Mainly Sunny.

The day began quite cloudy with the weatherman saying that cloud in the west of the country would spread eastwards. What he didn't mention was that here the cloud would thin and then move on by mid-day giving us a hot afternoon. By evening we were back to cool and grey again.

This morning we drove to Machynllth to meet up with some of our classmates for a morning of working on our Welsh. Our usual cafe in the old parliament house was closed due to some work being done in the kitchen so we marched down the road looking for an alternative venue. Being a Monday morning most of the other cafes were also closed but we found one in a bakery. Being smaller it was a bit noisy but we were able to move to a bigger table away from the coffee machine where we could spread out our course folders. We had a productive session going through the last homework and sharing any points of confusion. (I am easily confused.) Although we have a long way to go before we can converse with fluent Welsh speakers we have made great progress since the first lesson's tentative "My name is ...." and " I come from ...." The bakery cafe was a good alternative. I had an excellent slice of carrot cake with my coffee and though they didn't have any bacon Peter had a satisfying ham and egg sandwich. Two fried eggs and a big slab of proper ham in freshly cut wholemeal bread.

Afterwards I went in a couple of charity shops, only found a children's book written in Welsh and English for 50p but it's fun to look. I also had a long browse in the fancy card shop and bought some cards for future use. I had a quick look in the Co-Op where I found some beer battered onion rings for Peter and some fruit tea-bags for cold tea for me to try, both in the reduced section. 

Peter stayed in the car while I did my shopping and then we went for a stroll on the path that runs behind the main street out towards the playing fields.

We came across a communal herb garden with some fruit bushes and apple trees being trained along wires.

Back home I built one more brick pillar by the street wall though I need to swap some stuff around before I can bring out the last plastic trough. After that I'll have to wait for the return of my troughs that were borrowed for the community hub. Then I went down to the front garden and worked on cleaning up the big facing blocks. If only whoever built the old raised beds had stuck to using mortar instead of cement to stick them together. Some comes off with a good whack but most of today's needed painstaking chipping off. A good thing that the neighbours on both sides weren't at home as even I was getting fed up with the noise.

I think the 'keys' on this sycamore look like a big cluster of moths.