The end of the trail

We took our apples to be juiced , an annual errand that supplies a very delectable end product. The service is provided by a Care Farm at an old  mansion in the Teifi valley; the family it belongs to having turned the whole place over to a variety of altruistic purposes.

On the advice of the owner we set off to explore, following a path that stretched deep into the woods. It led to a beautifully constructed small  roundhouse of mud plaster, logs and hessian with coloured bottles set into the walls and chimes hanging by the window - an ideal overnight gaff if you were lucky enough to find it. Not so the ruined farmhouse close by, that had clearly been dilapidating for a century or more, its roof long underfoot.

What of the horse shoes? Nearby, and quite unexplained, was  a life size shape of  a covered wagon  made entirely of them. No explanation was offered but how many hours must have gone into the construction, hundreds of old iron hoops  welded together to create the spectral form?
(I wondered if there might have been a smithy here once.)

Other arresting items along the trail included: a poem dangling from a tree, a green man on a plinth, acoustic devices, a wooden boar... but the wagon felt like a monument to the  countless horses that ploughed and carried and  hauled and hunted across the acres in service to the men and women who laboured or lounged here in the heyday of the estate.

Some of the above-mentioned in extras