Really and Truly

We met at Chris and Val's lovely farm Pant y Turnor - The Turnor Valley. As Jennifer reported in her blog Chris had laid some aggregate down on the grassy area outside the house and erected a humongous tent. It must have taken days to erect it.

Getting to Llangadog from Stratford took about 3 1/2 hours. It was only 128 miles and the Mapquest deal said it would take 2 hrs 28 mins. Motorway all the way to Wales and then 'A' roads to Llangadog. Well, navigating with American logic we got lost. As did Emily coming from Bristol and Jenn and Anth from Evesham. We did finally get to the hotel to get cleaned up for the do.

Emily had been there a day early so she had scoped out the directions Chris had supplied and she had not been able to locate the farm. Now these directions were distributed by me to all the American and Runcorn side of the family. Problem was they contained a GLARING error. At the three horseshoes turn right shoulda been turn left. You cannot believe how hopelessly lost we were. And all the groups from the Runcorn side had the same confusing problem. Fortunately as sparsely inhabited as the area is anyone you asked knew Chris's farm.










Here is a video of Ken scaring his new great grandaughter....
And another of Ken's acceptance speech.

As you can see from the pics, we really and truly had a wonderful time truth be told.

Cymru am Byth

'Wales Forever'

My father was born in a small Welsh town called Hanmer. It is pretty close to the border with England and the only way one would know that you'd crossed over the border is that the directional traffic and road signs are written in Welsh as well as English.

So it was like going home last week when we went to my brother's 90th birthday celebration. It was terrific to see everyone there - Emily, Jenn and her family, Ray B and Kevin H and their families. And Chris and Val Downward who live in Llangadog were just terrific hosts. Their kids Andrew and Simon and their families were there too.

With so many people coming from so many distant places there was not enough room at the farm even though it has three houses. So we stayed at the famous Red Lion Hotel in Llangadog. The name of many Welsh towns begins with Llan -meaning church- followed by a saint's name. The hotel was first class and the owners were very friendly and hospitable. They took over the hotel about 5 years ago after the prior owner's daughter was shot and killed on the hotel's back doorstep by a local farmer who then shot and killed himself. I could not find why he did it other than that he was not stable minded and she was up the duff! And the farmer had a fixation on her. You figure it out.
Caroline Evans She was 27 and ran the hotel with her dad, a retired vet named David Evans.


Farmer William Davies

After firing into the ceiling twice a struggle ensued and he shot her and she died instantly lying by the rear door of the hotel. The old dog Charlie usually occupies that spot now.










Here's two shots of the hotel. One from their brochure and one that Emily took. The three big steps of stone to the right of the the door were placed there to allow gentlemen to easily mount their horses and date back to when the hotel was a coaching inn probably mid 18th century.


Anyway, just thought you'd like to know that.


Next post will be about the 90th birthday celebration.

Cruising Down The River

Despite us both catching a nasty cold with a lingering cough-(still got it after 12 days) we had a great trip and loved the Avon and its surroundings. We got to Stratford on Friday and watched a regatta that was going on and went to the market where we saw some interesting stuff....





After walking around town we caved in early and luckily that put us both right on to U.K. schedule. Next morning The Tuds met us and we drove down to Bidford to pick up the boat.




























..........Had a nice ploughman's at the pub there in Bidford while we waited for the boat to be prepped. Tud and Josie were thrilled with the cruise and we sailed them down to Evesham where we overnighted next to the lock. We went ashore for dinner and finished a nice bottle of red after we returned to the boat.

The next morning we boated back to Bidford and dropped them off.

Then we cruised back down river to Evesham and stayed there again. A very nice town with good restaurants and shopping. Monday morning we headed down towards Tewkesbury to meet The Martins there Tuesday at noon.We found a lovely little mooring and had a very nice evening watching the sunset and Canadian geese.

Here's a nice couple of videos we took that evening.......








Here we meet the Martins.....

And here Col and Anna get the Captain's hats that I bought them weeks ago. Colin had asked me if he could drive the boat and I told him he and Anna could be the captains of the boat. They loved the boat and the hats.

Colin and Anna sing with a little help from Grandad.........

The kids loved seeing and feeding the wildlife on the river...

And before you knew it our time with them on the boat was over and we said goodbye.
But we would see them again, with Emily in Wales a few days later.

Bev and I enjoyed the last two days on the river and by now our colds were merely coughs. Here is a video of our last lock. We did about 25 of them and they were sometimes a little like work!
We went up to Birmingham Friday afternoon and rented our car drove it back down to Bidford where we stayed the night before leaving for Wales early Saturday morning.
Here's Bev at the station in Stratford.

That's it for the boat trip. Wales next.

Poor old Patchie.............

Patchie may not be the smartest dog in the pack but she is cognizant of little clues and is on alert immediately when suitcases come out of the attic.

She noticed the layout of clothes on the spare bed and knows Bev would never leave stuff out like that unless...........???. Something's afoot. She adjusts her behavior at these times and acts like my shadow. During 'normal' times she merely watches me as I come in and out of her view as I move around the house. Now she must know what I am doing all the time. I feel sad that we will be leaving her at the kennel for 2 weeks and as a as an act of contrition I have been walking her longer than I usually would in these swelteringly hot 'dog' days of Houston summer.

I also bathed her and brushed her teeth so she's ready for anything.

There will be no posts for a while. We're off to Old Blighty manana. We will see friends and family and float on a rented self-drive 'narrow-whacker' down the Avon and up the Severn.
Ta-ta for now!

Evelyn's One - Evelyn's Gone

The whole bunch of them along with Li'l Bev left town. As Steph said in her space it was a sorry goodbye when all of them piled into the limo. We will miss them for the next two months and I couldn't help thinking of not seeing Ev's first steps and she will probably learn to chat while she's gone.

Father's Day yesterday and it was really good. My lovely wife waited on me hand and foot and I got phone calls from all my girls. As an added bonus I had my usual Saturday crossword to do on Sunday 'cos it arrived late and I worked Saturday p.m. We spent most of the morning thinking of Tim Russert and feeling sad that he had died suddenly on Friday. We always liked to watch his Sunday show.

Thanks to all of you for lovely day. The U.S. Open closed it all up and there'll be more of that today.

I did take some pictures of the Nantucket bound family as they were leaving.








And I did a couple of videos too..........
Here's Evelyn playing with her White Elephant and making the rude noises she knows will get a response from Nana and G'dad.

Here Nana is walking the twins and baby down towards the limo and Graham is telling us where they are off to for the summer. Massachusetts, Canada and Seattle.

Evelyn's One

Sunday June 8th was Evie's 1st birthday and a lot of people came to help celebrate. Here are a few pics and 3 vids.......

Wanna see a pretty girl????

Here's 3 pictures and a small video has been loaded to youtube under get2eric............. when you get to 'get2eric' on YouTube sort the videos by 'date added' and the first will be today's vid......