One of the nicest things about camping at Chapel Farm House (aside from sponging off our Host Family) was the short, easy walk to the Church of St. Mary, which just happens to be a Grade II listed building dating back from the early 1400s, with additions in the 1600s and some restoration in 1883. … Read more The Church of St Mary, Craswall, Herefordshire
I have been camping, and lo it was very much fun! Sweet Babou and I and the small herd of daughters were invited to go along with our friends, whom we call our Host Family who are showing us how to be properly British and do British stuff, on a small camping trip for the… Read more Camping in the Welsh Marches
Sunday was a lovely, sunshiny day in South Wales so my Sweet Babou and I loaded the kids up and took them to meet some friends for an amiable amble through Fforest Fawr (which means the big (hunting) woods in Welsh), also known to locals as Bluebell Woods. It feels wonderfully rural but in reality… Read more A Sunny Sunday in Fforest Fawr
Yesterday my husband and I took our children to Margam Country Park, which is near Port Talbot in south Wales. It is more than 800 acres of pretty landscape and and home of some remarkable historic buildings. To wit: the ruins of Margam Abbey, the Margam Orangery from the Regency period, and Margam Castle. Thus,… Read more Ruins and Regency
On 16 September 1400 Owain Glyndwr reclaimed his hereditary title of Prince of Powys Fadog and within four years he would be crowned the last Tywysog Cymru – the Prince of Wales – and would lead the Welsh in a final uprising against the English in a bid for national independence. The Welsh were never… Read more The Last Tywysog Cymru
Roald Dahl is one of the most famous authors of children’s stories in the world, and since he was born in Cardiff on 13 September 1916 he is considered a native son of Wales, which the Welsh are justifiably proud of. However, this is cheating a bit; he was the son of two Norwegian… Read more One Century of Roald Dahl
Today is the first day of school and my kids are not going (at least for now) to the schools I had thought they would be attending when I first planted my tuchus in South Wales. This has moved my cheese, and I am trying to adjust … with limited success I must confess. The… Read more School Daze
Most people know a least a little bit about the time God saved France from being owned by the English when He sent a French peasant girl named Joan of Arc to lead the Gallic troops and repel the Anglo aggressors. Fewer people know He had saved France from the English not long before, when… Read more The Death of Henry V
All languages have taboo words (the so-called dirty words for example) and all languages will lose innocent words that sound a little too much like a taboo word. No one uses the worded niggardly any more, even though it simply means “miserly”, because it has a very bad word indeed in it. It has no… Read more Feckful and Feckless
There is no Utopia and now we have discovered the dark underbelly of Welsh life – how they assign schools. Good Lord is it frustrating. Okay, in the USA you are guaranteed a place in the school of your district. If you move into that district on August 20th and school starts on the 21st,… Read more The Fly in the Ointment