The settled weather continues with more fine sunsets and cold crisp days!

We’ve had a few visitors around The Cottage recently. The Bullfinches have returned from their winter vacation, some rouge sheep have been in and cut the grass for us overnight and there’s a big gang of goats loitering on the track outside eating their way across the slate heaps!

I was delighted to see a ‘Vintage’ Ford Escort Van on the A55 yesterday too! It brought back a lot of happy memories – how on earth did Clare and I live in the back of one of those for weeks and months at a time!? (Find out here!).

Sunday was a blue sky beauty, but the cliffs I wanted to visit were in the frosty shade in the morning. I took my group to the indoor climbing wall for the morning, where we had a brilliant time as there had been a competition the day before and all the competition routes were still up – we had our own mini bouldering comp! Once we’d tired of bouldering, we ventured back outside, only to find it had clouded over! Typical!

It was plenty warm enough out of the wind to climb a few of the sport routes at Oak Tree Crag. The rock is still very sharp and we had to take care with which holds to pull on.

We all got a climb or two in and those who’d had enough were happy to climb up into the oak tree and enjoy the views from there! When asked if it was safe to do so, the reply was, climbing up trees is great fun and recommended. Falling out of them is not.

After getting home, there was just enough light left to bike down to the Menai Straits to meet Clare. A super bike ride as it was downhill nearly all of the 14km there – and better still, I was able to put the bike in the van for the return journey!