into the Granville passageway was non-negotiable, despite Trent’s wrestling this way and that and Robin’s ripping up the passage’s shelving with his bare hands. 

The only solution was to dispatch it tout de suite to Kettering rubbish tip, sensibly open until 6pm (Towcester’s dump closes at a ridiculously early 4pm as Dave will know full well). 

The other half of the grey sofa Steph picked it up mid-week and being a soupçon less unwieldly, JUST fitted through Granville’s passage. 

                                                HALLELUJAH!!

April in UAE

 A taxi driving over a manhole cover. 

The cranes from the construction sites behind the compound’s tall perimeter wall randomly dropping what seem to be gigantic metal poles. 

A domestic worker cleaning a car in our street, slamming and opening the doors multiple times for whatever reason is known only to him.

bougainvillea

Wild ring-necked parakeets screech as crows caw harshly. 

On my daily early morning walk around our residential compound, everyday noises are louder than ever before. Our ears have become super-sensitive alert organs. 

“Bon voyage!” I shout as I watch an Indian couple scurry into the taxi, carrying multiple bags and squeezing most in the boot.

“Thank you,” the man says. “Stay safe.” 

I feel a bit tearful as I see the taxi disappear around the bend. I wonder where they are going. Somewhere quieter? But I expect somewhere more chaotic than the actually quite quiet UAE, albeit accompanied by underlying apprehension. What’s next? 

Although “they’ve” stopped firing at us, we’re still wired, anticipating an alert ping on our phones instructing us to Shelter in Place, or waiting for a bang of an intercepted something or other overhead. 

yellow oleander

But none today.

drumsticks

The flock of pigeons from our diagonally opposite neighbour swish and circle rhythmically overhead. That’s a welcome sound, every morning and evening.

The purple sunbirds love our spindly moringa tree, heavy with flower and fat drumsticks aka pods. 

As I walk the sun appears as a thin arch in a pink sky. It’s a gorgeous 20 ̊C accompanied  by a slight breeze. 

A yellow-vented bulbul warbles on a stark branch of a tree rising above the wall in a villa’s garden.  Cascading over this wall is a yellow oleander with its freesia-like scent that evokes memories of my long-gone parents’ and their home “Rannoch” in Bulawayo, Rhodesia, where there were often freesias in a vase.

The neem trees are blossoming; their sweet powerful scent fills the air. Jasmine competes while untidy beautiful bougainvillea sprawl lazily everywhere.

Heavy with their load, bunches of round brown fruit pods of a sapodilla tree (chiku in India) reach into the main street leading towards the compound entrance gate.

neem sapling

I see another resident come out of his house, cross the road and walk towards the shrubs lining the grass area where later in the morning children play football and domestics briefly huddle with their charges. He picks the soft new leaves of a neem tree sapling; they are golden brown and red. Maybe he uses the leaves for health purposes. Life goes on.

Eurasian collared doves koo-KOO-kook melodiously. 

The ceasefire has been extended again.

Tea with orangutans

 Musings about my family and other animals

 

Recently I chatted to a British resident of Dubai who wouldn’t be seen dead in any sub-Saharan country because of all the dangerous wild animals, yet she was happy to have tea with an orangutan. 

As she sipped away during this peculiar tourist offering at a Singapore zoo, she became only mildly disconcerted when the primate gripped her wrist tightly (perhaps he wanted more sugar?) 

She shuddered when I told her about our animal interactions last November in Zimbabwe, the wild west of all sub-Saharan Africa apparently.  The animals there are yes, wild - but they are free, and in places like Victoria Falls town residents respect those that nonchalantly wander into their suburbs. 

A local bush telegraph messaging ping one Tuesday morning pre-walkies alerted us to the fact that 12 buffaloes were strolling along Soper’s Crescent. We gingerly set foot down Wood Road instead, encountering only some beady eyed warthogs, three wary kudus, some confused guinea fowls chuntering excitedly and a gang of very busy mongooses. 

On the property where we stayed two baboon thugs tried to pull the thatch off a cottage roof, the tenant irate mostly because they pushed her birdbath over in the process. Over her garden wall she often sees elephants sauntering past. 

I confess it does take some getting used to. My Dubai messaging group pings are all about missing cats, feral cats, lost dogs, escaped tortoises or murderous house crows (these awful Corvus splendens drop pebbles in our garden and chicken bones in my neighbour’s, which their Yorkshire terriers eat then end up in the vet on stomach pumps.)

Way to the south at Garth Farm in dry Matabeleland my cousins also live unusual lives in harmony with different sorts of animals, so when five eccentric relatives from Australia, Harare and Dubai visited for a few days in November last year (2024) they took it in their stride.

A pampered pomeranian

This year the small hard-backed rose beetles (aka rose chafers, Christmas beetles - Hypopholis sommeri) were at full throttle. No rain in sight for months yet they relentlessly dive-bombed our evening meals as we sat around the huge square table. I’ve never seen anything like it. 

I appeared to be most freaked out by the sticky-legged insect invasion (it’s the hair trap scenario), although in between pushing two large, very determined dogs out of the door to make space for his feet, Kevin did throw around 102 beetles into the night rather than have them land in his curry. 

After pudding Aussie Erica took to calmly brushing Pomeranian No 1’s fur with a hairbrush while it sprawled its four little legs comfortably across the dining room table. Quite a few beetles must have embedded themselves in that lot. 

It must be said that we were not a bunch of orangutans. Not at all. Cousin Graham’s wife Doris produced endless supplies of gourmet cuisine (ham, butternut and roast potatoes; roast lamb; chicken curry; bacon, eggs and more every morning) using only an ancient wood fired stove. Wine, water, gin and whisky flowed as did the conversation, and when cousin Fay borrowed just one hearing piece from sister Nicky there was way less shouting all round.

I’m happy to report that the long drop which scared the life (or whatever) out of me as a child is now defunct – no more terrifying ablutions looking for snakes around the toilet seat or dangling from the ivy-covered tin roof above. The farm has had flushing loos for ages actually and is pretty much using only solar power. I saw only live chongololos and dead moths on the bathroom floor; far more acceptable.

In the yard behind the kitchen were sheep whose new-born rejected lambs Boris, the exuberant springador spaniel, tended to with great care along with his gentle labrador mum Coconut. Aptly named after a well-known British buffoon, Boris is tender with lambs and happily retrieves thrown objects but does not do so well on the social spectrum. He loves EVERYONE. 

Bizarrely he has connections with politician Boris but that really is another story… 

Walks at Garth were as adventurous as in suburban Victoria Falls, although there was never a remote chance of spotting wildlife as we were accompanied by a posse of eight dogs including one-eyed Mama Pom and Hansa - the silent, world weary, tough-as-nails blind and deaf male mongrel with a severe limp. Hansa (named after a South African pilsner) has a few stories to tell that’s for sure. A Jock of the Bushveld. 

The five pomeranians always walk behind Doris in single file. It’s quite extraordinary.

Dry river beds and
dams - it's November in
Matabeleland

I don’t recall it being called The Chebs but that’s the dry sand river a short distance from the homestead. It’s a spot the Inyatis (a branch of the Robertson family) remember very fondly.  This year the cicadas screeching from the mopani trees were simply deafening. All around us yet impossible to see the shrilling insects. Luckily no-one had any hearing devices installed then.              

Instructions being dished out left, right & centre

Many of my relatives and friends have fond memories of Garth Farm, mine were too but also mixed with apprehension – snakes, terrorists (during the bush war) and stinging insects, in that order. As a kid I used to dream of being chased by snakes, me running away in slow motion of course.

Hypopholis sommeri
 our nightly dinner time 
entertainment

Ow!!!!

As we meandered back from the dry river to the homestead one evening, we didn’t hear an anticipated revving of motorbike engines. We had left Erica, Graham and Nicky playing with bikes in the garden, Erica for the first time ever. 

Needless to say, one had landed on top of her after a dramatic spurt, also pulling over Graham who was at the back stabilising the machine. He injured his hands again, for the 4th time. (He keeps falling on them. Don’t ask.) 

A shaky Erica retired to her room and didn’t surface until the next morning, cheerful enough albeit black and blue. 

Love paper bark trees
(Commiphora marlothii)

  

In the heat of the day Doris swims with Pom No 1aka Tinkerbell. True love. Once I joined them until a water scorpion with a huge upright sting-tail swam past doing a couple of lengths. Experts were summoned.  The ecologist cousin among us calmly scooped the beast into a jar and deposited it somewhere beyond the tall palm trees.

Later, stomping at the back of the homestead with Fay and silent Hansa, the latter managed to find a baboon skeleton to gnaw on while the former discovered a tranquil view atop a kopje. I tussled the determined dog off the bones using a stick and stern language (forgetting he was deaf) then threw the macabre carcass against a stone wall. Never a dull moment. A far cry from having tea with an orangutan.

We got back to the homestead to find young Erica brandishing a rifle. Slightly disconcerting truth be told, but soon discovered this was not a revenge mission, just target-practice on a plastic bottle stuck in the sand. 

We kept our distance nevertheless. 

Boris’ hunting instinct was so powerful he pulled over handler Doris as soon as the gun went off. The feverishly excited springador retrieved a sausage tree seed (Kigelia Africana), which was something.

The road that leads to Bulawayo

After four action-packed days four relatives left the farm to drive back to Bulawayo then onto Harare, so my hosts and I waved goodbye with misty eyes. Twenty minutes later they, minus driver Kevin, appeared back on the verandah bringing with them Dave, a strapping young hunter with mechanical capabilities. 

Gosh. What on earth had they done with the driver? It was rare to see anything along that dusty corrugated road let alone a presentable AND useful bloke. 

The not-so-trusty pick-up had broken something. While the driver waited securing the vehicle Dave and Graham bashed about in the workshop making a bolt to hold the car together until it reached a garage in Bulawayo, about an hour’s drive away. 

The party finally left for good, and we followed later that afternoon. En route we pulled into Garry Rosenfels homestead to sort out some documents. He is Graham’s 1st cousin on his mother’s side. He turns out to be a 3rd or 4th cousin of mine: his great-grandmother Helena Bissett (nee Jobling) and my grandfather Charles Spearman Jobling were siblings. How bizarre! I knew my mum had a cousin in the district, but I had never met her nor any of her family.

Another interesting discovery was that at the entrance to his home there’s a vintage saddle, a remnant from the movie The Shangani Patrol which was shot in this area around 1970 and in which all his family starred!

On to Bulawayo for some flashbacks from my childhood. Freshly painted Borrow Street Municipal Swimming Bath erected in 1926 had the same entrance turnstiles Netta and I pushed through as kids with our grandmother Mollie Jobling. The pool was sparklingly clear blue, the only things absent were the two huge diving boards. 

At the doctor’s surgery on the opposite side of the road (checking Graham’s hands) I waited, flicking through a 1994 copy of Fairlady magazine. The most recent magazine was an Aviation Week dated March 2011. Strange not to update the reading material!!

We then visited Rannoch at 6 Hill Road Lochview, a memorable Robertson family home and where my family and I lived until I was 11. It was too unrecognisable to get all nostalgic, but I did see there was one Christmas tree where once was a row. The blue painted swimming pool my dad built was still there, obviously empty and now on a separate sub-division set in dry scrubby bush. 

Rannoch, our former family home

The pool my dad built

After a siesta (it’s marvellous how my contemporaries in Africa all religiously take afternoon naps) we drove to the unofficially named Bend Over Boutique, a huge outdoor market where local entrepreneurs make a living selling clothing donated to charity by rich folk from Western countries who have grown too fat or bored with the garments. These arrive in enormous bales which are sometimes sorted, sometimes left in giant piles - hence the term ‘bend over’.

Cousin G and I sifted through the rows and rows of tightly packed clothing, he hopping about on one leg trying on shorts and me hopelessly squeezing dresses over “The Girls” (Doris’ euphemism for bosoms), absolutely sweltering with the exercise in the oppressive afternoon heat.

Then it was farewell to the cousins and Bulawayo – thanks for some epic times and see you soonish I expect!

Pembrokeshire’s puffins, people, scenery and greenery

Volunteer on Skomer Island 

From the enthusiastic volunteer on Skomer Island to the wetsuit-clad Australian surfer determined to place his remembrance pebble atop Dobby’s cairn on a Pembrokeshire beach, it was a lot about who we met along the way.

The Girls Trip round 2 (minus key member Vicki, so sorry!) sped out of Eastbourne at around 0900 on 12 June 2023 in Netta’s trusty Freelander packed to the gills with goodness knows what. 

It successfully weaved us three to The Woodlands site at Roch in Pembrokeshire, reaching our quiet cosy mobile home Chalet Cwtch nearing sundown. 

It took ages as driver Netta doesn’t do motorways, a fault Trish and I rectified upon the return journey.

Cheers Trish! We made it without chucking up

Stepping back a few days - prior to Wales Robin and I were in Shiptonthorpe near York, celebrating Di Carter’s 90th birthday. (Thanks Susan, Ian and Vicks for the hospitality.) Trish met us there having been staying close by in Nafferton, after which we drove to Towcester, passing signs to villages with Bill Bryson-worthy names such as Styrrup and Blatherwyke, then rehydrating at The Navigation waterhole at Stoke Bruerne. 

At the canal that runs past the pub we watched a man opening a lock for his narrow boat to pass through, quite an elaborate performance. Martin from Birkenhead and Ruth (steering) had set off from Chester and taken three weeks to reach this spot. 

They were on their way to London to meet a whole lot of other narrow boaters to cruise together on the Thames, something to do with the St Pancreas Cruising Club of London. Ruth generously gave Trish and I a brief sail while Martin on the canal side explained the inner workings of locks to Robin. 

What fun!

We met more new people – the “peanut girls” (and plenty of the usual suspects or course) at Nicky and Lez’s joint 40th birthday party in Chislehurst. It’s wonderful how these curious things called Apps can bring people together, the Peanut App being no exception. 

Nolton Haven 

I digress! Back to Wales – it certainly has spectacular beaches. Nolton Haven was nearest, with a vast expanse of soft sand, sea anemones hiding in rock pools and seaweed-covered rocks that glistened in the morning sun as the waves receded. 

A few people with dogs and/or kids pottered about in the warm shallows, while from the towering cliffs of the Pembrokeshire coastal path you looked down upon Mediterranean-esque shades of blue water.  

The next day was scorching. We aimed towards St David's Head to check out the breathtaking view but Google maps took us to St David's Cathedral instead. A good find! 

Since it began as a monastery founded by St David around AD590 (being PC its C590) it has been bashed, battered, raided, earth-quaked and the present cathedral, mostly of Cambrian sandstone, is the result of centuries of rebuilding and expansion.

 

We learned from a mature Lincolnshire couple whose table we shared in the cool garden of St Davids Cross Hotel that St David’s is the UK's smallest city in terms of population. And that a city is a city because it has a cathedral. Cor!

The following day we visited Colin and Fuddy in Haverfordwest. They were looking well-tanned in that boiling heat and their sweet doggie Buster, brought over in the same plane that carried themselves when they fled Zimbabwe during the delightful Covid 19 lockdown, was fit, fat, flourishing and lolling drowsily on the lawn.

Pursuing puffins again

At noon on Thursday June 15 we caught the Dale Queen boat from Martin's Haven to Skomer Island, home of the Skomer Marine Nature Reserve.                                                             Trish was particularly impressed with an 86-year-old grandmother who, with the help of her very caring and attentive grandchildren, negotiated the 87 rather steep steps that lead from the boat drop off point to the top of the island.                             Mind you, David Attenborough at 96 did the same the year before.

We spent five sweltering hours there, seeking out just a sliver of shade whenever we could. Many of the island's 42,513 puffins, plus its guillemots with their gorgeous chocolate-coloured heads, razorbills, oystercatchers, seagulls and manx shearwaters were nurturing babies. 

The puffins are amazing as ever, although our first trip to see them in June 2019 on Staple Island in the Farne Islands was somewhat more dramatically memorable. I think because we honestly nearly died of thirst on Skomer, just so unprepared for that heat.

The island is also home to half the world’s population of Manx shearwaters, difficult to see as they are nocturnal. In spring around 700,000 of them return from South America to breed and rear chicks. They sit on their nests in underground burrows during the day, which is when a population census can be recorded by the volunteers or staff. Manx shearwater calls are played down every burrow, and if in residence the bird will usually call back!

Oystercatcher and chick

                                                                      Tenby

Our journey then led us to charming if touristy Tenby [I didn’t see any giant rats but read all about it in the South Wales Argus prior to arrival], where we explored the harbour and town crammed with colourful rows of triple storey houses. 

While the historic Tudor Merchant's House is popular with tourists, the skinny four-storey bookstore opposite called Cofion was more captivating for the books were displayed in crazy horizontal piles. Incredibly hawk-eye Netta found a book I had been wanting - The Goshawk by T.H.White. 

Dobby's fictitious bones

Next we ventured to Freshwater West to discover Dobby’s burial site – or to be precise, the place where his death scene was filmed. 

After a short walk along the rocky coastline from the car park, we came across a huge mound of pebbles adorned with messages dedicated to the beloved fictional (free) house elf. Atop the pile a small cross with a flag fluttered, accompanied by a grinning toy Dobby a Harry Potter fan must have placed there. 

A surfer from Victoria, Australia, wrote on and placed a pebble on the memorial mound on behalf of his family of four. He did so with reverence - and also with a little bit of a laugh. 

It’s just fun and quite heart-warming to realise how connected we are, and how much the characters, books and films touch so many people from all over the world.

Freshwater West beach

Stack Rocks

We had a little trouble finding Stack Rocks aka Elegug (Welsh for guillemot) Stacks - two isolated pillars of limestone peppered with razorbills and guillemots; as well as the Green Bridge of Wales, a dramatic natural limestone arch.

 
The road leading to this spectacular site on the southwest coast passes through the Castlemartin Training Area for army tank manoeuvres and live firing gunnery exercises, so it is often closed to the public. 

Luckily it was open and we had the place almost to ourselves.

We left the tranquility of Chalet Cwtch for Kidwelly, also a mobile home but Chalet Escapes was a completely different kettle of fish. 

Situated in an enormous caravan site of 600+ mobile homes, the whole scenario reminded me of an episode of one of the Carry-On comedy series, the one at the seaside in a Butlin's holiday type camp complete with entertainment centre and streams of happy British holiday makers of all shapes and sizes.

Well there wasn't much to laugh about this time. Our mobile home was in a Sahel-like area it was so dry, and a rather stark grey estuary was the "beach". Despite the overpowering whiff of Jik (bleach) the place was grubby with a lumpy double bed, dirty plates and even a large gash in my bunk bed mattress. 

We did not realise it was a full-on resort – oops – and did not check ALL the reviews beforehand, many of which stated as above!

So we left early the next day vowing never to return, stopping first in light drizzle at Colby Woodland Garden.

Its natural shady woods with walking paths, a walled garden and a wildflower meadow was more appealing than the famous National Botanic Garden of Wales. 

The latter showcased The Great Glasshouse, the world's largest single-span glasshouse housing more than 1,000 plant species from Mediterranean climates including South Africa, Australia, Canary Islands, Chile and California. 

It was rather forlorn, perhaps the heat had dried everything up.

The Great Glasshouse at the botanical gardens

Colby Woodland Garden, National Trust

“Do not go gentle into that good night…” 

Dylan Thomas' writing shed

Just past impressive Laugharne Castle opposite the Taf estuary high above the water we peeped into Dylan Thomas’ writing shed and The Boathouse, former family home of Wales' most renowned poet. 

Here he wrote many of his most famous works such as Under Milk Wood and:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night...... etc

Abergorlech

And so to Abergorlech and Jenny Hamilton's place Cartref, located on a hill.
The Black Lion pub, Brechfa Forest, the river, Gorlech stones, landscapes, and of course Jen, were as picturesque as last time we visited some centuries ago.

Good weather, good food, good chats, leisurely walks and spectacular greenery, forests and fields. Jaws (and ears) were a little tender by the time we left.

Maes y Bryn Retreat 

Prior to that Netta and I popped in to see my school friend from Bulawayo Anita Clarke (Hedges) at her beautiful home and Maes y Bryn Retreat  in Llansawel, set in 10 acres of hill meadow and woodland on the edge of the Brechfa forest.

The family home - filled with vibrant, colourful furnishings, light and space coupled with the complete serenity of its occupants (including her late husband, laid to rest in a special plot nearby) - makes one feel very at peace with the world.

There are other off-grid spaces in the garden that visitors can use for workshops, meetings or whatever, plus accommodation for overnight or longer stays.

Eastbourne calls 

En route home we stopped at the Country Market Garden Centre in Bordon for lunch to meet stepma  Gill. After the meal I got locked in a loo cubicle when the latch broke. Mild panic set in but lo and behold Trish, who was still abluting, came to my rescue.
The garden centre supervisor didn't seem too appreciative when I handed her the remains of the broken door latch.

A mission from Jean

Onwards to visit my dad’s cousin Jean in Petersfield where we were given an ancient Robertson or Thompson family Christening gown and a Mission: to establish its history.

I chose to accept it.

We bumbled along the B2146 then B2141, windy-windy  but reasonably traffic-free routes across the South Downs, then the A286 over Sheepwash Lane (again, what a name), reaching the A27 and Eastbourne by 7pm.
 

It was good to be home (at Netta's home)!