Our palatial converted threshing barn in Peterstow, near Ross-on-Wye where we stayed for a week with Mum and Dad and Tom, Esther, Grace, and Lily May. A beautiful location with stunning views over the Herefordshire and, in the distance, Welsh hills and a wood in front of the house that was the home of at least one buzzard. And a chiffchaff that spent the entire week chiff-chaffing away but which I never managed to spot.
The bank holiday weekend was superb — beautiful, hot, sunny weather and we spent most of Saturday, Sunday and Monday staying pretty close to home: playing in the garden, walking to the local church (St Dubricius, with Anglo Saxon origins, a lovely pipe organ, and pretty frescos), nipping out with Dad to a local car boot sale, popping round to the local hotel for their Bank Holiday fun day, and having the special afternoon party to celebrate Mum and Dad’s 70th birthdays.
The days following the BH were somewhat cooler and overcast and meant we tended to play in the garden a little less. We pieced together the 1000-piece jigsaw Dad had brought, made yummy food in the enormous but pretty badly-equipped kitchen (luckily, we had brought a lot of stuff ready-made, and kept the rest pretty simple).
Tom knew someone in Herefordshire who generously lent me a guitar and Tom and I put down a version of GI Blues using Logic on his laptop. He had his snare and kick pedal and some cymbals. You can hear the result on soundcloud.
We did a couple of day-trips in the gloomier weather. One to Symonds Yat, where we saw, in the distance, though the drizzle, a pair of breeding Peregrine falcons; and another to a minature steam railway/adventure park in the Forest of Dean where dad, of course, knew the owner, or manager, or something.
