Vale of Rheidol Railway.

A sunny morning progressed to an even sunnier and very windy afternoon and evening.

I had a good start to the day getting both Duo Lingo and homework done before breakfast and washing on the line soon after. The zoom lesson wasn't too hard as we have begun to learn to tell the time. Of course numbers aren't straight forward, apart from the usual mutations caused by whatever comes before the number there are also feminine versions and ....... an additional completely different number system. This is mostly interchangeable with the logical 1, 2, 3 etc and no odd words for teens or tens eg 25 is 2, 10, 5. but for time and money the different system is always used. We are only learning the numbers we need and not the whole lot in one go. More complexity to get my poor head around. Though we still have remnants of alternative number names in English; a dozen, half-dozen, score, four score and ten, pair, trio and a more modern one double top (40). And maybe some Northern hill farmers still use the old sheep counting system yan, tan tethera which acording to Wiki was also used for counting knitting stitches and derives from Brythonic Celtic languages.

Not much else to say about today, after Welsh class I began clearing the footings of the raised bed wall ready for the first course of blocks and then went off to Disco Aerobics. In her memory we danced to a number of Tina Turner's tracks. 

So as promised here are the train photos from yesterday.

The immaculate steam engine is one of several that runs on the Vale of Rheidol Railway which brings tourists from Aberystwyth to Devil's Bridge. The line terminates in the station yard alongside the popular cafe where we had our coffee and a bite to eat.

There's a loop of line that lets the engine turn round before hitching up to the passenger carriges, some closed and others open.

Ticket office on the left, cafe on the right. 

As we walked from the car park to the bridge we kept being passed by farm vehicles many of them towing sheep trailers. At first I thought it was just because we were in a rural area but when I looked further along the track I could see what had to be a livestock market. I've looked on-line and it is indeed a major sheep auction for the area. These were the average prices for sheep yesterday, cull (mutton?) ewes -£60, rams-£142 and Spring lambs-£103. I'm finding it harder and harder to justify eating much meat these days both for sentimental reasons and for ecological reasons. 

Living a wonderful life was this flock of chickens, and two roosters, clucking and digging around in a garden right next to the track.

Just as we were returning we were passed, not by a farm vehicle but what I call a squashed car or to be more specific a posh, squashed sports car. (Can you tell I'm not bothered about cars?) Then another and another  until ten cars had gone by. Peter tells me they were Lamborghinis and Aston Martins each costing around a million pounds. What an utter waste of money and you have to be small and flexible to get into them. Not for me then. (Correction, Peter now tells me the cars only cost around £300k. What do I know? Still far too much of a waste.)

Beautiful sea colours today.