Montgomery Castle

Olivia and I had a chilly and grey walk around Montgomery Castle the other week.
Briefly: the castle was built in 1223 for Henry III by Hubert De Burgh. It was destroyed in by Parliamentarians in 1649 during the civil war.
The views on a clear day are spectacular.

A Seemingly Unremarkable Field

I went up to Montgomery Castle on Thursday and took some photo's (next blog post), and one of the photo's was this one of an unremarkable field. This unremarkable field however, it turns out is the site of the Battle of Montgomery that took place in 1644.

The battle was between Royalists and Parliamentarians and cost the lives of about 700 people.

Amazingly despite living only 8 miles away (and my oldest daughter living just a few hundred yards from it) I'd never heard of this battle. This I thought was quite sad, that this field had been littered with the bodies of hundreds of our brave ancestors and people nowadays walk by it and even through it and have no idea of it's history.

Blood spilt for what?

Lake Vyrnwy

Olivia and I went up to Lake Vyrnwy recently and I took these photo's.

She brought her binoculars to look for 'Peregrine Falcons'. We saw one but the shot was no good.

A very mossy stump.

This shot has an in camera filter on - I'm not sure which one!

The weather was cold but bright.

There was the remains of some snow on the hills.

The bridge and some nice red chimneys.

And a nice Robin to finish off with!

Flying

Tried to capture some birds 'in motion'.

Didn't work out great but there you are.

They are a Feral Pigeon and a Sparrow by the way!

Sledging

We went sledging yesterday. It had snowed (and blowed) the night before.

It was a beautiful day.
I was a bit heavy to pull!

Olivia complained that her sledge was full of snow.

I love these old Georgian chimneys.

The Long Mountain

Myself, my wife, youngest daughter and our two dogs went for a walk on The Long Mountain - about two miles from where I live - on New Years Day.
We drove up there and there was no snow at all until we got to about five hundred feet and at the top (thirteen hundred feet) there was about eight inches - and frozen solid.
The road had been ploughed but was still icy in places and I had to at one point ditch my car to avoid a head on with another vehicle!
The temperature at the top was -2c (28f) and down 'in town' 3c (37f) which was a bigger difference than I thought it would be.
Tracks in the snow showed we were not the first there that day.
Paragliders had beaten us to it!
As you can see the dogs had a very good time!

The hill in the distance on the right is more or less where I work - it's part of my postal delivery round and stands seventeen hundred feet and has a few hundred houses scattered on and around it. Getting to some of them at the moment is as you can imagine a little slippery!

Local Churches No 2: Llandrinio

This is St Trinian, St Peter and St Paul Church in Wales Church at Llandrinio.
The font apparently is about 900 years old!
The Church was built in the 13th century with bits added in the 18th and 19th centuries and there has been a Church on the site in one form or another since the 6th century.
While I was photographing the Church there was a very loud Pheasant shoot underway close by which led my 5 year old daughter (who was with me) to say 'do you think that they're shooting Red Kites Dad? If they are that's awful!'