Britain's Last Invasion

The stressy continues a bit here, but I'm hoping things will improve. As there is still nothing I can do then I am just trying to keep my mind off it as best I can. To help with this, I thought I would head back to Pembrokeshire again for this post :)

On my (not very up-to-date!) UK Bucket List, in the Wales section, is an item ‘See the Last Invasion Tapestry in Fishguard’

After days of activity and hiring equipment, Adam and I were ready for a gentler-paced day, and one that involved less expense! This therefore seemed an ideal time to achieve this item, and we headed off up the coast via coffee in St Davids – just because I love St Davids! – and on to the little town of Fishguard on Pembrokeshire’s north coast.

Pembrokeshire, showing the main towns (source)

Housed within the small library within Fishguard’s town hall is remarkable piece of work about a remarkable event.

The last time an invasion force landed on British soil was in 1797, when a French invasion force sailed across to Britain, and landed near Fishguard at a part of the coast called Carreg Wastad.

OS Map showing Fishguard, and Carreg Wastad circled in red.

Accounts of the invasion vary, but the important thing for the locals was that the invasion failed: The French troops went on to surrender fully 2 days later, following skirmishes with the British, who were mainly volunteers or local civilians. 

Though it didn’t all go smoothly for the defenders, and reinforcements were required from around the county, the locals and volunteer forces of Fishguard, along with their reinforcements, did manage to keep Britain safe. 

This isn’t the whole of the story though! The local Welsh women also played an important role, which has developed into a legend in its own right. 

'Welsh Landscape with Two Women Knitting' - the lady on the right is wearing the traditional costume, and the landscape looks a lot like the landscape around Carreg Wastad! (source)

There is evidence to support the fact that the appearance of local women in the countryside, dressed in their traditional red shawls and black hats, deceived the French forces into thinking that they were infantry soldiers in great number, persuading the French towards surrender. A local woman, Jemima Nicholas, even captured a dozen demoralised French soldiers, and secured them in the local St. Mary's Church!

(read more here if you like, or of course just do a search for it if you prefer :)

In celebration of the bicentenary of this event, more than 70 women worked for 2 years with 97 colours of embroidery thread in order to create a stunning 30 metre-long tapestry, telling the story of the invasion and its subsequent defeat. Fishguard’s very own answer to the Bayeux Tapestry :)

This beautiful piece of art/history is available to view for free during the library opening hours, and with a rapidly dying camera battery, I tried to capture it as best I could:

The scale of the tapestry - all that embroidery work!

Retired Sailor Thomas Williams Sights the French

 

Meeting the Volunteers at Goodwick

The French Land - and complete the last invasion of mainland Britain

Many of the French Soldiers were released criminals, and they pillaged and looted, and made the most of the good food and wine available.

French Soldiers Ransacked Llanwnda Church and Burned Manuscripts

The Cavalry Arrives!

The First Surrender is Offered - the terms of the first surrender note were not agreed to

Jemima Captures Twelve French Soldiers

The Troops Prepare for Battle

The Myth: That the Welsh Women Marched to Fight or Capture More French Soldiers (they most likely did go watch any battles that might take place)

The French March to Goodwick Sands

The French Surrender Fully, Lay Down Their Arms and Prepare to March to Prison

I hope you enjoyed this little snapshot of some of my local history, some little-known British history, and an amazing community project to bring the history to life and create such an fantastic artefact for all to enjoy :)

Beautiful Pembrokeshire: Puffiny Loveliness!

Ooh dear, yesterday evening and today have been a bit stressy, a bit unpleasant. I have done my best to help the situation, but with no positive results. As there is nothing else I can do, I thought I would post this about puffins. Those gorgeous little critters are guaranteed to cheer me up a little :)

On our second day in Pembrokeshire, my friend Sarah’s oldest boy was going to be busy dog-sitting for his dad. He doesn’t really like boats after a hairy experience when he was younger (although he does enjoy other water-based activities) so he wouldn’t have wanted to come with us, but my husband Adam, friend Sarah, her youngest boy and me took the boat over to visit Skomer Island.

Skomer Island is run as a nature reserve, and is most famous for its seabirds, particularly the beautiful puffins. Puffins are similar to guillemots and razorbills, which I had seen a few of when I was in Cornwall. However, while these other two bird species nest on the steep rocky cliffs, which are available all over the coastline, puffins nest in burrows directly on the coast. Use of burrows means that they are more limited in habitat availability, and also makes them vulnerable to disturbance from land-based predators, human activity etc, further narrowing down the habitat they can make use of. Skomer is therefore a really significant nesting site for them in the UK.

Visiting Skomer is a multi-part expense – the car park is National Trust, so we didn’t have to pay the £5 fee as we are members, but we did have to pay the landing fee for the island of £10 (This has a fair pricing structure, with discounts for students and retirees, and free for Trust members and children. The money goes to the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales, which maintains the island) and also the boat fee of £11 for adults (£7 for children, babies free).

Although this money does add up, the island is so special that for me it is totally worth it. To make it even more worth it, there were still loads of puffins on the islands! I had really hoped to see puffins again before leaving for Australia, however they only come into land for their breeding season, and are normally back out at sea at this time of year. For very horrible reasons though, many puffins still remained: the storms earlier this year caused a lot of damage to the auk populations, causing what was named an auk wreck. So many of these birds (puffins, guillemots, razorbills) were killed in the storms, and those that did make it had had such a battle for survival that they arrived at their breeding sites late and in very poor condition. They therefore started late, and also required extra time to get healthy again. Very bad news for the birds, so difficult for me to be too happy about still being able to see them – though seeing them is such a joy.

The puffins are so wonderful that I think it’s best if they take over for the rest of this post, do enjoy their cute little faces and their sweet loveliness!

Why did the puffin cross the road?

I hope you enjoyed the puffins as much as I did! (Although admittedly that would tough ;)

Charity Crochet

I have been readying other posts about Pembrokeshire, so that I don’t end up huuuuugely behind again, and while I am keen to share those, I am also having a bit of crochet posting withdrawal…

I really really want to be able to share my mum’s Walled Garden Blanket, which I finished while I was down in Pembrokeshire. We took it to her knitting group, and it attracted lots of compliments, and I so wanted to share it! But circumstances snookered me with that – we had such glorious weather for most of the time we were down, but of course the first day of rain came the day after the blanket was finished, and there was rain for the remaining few days after that too. There was nowhere in my mum’s house suitable for photographing it, as she is having building work done, so outside was the only option. With outside ruled out, that sadly means that I didn’t come away with any photos of my finished work :(

It’s not all bad though, at least I will be heading back there in a few weeks’ time, so hopefully I can put a post together then!

So, with that project finished, what next? I have so many WiPs to choose from, except that they are all packed and in storage now: our stuff will all be collected for shipping fairly soon, and anything that doesn’t get shipped will have to either come in our suitcases, or get left behind! Bearing in mind that also in our suitcases will be the things we have deemed too precious to send by sea – family photos, jewellery etc – and the stuff we will need to keep us going for the first month or so over there before our shipping container arrives, there might not be room to keep back a lovely crochet project to work.

I came up with a solution though! I can simply crochet stuff that I have no intention of bringing with me, then leave it behind when I go! Some of the ladies at my mum’s knitting group regularly make things to sell in order to raise money for Tŷ Hafan (pronounced like ‘Tea Have-An’, for those non-Welshie people!). Tŷ Hafan is a paediatric palliative care charity, and offers the only children’s hospice service in south Wales, so it is obviously a very deserving charity. I therefore thought that I can just make as many baby blankets as possible before I leave, and they can all be donated either for use directly by the hospice, or for the ladies from the knitting group to sell at their fundraising stalls.

I began the first blanket while still in Wales, using a few 100% acrylic DK yarns from my mum’s stash. None of them had labels, so I have no idea what the brands or anything are, but I began with a yellow, an orange, and a white, and deciding to make another blanket similar to the Safi Baby Blanket, with the pattern from here at Sarita Creative.

Hooking up the little circles in all one colour is quick and simple, and quite rewarding :)

I did decide to change the pattern a little bit by adding an extra round to the squaring part of the pattern – while I did like my Safi Blanket, I thought I might like it a bit better if the coloured circles were a bit more spread out. I think I made the right decision, and of course it means that the squares are also a bit larger, so fewer are required to make the same size blanket. And of course that means fewer ends to sew in per blanket, which is a win in my book!!

I finished off my last square this morning, so here are my little stacks of circles-in-squares:

I have enough for a small crib blanket of 5x7 squares, using alternating orange and yellow circles. Now I just need to hook them together and make a simple border – I was toying with the idea of using coloured joins this time and double crocheting them together, but on the other hand slip stich joining with the white will be quicker and easier… Watch this space I guess to see what I decide! Haha ;)

Then I can start on the next one: I have a very limited supply of these cute twisty colour yarns in purple/white and aqua/white, so it will be a challenge to find a pattern to show off the yarn without running out! I’m looking forward to it though :)

 

Beautiful Pembrokeshire! Some Active Bits ...

Hello again!

I’m back in Nottinghamshire after my husband Adam and I had a wonderful visit down to my home of Pembrokeshire in West Wales. I have lived away from there for 12 years now, but it still feels like home to me :)

We did loads of active stuff in the outdoors, but also a bit of sightseeing type stuff. We did far too much to cram into just one post, so I will split it up and make a really big effort to actually post everything this time!

One post that I’m afraid will have to wait is about the Walled Garden Blanket. I finished it while back at home, but had no opportunity to take any photos. I will rectify this when I go back in September! I’m so gutted not to be able to post about it!!

We were blessed with incredible weather while we were back, which lasted for most of the time we were there, and so we were able to really enjoy ourselves. My best friend Sarah, who I have known well since we were about 13, still lives in our home town, and she has 2 lovely boys. They were off school for the summer when we arrived and so it was great to spend plenty of time with them when we were visiting. They will be visiting us next year in Australia, but still every moment counts!

Our first day therefore was spent at the beach! Pembrokeshire has so many wonderful beaches, and on this day we headed to Manorbier in the hope that there would be surf. There wasn’t… We spent several happy hours soaking up the great weather, catching up with each other, reading, and then I braved the sea, going out with the boys to try and catch the tiny waves on the surfboard and later taking the youngest one out with a snorkel as he wanted to swim a bit. Great fun!

A bit blurry - I guess that's what happens when a little boy has the camera!

The next day deserves its own post, as we headed off on the boat to Skomer Island for some puffin spotting! I will write about this separately :)

The following day and we hit the water for the third time in three days – this time with wind power. I learned to sail little dinghies when I was about 10 or 11 years old, and when Sarah had got in touch before we travelled down to ask if I would take her littlest one out sailing I was really excited. I haven’t sailed in years, but I had sailed for so long that I felt confident I could still sail competently, and teach the little lad too.

Sarah’s boyfriend Andy can also sail, so we hired a couple of dinghies so that everyone could go out at once. I took littlest one out in a Topper dinghy. It’s designed for one person to sail, and as such it only has one sail – the main sail – to worry about, so it seemed a great way to teach him. I began by showing him how to look after the main sail. As we went along I also taught him a few bits and pieces about the theory of sailing to help him understand what he was doing. Once he was ready, I moved on to teaching him about helming (steering) the boat. At first he struggled to concentrate enough to steer properly – he was so excited and so interested in every that was happening all around us! After a short while though he calmed down and then – with a bit of guidance – he was sailing by himself! He seemed to be having a great time, and I found it so rewarding to see how far he had come in just an hour. I’m not always good a teaching as I lack patience, but I tried really hard to stay calm and relaxed while trying to teach an excitable 10-year-old, and I felt really good about our time out on the water together! 

We had hired the boats for 2 hours, and after that first hour I swapped over into the bigger boat (a Wayfarer – or ‘Wafer’ as the littlest one kept calling it!), while Andy swapped into the Topper. I was then sailing with my husband, my friend, and her eldest son. They had obviously been learning about sailing already, so I just let people have a go a whatever they fancied – managing one of the sails, or taking a turn at the helm – while I supervised, until it was time to go in. There wasn’t much wind, so it was very relaxing sailing. I was chuffed at the end that after so much time I was still able to take over control of the dinghy when we had to head back in, and tack it (sailing and making a series turns so that you can get to an upwind destination) back to the jetty, judging it right to glide in to the jetty without bumping the boat. I was very happy with the day!

The fourth day and we were not waterbabies this time. Andy used to work at a quadbiking centre near Tenby, Ritec Valley Quads, and was keen to take everyone there. The rest of us grown-ups had all been quad biking once before, although it was the first time for the eldest son, while littlest son had to go on the children’s circuit which he had done before. We were all looking forward to it, and the course was really interesting – lots of different terrain and tricky paths to follow - even a couple of obstacles to overcome.

The quads had gears which you click through up and down, and it’s really tricky to remember which gear you’re in sometimes! We whizzed around the place, with only the occasional detour off the track when a bend was too tight…

The time seemed to go by fairly quickly - I just felt like I was getting the hang of things and feeling braver when it was all over! Adam found this his favourite activity of everything we did while in Pembrokeshire, Sarah and I had a great time, and her eldest son did really well considering it was his first time. I think Andy enjoyed it too!

Well phew! I think that's enough activity for one post... Still to come are write ups about puffins, walking on the coast path, the Last Invasion Tapestry, and maybe a bit of crochet news - not necessarily in that order! Thanks for visiting, I'm off to try to get more written up and ready to post, and maybe a bit of work on my next project. Oh, and perhaps a cuppa ;)