While releasing the geese, putting their food in, breaking the ice on their water bowl and clearing out their soiled sawdust, I was treated to several hard pecks on the back and a whack across the face with Mr Goose's wing for my pains. I have to admit that I am rapidly losing patience with him!!
After I'd come in from the frosty terraces (face still smarting from the whack courtesy of Mr Goose), we sat down for a warming bowl of porridge before getting ourselves ready to take Reggie out for a lovely sunny morning walk. We drove into town, parked in the main square and walked along the river bank, enjoying the bright sunshine and the view of the snow-capped hills in the distance.
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| There he goes! |
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| Here he comes! |
We then headed back into the square, popped Reggie back into the car for a short while and went to Bar Poulter for a quick coffee. Bar Poulter was buzzing with people - mainly older folk and mainly men. We assumed that they were all there for their pre (or post?) church beverages and weekly chin wag.
After our coffees it was time to head back home - it was around 11.30am when we got back in, so we decided to have an early lunch and make a start on our outdoor work straight afterwards. Thus, come 12.30pm, we were already revving up the power tools. We'd cleared the bramble clippings away from a small patch of terrace so that we could put Reggie somewhere closer to us this time - when he is attached to his stake in the garden we can barely see him from the terraces, and as the plan was to go even further down the terraces today, we decided we would feel happier if he was on the terraces with us. Once we'd cleared a patch on the third terrace down, Stuart banged a pole firmly into the ground and we settled Reggie down with his pillow, a bowl of water and his weekly treat: a ham bone.
In fact, by the time we'd descended to terrace numbers 5 and 6, we couldn't see Reggie from there either (at least, not when he was lying down chewing on his bone), but at least we knew he was closer to us than he would be in the garden.
We spent the next four hours toiling away with hedge trimmers, chain saw, hand saws and rakes doing battle against brambles - or, as I think they should be renamed, the Triffids. The brambles really do put up a serious fight against being cut down. They tangle up your hair (or mine, at least), they snag on your clothes (or skin - my arms are a mess - they look like I've done three rounds with a tiger cub), they wrap themselves around your legs, they loop themselves over your feet and attempt to trip you up, and they even undo your shoe laces in an attempt to make you fall flat on your face. Seriously, I have taken to double-knotting my boot laces recently (and tucking the ends into the tops of my boots), but that's no match for the brambles. Today, I triple knotted my boot laces but I still found my laces undone not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. Triffids I tell you, they're Triffids!!
Despite the best efforts of the brambles though, we managed to finish clearing terrace no. 5, clear terrace no. 6 and make inroads into terrace no. 7. Not bad for an afternoon's work!! We can see grassy patches on terrace no. 8 beyond, and we can see that there is a no. 9 beneath that - although whether we go as far as no. 9 we're not sure yet.
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| Brambles (Triffids). |
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| The start of terrace no. 7. |
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| Grassy patches on terrace no. 8 below. |
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| Terrace 5 with number 6 and 7 below. |
A full afternoon's bramble fighting certainly took its toll on our legs, arms and skin, and by the time 4.30pm rolled around we were more than ready to call it a day, collect up our tools, rescue the pup from his post and head inside to light the fire and rest our weary bodies. We'd worked up quite a sweat on the terraces in the sunshine, but it didn't take long to cool right down again, and with another frost due tonight, it's time to put some more logs on the fire and settle down for a cosy evening.
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