I could live there.....

Last weekend found us on a mission to Wales for a diesel cap for the truck, I lost the original..oops, as you do, filling it up with diesel, left it on the pump and walked off nattering away, as you do - only for Mr Oh So Righteous saying about 50 miles later - 'you did put the diesel cap on didn't you?' Needless to say I gave him a filthy look as I uttered those immortal words, 'Course I did - what do you think I am? a moron?' When he checked a few miles later he just said one word -'Yes!' I have not lived this incident down for a few weeks.

One had to be ordered, bit more salt to be rubbed into the wound. Anyway on our way back from very nice 4x4 garage in Newtown we decided to wander off the normal route as we are wont to do ...sprotting round looking for For Sale signs, pretty villages, stone barns in need of TLC whatever...along the border with Wales. We turned off the Newtown to Llandrindod helter skelter road as soon as possible and found ourselves at the top of the Felindre valley.

The Felindre valley became famous a few years ago when this area experienced rather a momentous event and yes the earth did move for me and quite a few others that summer afternoon as chunks of masonry fell off buildings in Shrewsbury some 50 miles away. There is a fault line along the Felindre valley and the epicentre of the earthquake was slap bang right there, in amongst the open moorland dotted with sheep and sign posts to such places as Beguildy and Monaughty Poeth. I love these mysterious half Welsh, half mythological place names. Mary Webb did too because she used them in her novels set in the borderlands of South Shropshire. Beguildy, I think was a wizard type in The Golden Arrow, but was it Precious Bane? whilst Mrs Felindre was the matriarch in The House in Dormer Forest. Vessons was the 'butler' of sorts at the Hall in 'Gone to Earth'. Presumably Mary Webb would wander round these same high hedged lanes peeping over gates and through gaps in the trees into the valleys below with a story forming as she travelled.

Last week we found our way down the valley to Knighton and after a 'pit stop' we wandered back to A E Houseman's 'Clunton and Clunbury, Clungunford and Clun .the quietest places under the sun'...they still are. They are also very picturesque and guess where the camera was ?- at home!

I had never actually found my way to Clungunford before and immediately fell in love with it. Stone cottages with quirky windows hid under huge oak trees, gardens peeped out stuffed with hollyhocks and flocks, sweet peas and roses...chickens scratched in the dust outside a gate and alongside a basket of obviously free range eggs stood some jars of home made jam and an honesty box. I could live there, and paint pictures and write a best seller ...it just looks like that sort of place.

Today we went back for said diesel cap that for the price must be cast in solid gold but that apparently was of little consequence seeing as it was me that paid for the dratted thing in an effort to teach me ...TEACH ME ...to be more careful in future ...mutter mutter. We also took HIS picture to be reframed and restored ...with any luck it may disintegrate when they take it to pieces but I know I'm not that lucky. I stuck my two pennyworth in re the frame and the mount in the hope that I may find the 'new look' a bit more inspiring than the original. Its not a picture that inspires me to anything really, except a migraine perhaps, but he loves it so up with it I will have to put! So here IT is in its 'before' state and in two weeks time we'll see if IT is any better in an 'after' state ...somehow I doubt it. Anybody that doesnt know IT depicts the story of Beddlegirt - oops sorry can never resist that, BEDDGELERT ...Prince Llewellyn and his faithful hound Gelert who came to a rather nasty end.

Today after depositing picture from hell we found another route back, this time we found even more poetic names as we followed Offa's Dyke, and dozens of walkers in waterproofs, Pentre nant, Two Crosses, Three Gates, Edenhope, The Lurkeys, Mainstone, Llanhedrick, Shadwell, Mardu, Cefn Einion, Colebatch and back to one of my all time favourites Bishops Castle, I could live there as well. I could happily wander up and down the steep main steet listening to the quarter hour bell on the Market Hall clock and live in a purple town house with a black and white gable, or a green one with white spots...yep ...I forgot the camera again today ...blast!