I dont particularly like this time of the year . The mornings are cool. The skies are like a grey blanket covering us and keeping the sun out. When the suns does appear it swelters . It is so muggy that the trousers I wore this morning are discarded for shorts . The thin jumper thrown back in the cupboard and the T Shirt dug out . The air feels still . The sun burns down . High summer has arrived and with it unpleasant sultry conditions . We dont do summer well . The grass is turning yellow . The hedgerows are dusty. The flowers in the fields are almost over . Everything looks a uniform yellow or off tinge of brown . The schools are out for summer . Well at least some of them have broken up for the summer break last week . Others finish today and a few will close down next week . It will be unpleasant trying to visit the seaside when the crowds are out and the beaches full of the families enjoying the summer holidays . It will be more of a home summer than an away one for us . We
rarely travel far from the end of July , through August . Picking up travel again in early September . Prices in campsites are too high even if you could find one . Not for us this summer in Britain travelling . Covid too is raising its ugly head . Numbers are rising but hospital admission seem pretty stable . Hopefully they will stay this way . We still hear of cases . One reported in the Keep Fit class at the church this week . Life is still rumbling on with Covid . Bit like it is with Boris and the elections for the next Tory Leader . Unpleasant and unneccessary .
After the plans to go to see gardens were thwarted I began to think it was perhaps a godsend with hindsight . Who wants to see three gardens where the plants would be all the same ? Who wants to see border upon border of similar plantings ? And who wants to stand out in the sweltering heat . Perhaps the park was a good idea . At least there was shade . Our next stop would we hoped provide even more shade and something slightly
As we drove we talked about the new fan for the van which had turned up today . Unboxed it lies on the floor . The Maxxair is the new must have addition to motorhomes . No need to suffer the heat in the van when you can fit a 12 volt fan which will suck the hot air out . The old velux roof light needs to be removed . A job which should be easy . The sikaflex holding it will be a nightmare to take off and we need to make sure we pick a dry day . We dont want rain . That could ruin the whole operation . Also we dont want it too hot on top of the van roof . That will be unbearable . It is a no win situation at the moment trying to pick the right day . The job should be easy shouldnt it? Are these jobs easy ? . We will have a fan ready for our Late Summer trip . Well that is the plan . And of course all good plans ................
lovely little village just a few miles out of Wrexham . A place I knew well . The sort of place where I found myself recalling tales again from childhood . Always walked down here with my gran and when I was a teenager walked for miles down Pontycapel Lane . Pont - a bridge , Capel - a chapel . So once there was a chapel on a bridge and this was the lane that led there . A railway station latterly converted to a halt . That closed in 1963 . I should remember it but I have no recollections despite many walks that way .
Colliers Park - where the Welsh FA national team practice . The new training facility looks excellent . New buildings and all on the old colliery land .
The old oak tree . Long gone with the stump carved into a bell . The bell is linked with Gresford in the old poem . The seven wonders of Wales . Or to be more precise the seven wonders of North Wales . Pistyll Rhaedr - a waterfall of 73 metres which falls over three stages . Not magnificent but
substantial in our country . Wrexham St Giles church whose steeple can be seen for miles . The 21 yew trees in Overton churchyard . Planted between the 3rd and 12th centuries .
