Friday, June 27, 2003

 

Day 64. Saturday 28 June 2003. Garden Show.

Up early this morning and as I waited for Pat to rise and go down for breakfast I had a stroll up Blackbarn Lane, just a short walk to the end and though an opening into a paddock below the local school rugby pitch. I stood in the early sun for a while and looked over the fence to the stream meandering by and listening to the buzz of the bees and insects busy feeding off the wild flowers. There was not a sound human or traffic to be heard here, everything was at peace.

Returning, Pat was up and about preparing to go to breakfast so I made my way on foot down to Maryport Street in the warm sunshine. We had a lovely full Welsh breakfast with plenty of everything and I travelled back to our accommodation in the car with Pat.

After our return from breakfast and back in Blackbarn Lane Ian came to seek us out. We had been given tickets to visit the show gardens and to accompany Doreen. Doreen's recent leg problem was still troublesome and she was using a stick so we visited local gardens only of which there was quite a number. It was absolutely amazing how every garden could be so different and even more amazing how an interesting garden could be made from the smallest of plots with a little imagination. I enjoyed immensely our morning garden walk.

Later Vicky turned up full of vim and we went up to a large hillside farm garden near the castle in the late afternoon by shuttle. The garden organisers had arranged a shuttle service around town to the outlying gardens to which we availed ourselves. Nothing was flat up here but the house. The gardens were lovely and well laid out from the vegetable garden and glasshouse full of tomatoes to the old mature orchard, lawns and herbaceous borders. Even a small, fast running stream through the gardens disappearing under the lawn for a way and resurfacing in the lower reaches of the herbaceous border. There was work aplenty here to keep this garden in order.

The clock was ticking and well past 4 o' clock, it was time to go. A shuttle was just leaving so we sat in the shade and waited. And waited, it was obvious the shuttle was not coming back. Oh, what a long walk down hill and back down the rough lane in the blazing late afternoon sun. Pat, a non-walking person was horrified at the prospect being unsteady on rough ground at the best of times. Ian came to the rescue and with his long, long legs took off down the hill to bring the car up for us. We settled back in the shade to wait; it would take him some time we thought.

But he had left a moment too soon, the lady of the house had noticed our predicament and offered to run us down in her large Mercedes station waggon (estate car). We found Ian on the way down and our driver stopped and we thanked her profusely for our lift and we returned to Blackbarn Lane accompanied by Ian and Vicky, stopping off at the Blackbarn Inn for a coffee and sat in the shade for a while. Ian and Vicky asked us if we would like to go out to dinner this evening but we had to decline, we were tuckered out, over-heated and not in the least hungry with the heat of the day. All we wanted to do was rest.

As the evening cooled we decided to go to the Inn just situated a few paces at the Blackbarn Lane entrance for a cooling ale and then we started to feel hungry so the landlord made us a bowl of chips.

After another beer we headed back to our accommodation and we were in bed fast asleep in a trice.

posted by OldEric 4:24 pm