OUR 2ND TEMPORARY HOME - Aug/Sept 2012

After 2 weeks at the first place, we packed up our belongings and headed for our next rented home - an hour's drive. The cats traveled better this time as I negotiated roundabouts and bends from the start. The new place had more room so was more suitable. We would be here for 4 weeks before having to move on again.

As it is situated on a fairly busy road, again we decided to keep the cats in, at least for the time being. The house had great views, which changed from day to day, hour to hour depending on the weather. It overlooked a graveyard instead of a back garden. Beyond that, nostalgia set in, as we spotted a little white bus weaving its way through fields and around hills just as the little red van did in Postman Pat land and probably still does! Beyond Postman Pat land is the sea, the St Tudwal's Islands and the Snowdonia range.

I wanted to watch the Paralympics - ideal with plenty of time on my hands. However, the signal here was very poor and the TV only worked sometimes. If we found the signal, but then moved our bodies slightly, the signal disappeared again - for days at a time. 

I wanted to make phone calls, but again, a dodgy signal meant that the mobiles only worked in rare fine weather. 

I wanted to access the Internet so Will bought a dongle. This gave us Internet access - but only if we were pressed right up against the kitchen window! Our way around this was to make twice weekly visits to the nearest Little Chef for their free Wi Fi,  to access emails, etc.

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At the end of August friends visited. We took a glorious walk along a long sandy beach (of which we have a large selection) accompanied by the usual strong winds, whisking up the sand into a mini sandstorm. The beach is huge, but only a couple of dog walkers shared it with us.

Early September, we drove to another large beach. An interesting one, surrounded by hills under which sits a row of about 80 colourful beach huts. This one however, is clearly a very busy beach. At the end of an overcast afternoon with an autumn feel to it, there were hoards of people in towels and swimwear climbing the steps from the beach to the car park, having spent the day there. At £4 per parking ticket, perhaps they were getting their money's worth. Meanwhile we wore fleeces and cagoules, and I wondered if they lived in a parallel universe? Probably 'not so parallel' going by what they were not wearing! 

We met family at another beach later in the month. It was a hot Saturday afternoon. For your £4 you park your car wherever you want on this vast expanse of beach, along with the hoards, who take out their deckchairs and picnics and sit by their cars watching the sea while the more energetic families play cricket, and the boy racers zoom across the beach to get as close to the sea as they can in their souped up Ford Fiestas without sinking, before zooming away again across the sea in jet-skis. 

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At this time we visited our own house approximately twice a week. On our first visit we found it surrounded by mini diggers and the suchlike. 

A tractor with trailer were carting away rubble and big boulders from excavations made. We hadn't thought of asking to keep any boulders that were revealed. Unfortunately the one on the trailer was very heavy and too difficult to lift down again, but following our request to keep any further ones, the builders started a rock pile. 

The foundations for the new conservatory were down and now resembled an outdoor swimming pool!

Horror of horrors! The architect phoned Will to tell him that one of the two chimneys needed to be demolished as so much damp was getting in through it. My heart sank. The only way to get around it was to rebuild the whole stack from floor level - Floor? What floor? On my last inspection, we had no floor! This would be at a great expense and we already wondered if our budget would cover the work being done. Will took no time in telling the architect “No problem, get rid of it”!

I felt sick. My aim has always been to retain as much as possible of the original character of this old house. I have already had to accept that my little painted wooden sash windows are out of the question. Such windows would be made and installed at the expense of the rest of the building works, and then apparently wouldn't last long with the Welsh coastal weather. 

It is of my opinion that a Welsh cottage needs 2 chimneys and small wooden sash windows. I cringed with guilt whenever I saw a cottage which had managed to preserve both these. However, I have since, after a fashion, managed to justify our decisions, in an effort to rid me of my guilt and sickness ...

1. The original part of the building has been added to so many times over the years, that we have no idea what it originally looked like, but it probably only had two habitable rooms. It would be virtually impossible to, and impracticable to return it to its original state. 
2. The existing windows are plastic, in reasonable condition and not the shape they would have been, not that there would have been windows in the barn buildings in the first place. So we would not be replacing original windows,
3. Although a Welsh cottage would not have had a conservatory, we are making improvements by replacing an existing one that was in a state of disrepair. 
4. The lost chimney? Well, it wasn't being used, and we had no plans to use it. But to me, it just looked right. Having spent a long time trying to dry the house, it would be a pointless chore if we are continue letting the damp in through an unused chimney.
5. We have potentially saved the house from becoming derelict. Derelict houses here cannot be rebuilt in accordance with the Council's rules in this area of outstanding beauty.

There! I feel better now!


Next blog - Meet the cats.