A GENTLE DAY

When we woke up this morning, Mr. HCB and I looked out of the window and still can’t believe that we are staying in such a beautiful place. The top left of the collage shows the view from our balcony, looking over to the owners’ greenhouse, which, having looked through his binoculars, Mr. HCB assures me is used as such - just hope he doesn’t get any ideas of having one that big at home!

We were both thrilled to see a sparrow hawk, jay, several coots, a swan, tufty ducks and shelducks - all before breakfast!

The sun came out, but went back in again quite quickly, so we decided to make a quick trip to the nearby town of Caerwys, the smallest town in Britain with a Royal Charter, to buy our provisions. I’m sure it’s not often you get a Butcher’s, a delicatessen and a Post Office in the same shop - what intrigued us was the fact that they used pencil and paper to write down the prices and then the butcher added the figures up in his head. Interestingly, I just handed over my £20 note and didn’t even query the amount!

We then decided as it had started raining that we would go back to The Boathouse but on the way stopped at Afonwen Craft Centre, where we wandered around for a while and then we met the lady in the bottom right of the collage. Linda, known as ElleShe, is what is known as an Encaustic Artist - which involves painting in wax using a hot iron and she is holding the one that she demonstrated for us, and which we bought. She told us that she began using this type of art as she was recovering from brain tumour surgery, which had left her in a coma for two months when she needed to learn to focus again. She had to find something that wasn’t too difficult or complicated and now teaches it as an art therapy to other brain injured people. What an amazing example of courage and determination.

Today she was at the Craft Centre as a visiting artist and she certainly had some beautiful pieces that she had done; we were delighted to buy ours, as all profits go towards brain tumour research. She was a lovely lady and we had quite a long chat with her - I wish now I had had a go myself.

We are now back at The Boathouse and Mr. HCB has got the wood burning stove going well, so as it is now dark and quite windy we will be staying in. I am quite happy just to sit and look at the fire - as we said to each other earlier, we just want simple pleasures, and we certainly have them here, in abundance.

Today I am grateful for:

1. Seeing lots of different ducks on the lake
2. Meeting Linda and hearing her story
3. Feeling the warmth from the wood burning stove when the wind is howling outside