New kid on the rock

The first kid of the year for the wild goats. Two females from the ‘above the railway gang’ with one of two small kids. The one out of sight couldn’t get over the broken fence so the others were waiting for it. Photo taken at full zoom i.e. we didn’t get too close! Thank you Sandra and John for being the first to spot them.

Paddington Princess dragged out of pub

Don’t worry, it’s not Kate Middleton on a night out with the lads, but the world’s oldest, narrow gauge steam engine. She was delivered to the Ffestiniog Railway in 1863 and was retired from service in 1946 as the last working loco when the railway ran out of steam. For some years she was at Blaeanu Ffestiniog, a symbol of the epic reconstruction of the line. In the last 31 years she has been in the museum and latterly the expanded bar at harbour station.

A bit of oil to cross The Cob

On 10^th November, she was dragged out of her corner having first been jacked up and then jacked across on a pair of metal sheets lubricated with Fairy Liquid. Shifting ten tonnes of loco within the confines of a pub is no easy task – the first ten metres took about three hours. With the help of a tractor with forklift she was eventually dumped onto the railway track and towed across The Cob for a bit of restoration.

Today, St David’s Day, she was unveiled at Paddington Station where she'll spend the next 6 weeks brightening up the daily commutes. Thereafter she has several other ambassadorial appearances to make.

This is how she was dragged out and her corner in the pub taken by a steam (horse drawn) fire engine.

Festival No. 6 – checkmate and amazing hair

Checkmate

Bleary eyed festival goers were in good spirit on the morning of the third day. Down in The Village, the re-enactment of Checkmate, by The Six of One (Prisoner appreciation society), brought back distant memories for those of us who’d watched 1960s TV. 

Osadia

This was followed by Osadia, a colourful duo from Barcelona performing elaborate hair transformations to willing volunteers. 

Everyone seemed to have a good time. What's more the festival was so good that it has been declared the Best Small Festival by judges at the NME awards. Da iawn!  

Taking the train to buy the papers

Half term with the trains running two per day. I walked up to Dduallt, on my way finding an old billy goat’s horn in the bracken, and flagged down the train. Five minutes later and we eventually pulled out of the station. 

Newspapers bought at the Blaenau Co-Op I looked in to the engine to ask the driver if he’d drop me at Campbell’s. This was not any old driver but my neighbour Ray who explained some complex mechanical problem that had occurred when I boarded the train at Dduallt. He borrowed the guard’s mobile and phoned ‘control’ to say they’d need to find another engine for tomorrow. Seemed an odd mix of technologies, the steam and the mobile.

Ready for Spring

An old oak has been shedding the occasional rotten branch onto the railway and the fear is that one day the whole tree might fall, causing substantial damage. Landowners are responsible and apart from putting right the physical damage, there is also the question of lost revenue which could be quite considerable in peak season.

We were very pleased to accept the railway’s kind offer to do the work for us. They arrived with wagon-mounted chipper and cherry picker and this and many other trees were sensitively pruned. All the weight of our old oak now leans away from the railway so when it eventually goes it won’t be a problem and in the meantime birds can continue to nest in it and feast on the insect life it supports.

We’ve been helping Wales get ready for Spring as well. Sue and myself somehow got ourselves selected as one of the couples to be used in the Visit Wales advertising campaign. So please don’t have too much of a shock if you see us on TV in March! Here’s what an earlier advert looked like:

New Year Walk

For New Year’s Day we walked past the wolf in Coed y Bleiddiau, in obvious need of a winter brush up. This year’s rainfall has produced vigorous growth; sometime last April the warden asked if I could carry forty buckets of water from the stream and empty them over the roots. Like the effect of a hose pipe ban there has been no fear of the roots drying out since then. We’ll be tending to the wolf sometime this month, weaving in the new growth, so that it looks more wolf like and less of a hedgehog.

From Llyn Mair we walked down from the mill pond admiring the hydro electric works in progress. Strange to see the pipes running overground but I’m sure they’ll be out of sight soon; some sections already had a hessian looking material draped over them. The turbine is due to be installed any day soon and Plas Tan y Bwlch will be glowing green by Easter as it once did long ago from 1905 to 1928.

Sadly the Grapes in Maentwrog was closed so, refreshments forsaken, we cut across the fields along the flood embankment next to the Afon Dwyryd. What a bonus, a blob of space jelly with what looked like caviar or slime mould embedded. Anyone got any ideas what this might be? I took a photo of something similar last year which the Discovery Channel has bought the rights to use in a programme they are making on the subject. 

Beside the junction of a stream flowing into the river was the newly cut stump of a trunk that was 90% hollow. I saw the canoe like trunk being driven away safely strapped on the back of a trailer. Must have been on its way to a special place, maybe the workyard of a well-known sculptor in Blaenau Ffestiniog? After all this was the point at which David Nash’s oak boulder entered the Dwyryd. 

From the valley floor a diagonal walk up through the woods to the waterfall and home. Along the way our local heft of goats: a seasoned billy, a decrepit female and two other possibly pregnant females. Hopefully they will produce kids this year. 

Boxing Day Train

No fluffy white snow this year but the steam looked good through the trees.