glimpses

We've been here for one week now.

It was a momentous move.  It felt like it took forever to get here, with four children, three dogs and two kitty's in one car with myself and Mr Wah.  We managed with only one loo break.  It was traffic and poor driving conditions that made it so slow.

It has been a strange and emotional move for me.  I have had to give up the dream of having my own small holding.  I was actually OK with giving it up, I think this is what surprised me the most.  I love having a garden, I love being outside, and I have always loved growing things, but back in Wales, I had several acres to play in but no garden.  It was land, and I found out that there is a huge difference between the two.

I have a garden now.  It is a reasonable size, and there are signs that there once was a thriving vegetable and flower garden.  There is space for chickens, but I don't think I will get them until next Spring.  It is so different to where we were in age, location, climate, size, everything.  I find it hard to make any comparison.  We were mild and soggy.  Now we are dry but freezing.  The wild up here is very, very wild.  We've already seen red deer in the field next door.  Brazenly grazing and not doing the shy hidey thing they are supposed to do.

We live wedged into a south facing hill, and although the trees have grown out of control, the previous owners kindly left us an Aeriel photo taking in the 1980's, which gives us an idea of what the place looked like then.  Pristine springs to mind.  A tall order for me.  So far I'm pleased because I have managed to rake up ten sacks of leaves.

This house is very, very old.  Before it came to us, it was inhabited by the same family for a long time.  They cared well for the building and structurally it is safe and dry.  It doesn't have a proper heating system (but proper depends on who you are and what you like) and there are a million little jobs that need doing around the place, but....oh, it is very lovely.

 

Today the chimney sweep came, and I got to learn most of his life history by the time he'd swept them all.  That's how long he was here for.  There are four downstairs and four up.  Whether we will use all of them remains to be seen, but they've all been inspected and save for one with a birds nest in it, all have been deemed as safe to use.  This was the worst one.  I think he thought I was strange taking a picture of dirt. 

 When we bought the house, we bought it as a job lot.  Meaning we bought the contents of the house.  I didn't realise this would include tinned food that went out of date in 2007, but then I also didn't count on being left old trunks, hat boxes, lamps and a hundred other lovely items.  We both thought we were just buying the big bits of furniture, so everything else has been a lovely surprise.  One day soon I will write a post just about the treasures we've found, as they really deserve their own special place.

 

The children have been really good about living in chaos, and the perpetual groundhog day of waking up, unpacking all day, going to bed.  We decided after five days of this routine to shake things up with a visit to the local ski resort.  We didn't expect there to be any snow, but we were wrong.

 

  

This is but a twenty minute drive from our house.  Eb thinks he is in heaven.  A snow board and hiking boots are his Christmas requests.  We also managed a sneaky meal in a local pub with a roaring fire afterwards.  And speaking of roaring fires:

All is good, if slightly disorganised in our world.