Day 20 - Friday 24th April. We had a relatively leisurely start to the day, and first went to Welshpool for some essential items, then on to John F's office so I could post the latest blogs. So it was after 10am that we set off from Woodlands farm, down the road to the cross-roads where we had finished yesterday. It was dry again, but more cloudy and breezy. The first part of the day continued over farmland but was fascinating for John F because he has lived and worked around here for 20 years but never seen Offa's Dyke nor walked these paths and seen Welshpool from this perspective.
It is good to have some company for a while: John and I have been together all day every day for nearly three weeks, and conversation inevitably becomes more stilted and predictable. There are some strains, centred around our different walking speeds (I tend to go on ahead and then wait for him) and shear over-familiarity combined with missing our loved ones. Overall, we are getting on well and don't argue but cooperate well, and this will have to continue for the next 5 weeks or so. Therefore having another's company for a couple of days is a pleasant diversion and John F is always lively and amusing.
Our route then climbed steadily up to 1,400 feet through pine forests, then over open grass with great views over Welshpool. We might have seen the mountains of Snowden had the weather been clearer. 'Our lunchtime destination was a pub on the main Shrewsbury road that we crossed just after 1pm, but it was closed. We then made a rather silly decision, to walk towards Welshpool where John thought we'd find another that was open. This took us a couple of miles out of our way and meant that we would not reach our target for the day, and also involved some walking on the main road. We did get our beer and some food and enjoyed it, but had we continued on the path, would have found a better, open pub without the diversion.However there was no way we could tell - you just can't rely on pubs to be open at lunchtime any more. One benefit of our diversion was that we got to walk along more of the Shropshire Union Canal that runs through Welshpool. It is quite delightful - a peaceful gentle waterway running through the woods and fields and only a few yards from the trading estates and main roads.
At 4.30 we finished at The Powis Arms, a pub by the canal run by a local farmer's wife as a sideline, and very nicely too. We had walked 16 miles and were still 4 miles short of the day's objective, but it was a varied and amusing day. Vera who is John F's business manager, collected us from the pub and took us first to a supermarket in Welshpool where I did some food shopping in order to cook us a nice dinner, rather than going out again. So after I'd had a shower, I got everything out and started chopping. I put some chicken stock on to boil, but couldn't work out how the hob worked - it was just a glassy black plate. John came in telling me it was an induction hob and showed me how to press the invisible buttons, so I waited for the stock to heat and continued chopping. After 10 minutes, I realised that the hob wasnt heating the stock and we then spent about an hour trying to get it to work. It was now 8.30 and I had prawns and a boned chicken and veg to cook. It was rather late to go all the way into Shrewsbury and we had spent quite a on food, so what to do? Well, I cooked garlic prawns in the oven, which worked OK, so we had a starter. Then John called someone he knew who was living in another flat who kindly said I could use their kitchen. I decided to knock up a stir fry and rice and carried everything out of John's flat, along the road in into his friend's flat. 20 minutes later we were sat around the dining room table eating our main course, and I went to bed early.
No comments:
Post a Comment