Time Travellers Return

Bryan's Ground, near Presteigne

[Cue Doctor Who TARDIS effect...]
Vworp... Vworp... Neeeooooww... Neeeeooooww...

And here we are, safely back from our excursion into the late 1970s. Good to see you again, here in, let me see, 2007. What? Oops. I told you we should have taken that left at Abergavenny. Everybody back on the bus!

Avon Gorge, Bristol

The picture above, despite a certain timelessness, is indeed from 2017; it is the view over the Avon Gorge from our Bristol flat, the evening before we left for Wales. If I were to spend more time there, I think I'd rig up something so I could take the exact same picture whenever the light, the weather, or the season said, "Oh, all right, go on, then!" Nothing so mechanical as a time-lapse sequence, of course, but it is such a fine, ever-changing vista to look out on from your kitchen at any time of day or year, that it invites documentation. In fact, I've been thinking I might retreat there for some stretches of time in solitary to get some proper writing done, but I'm pretty sure I'd spend far too long just watching the river flow. Although I suppose I could always sit on the other side of the flat, and gaze upon the garages and service-road instead.

Llynheilyn Lake

This is the view from our new Easter retreat, on the evening we arrived. Yes, yes, that is what is known, technically, as a "sunset". So sue me. In 1977 they were still quite fashionable. That lake is alive with breeding wildfowl, including a regal pair of nesting swans, apparently building themselves a motte and bailey castle in the reeds as a bastion against an assorted rabble of little grebes, tufted ducks, moorhens, Canada geese, and those ultimate unruly peasants, continually squabbling seagulls.

After the first morning it did rain quite a lot, off and on, which – although it didn't bother us much – may explain our Prime Minister's unexpected change of mind over holding a snap general election, following her own Easter hillwalking break further north and west in Snowdonia. Now, it seems, it's going to be our turn to suffer. She clearly needs better boots: mine were fine, rain or shine.