Autumn Colours.

At last I was able to go out walking with my Sunday group on this mainly sunny day.

I had a lift with a couple who live around the corner and then we collected another person to save burning fuel and on parking. Which was a good thing as we were a large group this week, 14 in all and the cars had to be parked along the narrow road that leads to the Rheidol Falls.

From there we walked back beside the river passing a field of alpacas. 

Then turned up a track passing a bright red acer in a pretty garden.

It was only a short walk up the steep side of the valley as the main goal of the afternoon was to help Suzanna burn up a load of brushwood. The wood had been lying about in her field for sometime as the summer had been too dry to risk lighting fires. The skeletal remains of the mature trees on the left-hand ridge show just how close the summer fires had got to Suzanna's place and why the fire service had advised her to evacuate. (She didn't.)

There were a couple of brief showers as we dragged the brushwood to an enormous bonfire supervised by Bob but eventually most of the wood was reduced to ash. If it had been left lying in the field it would have allowed brambles to take over and they are a real nuisance to get rid of.

As the bonfire slowly burnt itself out the Vale of Rheidol steam train came chugging up the far side of the valley on the way to Devil's Bridge. This is the last day that the steam trains will be running until next spring though the maintenance train will carry on as needed so I shall still have to check the way is clear before crossing the track twice on the way to the stables. 

(Iola has two Jack Russells that know to stay off the line but recently she was looking after her mother's Jack Russell. That one decided that it was his job to stand in the middle of the line and bark at the oncoming train. Luckily it was the small maintenance train which was able to come to a stop without running the dog over. But Iola did get a stern email from the train company.) 

With the fire safely burning down we climbed the steep field (it's about a 45 degree slope even if the photo doesn't look it.) to Suzanna's house. There we sat outside enjoying the view and a selection of home-made cakes with cups of tea.

I do like the turf roof Suzanna built on her shed.

We went back down to the cars in the valley by a different track by which time it was almost dark. I'm not a fan of these dark winter evenings.