Sunny.

A lovely sunny day to celebrate our 46th wedding anniversary. Peter gave me these lovely roses and enough extra nice chocolates and other sweet goodies to add at least a stone if I ate them all in one go. I'm hoping I will have enough restraint to chose a small selection each day. That way I can spread the enjoyment out for longer and perhaps burn off the calories more easily. I gave Peter a selection of bitters (beer made with barley and hops). From the vast selection in the supermarket I tried to chose beers produced by local breweries though I didn't realise that some of the ones I picked are very strong (5%). Peter was quite happy with my choices. We're having barbecued spare ribs for dinner tonight too.

All morning a police helicopter was flying overhead, something was going on. When the helicopter flew very slowly along the cliff at the lowest possible height I feared the worst though I wondered why the police were looking and not the coastguard helicopter or the lifeboat crew who were out for their usual Sunday training. Things got clearer when I read this article. Yesterday £90 million worth of cocaine roped together with empty containers as floats had washed up on a beach near Aber so I guess they were looking to see if there were any more. As well as the helicopter the police were searching up and down the beach. As far as anybody knows no more cocaine has been found. There's bound to be some very angry criminals out there.

I'd woken early so got my Duo Lingo done, sent off this week's homework and put some washing in the machine all before our usual Sunday breakfast. And then it was time to meet up with the walking group at Furnace to explore yet another new route up into the hills.

From the car park we walked along the little river to the main road, which passes over that stone bridge above.

Having bravely crossed the main road with its fast traffic and limited visibility we climbed almost vertically up the wooded slope on the opposite side of the river to the old funace buildings Peter and I visited a while back.

From there we could look down on the spectacular waterfall flowing over the dam built hundreds of years ago to provide hydro-power to the furnace. If you look carefully at the photo above the path Peter and I took to see the waterfall can be seen halfway up the right hand edge of the photo.

We climbed a little further through the woods and emerged on a mossy stone wall lined lane that took us higher up the hillside.

Our intended route was a path somewhere through that bracken covered slope on the right which would have led to the top of the hill. Unfortunately nobody has walked that way since covid and the bracken had completely obscured the path. Instead we tried walking along the edge of this field (not an official footpath) hoping to be able to hop over the fence and go up from there. But with no way to cross the fence we had to return back to the road.

Having come back down to the gateway myself and our group leader volunteered to stomp our way through the bracken to see if we could find the path or at least an easier route.

We got most of the way up but with the bracken and brambles getting taller and taller decided it probably wasn't the best idea to go that way. 

Back down the road we went for a bit,

and then swung up the side of the hill on an easy grass path.

There we stopped at this rocky outcrop for our lunch/snack stop. 

From where we had amazing views down to the estuary and across the wetlands to the sea.

We followed this easy path across the slope of the hill and spotted what looked like a clear path to the top of the hill. But we didn't have time to explore that way today. Instead we headed down the hill, my poor knee, and back into the trees.

Passing a mill and some old buildings in the process of being restored we walked beneath oak trees that had scattered acorns all across the road and then back down to the main road. There we crossed over and walked along a track that brought us back to the car park where we had left our cars. 

 - We've had a delicious dinner which I topped off with an excellent salted caramel chocolate brownie from Pwdin and now we're about to watch Strictly. You know that summer's over when Strictly reappears. Time to talk of ganchos and fleckles.