Travels with My Cousin

The last time my cousin, Sandra, came over from her home in New Jersey to visit was a staggering fourteen years ago, and we had a fantastic time. I think it was the Easter holidays, so I wasn't working fixed days, and we went on a road trip to Leeds, which included visits to Little Moreton Hall in Cheshire, Mr Straw's House in Worksop and Eyam in Derbyshire. And then a volcano in Iceland called Eyjafjallajökull erupted and all the planes between the UK and the US were grounded and we squeezed two extra jaunts out of her forced stay, visiting Isle Abbots and Shepton Beauchamp in Somerset, where our uncle lived, before walking from Langport to Muchelney and back, followed by a third trip to Kilve and East Quantoxhead. It was great. 

And funnily enough - although not for the poor folk of Grindavik - another Icelandic volcano erupted during this visit, but not causing enough air pollution to ground her flight this time. So she had just a week here, at a much less pleasant time of year, and during term time. Nevertheless, we still managed to meet up a couple of times, for which I'm grateful, and who knows, hopefully I'll get over to visit her in America sometime too. 

The photo below was taken by her at Easter Compton farm shop, where we had breakfast before my Auntie Mollie's 90th birthday party, the main reason for the timing of the visit. There are few photos of the Northerner and me together, so I'm really pleased to have this one.

With my cousin Joy, Sandra's sister, and her family

My late mother's six surviving brothers and sisters (from a total of eleven)

With as many of my cousins as could get to the party - we number 24 in all

my boys

Thursday was the day I had Sandra to myself, except of course there were still people who wanted to see her before she went back, so it was largely a matter of balancing everyone's needs, coupled with a truly gruesome weather forecast. In the end we booked a table at the Little Harp in Clevedon, where for a few years at the end of their lives, I took my parents on my mother's birthday. First, though, Son the Younger drove us to Portishead, where we spent a couple of hours with my friend, Liz, who knows Sandra well, and her husband, Paul. 

Clevedon was drizzly, as promised, but when we emerged from the pub, fortified by our lunch and the company of our cousin, Sarah, who lives in Clevedon, her dog Foxy, and the friend formerly known as 'Er-over-the-Road (who's really called Cathy and who knows Sandra well from previous visits), there was a window of drier weather so we made our way along the front to the pier. 

Looking in the opposite direction, we could see an interesting little coronet of cloud over Flat Holm, which is probably impossible to make out in this photo and which dissipated very quickly.

Of course, there had to be a photo call. Here's Cathy and Sandra ... 

... me and Sandra ... 

... Cwtch, Son the Younger, me and Sandra ... 

... me, Sandra, Cwtch and Cathy ... 

... and Cathy, Sandra, Cwtch, me, Sarah and Foxy.

Sarah pointed out the house where our grandfather, Jack Hill, lived before his family moved to Bristol, property prices being comparatively much cheaper in those days.

Clevedon Pier

Me, Cathy, Cwtch doing dressage, Sarah and Foxy

Mist on the Severn estuary at Sand Point, Flat Holm and Worlebury Hill 

And then the week, and Sandra's visit, was over. Thank goodness for keeping in touch on social media. 

Sand Point Bleak

My favourite sort of landscape is bleak.  Not shopping centre car park or industrial estate bleak, though. My kind of bleak generally involves trees that look like this.

This specimen is to be found at Sand Point, just north of Weston-Super-Mare, where I went for a bit of a hobble on Saturday, sun and blue skies belying the chill, prevailing wind.  

Sand Bay itself boasted a set of warnings that wouldn't disgrace an Australian beach ... 

... while the Point had a rather more charming notice.

Ah look, there they are.  

There were cowslips, bugle and birdsfoot trefoil as well.  And seals.

'Look at the seals!' a couple cried as they accosted us on the ridge.  'Have you got binoculars?  There are hundreds of seals down there, coming in on the tide. We've been watching them for the last half an hour!'

I squinted in the sun. I could see what looked like very black bits of shadow on the water. I supposed they could be seals ... maybe?  'Er, thanks,' I said.

We descended from the top of the Point to a path running above the shore.  'Nah, not seals,' we'd agree, and then, as a black shape curved and lifted with a wave, 'ooh, hang on, though ... '

Back up on the ridge there were wide-ranging views over to Cardiff and Newport and upstream to Clevedon and the Severn Bridges ... 

... and in the opposite direction, and altogether closer at hand, Sand Bay itself ...

... Worlebury Hill and Birnbeck Pier ... 

... the island of Steep Holm ... 

... and Flat Holm up ahead, where Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the first wireless signals over open sea to the Welsh mainland. 

I was finding the rough terrain very challenging in places with my less than reliable ankle, so we decided to head back to the car park via a pleasant earthen path that wound around the side of the Point.

This worked really well for me until it petered out and I was confronted with a large expanse of very steep, smooth rock.  There was nothing for it but to slide down very carefully to the beach below. (This is what it looked like at the bottom.)

I wonder who lives in a house like this?

Heading back home, there were  none of the expected queues of traffic between Weston and Bristol and we were in good time for our meal out with friends.  But not before I'd opened some of my photos in Paint.  Definitely no seals.  Probably bits of black sea weed lifting with the waves, and made sharper and darker by the sun.

Come to think of it, the pain in my ankle was sharper and darker too, but a small price to pay for all that mud and salt and bleak.