under another sun

A splendid night's sleep in the Llandindrod Wells Metropole. Up in time to have breakfast. The hotel has an air of faded grandeur and there were only a few people in the big dining room. We scooped up lots of breakfast, and drank some of their curiously tasteless coffee. Then packing and taking everything to the car and checking out. Noticed near reception a nice naive painting of the green hotel. We were given a large postcard sized copy of it for free. Then a mooch about Llandindrod Wells. It must have been a lovely place once, when the spa was really going strong. Beautiful buildings, but like the hotel all a bit run down, and like everywhere, shops that were closed. A nice little park. Then a lakeside interlude with dragons. A large lake dragon sculpture in the lake, and the paths up to the building at the side of it, where there was a cafe, toilets and red or green dragon pedaloes and so on were crowded with Canada geese, swans with cygnets, and ducks and moorhens and so on, w...

Croissants with Sue and John, and Lorraine and I packed up and made our fond farewells to Sue and John, who had been wonderfully welcoming as usual. After two nights with them, Lorraine and I felt more relaxed than I had done in a while.  Then we drove the half an hour or so off to see Maxine and Simon (who arrived after work), and Emelia who was back from University. Long chats sitting outside in the sunshine, in their increasingly lovely garden, with the field next door just having been mown, and the grass drying ready for baling. Maxine, who is Lorraine's cousin, is always so welcoming and warm. Emilia, meanwhile, is really enjoying her degree in Psychology, and showed us a great tome of a family bible she had bought second hand. She loves books, of all kinds, including philosophy. She is also doing powerlifting, and loving it. Tay was doing a summer job so we didn't see him. Simon arrived in his chef's whites. Interesting chatting to him about his love of independently ...