New Friends

Waiting to cross at the high tide

You know how it is when your paths keep crossing with an old acquaintance - not frequently, but over a long period of time, and often enough for you to end up being friends.  Well my husband has some friends like that, and since moving to Shropshire we have seen more of them and we're likely to bump into them more regularly through our local CTC group.  Through them, somehow, we found ourselves invited to spend a weekend in a Caernarfon Hostel with a mixed group of cyclists, walkers, and bird watchers on a collective event known only as “Mad Tony’s Bash”.  I only found out we were going a few days before we went, so it was all a bit of a shock for me!

I’m fairly nervous of meeting new people, but in this case, my nerves were ill founded.  For a start, there were a smattering of familiar faces amongst the group - more of those path-crossing acquaintances again.  The rest of the group were friendly to a fault, particularly Tony the organiser, one of life’s gems who gets on and does what others only think about, although he doesn’t always do what he does in a very organised way!

Old Acquaintances

We were in Caernarfon during the weekend of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and the weather was legendary.  Fortunately our riding plans were more flexible than the Jubilee celebrations so Paul and I decided to catch up on some clothes shopping on the very wet Sunday (we live in the sticks, so opportunities are limited).  We rode our tandem on the Saturday and the Monday, being speechless with wonder at the beauty we saw both times.

I feel as though we are heading for the wettest June ever, to add to the wettest April ever.  Perhaps even the wettest year?  But the intensity of the green in the hills and valleys can seem so overpowering that I continue to feel privileged to live on this island, even if it is wet sometimes.  

My other half holds the other half of our tandem