purplecat

'The dull bit' is a common, but unfair, description so says the guidebook. I'd say it was definitely unfair, unless you are exclusively focused on hills and mountains. This was/will be the shortest and flatest leg of our holiday by some way.

( Picspam under the cut )

Welshpool to Llanymynech: 12m/20km.

Rest Day, so have a Random Doctor Who Picture

Today was more challenging. It was hotter, or at least felt hotter, and I was concerned enough to be rationing my water supply. Theoretically it was a shorter distance, but we got lost a couple of times in a golf course and one stretch of path was so covered in bracken and low trees that we ended up taking a detour so Strava, at least, things we walked a mile further than the official distance. We saw a lot of the actual dyke though.

( Picspam of Offa's Dyke )

Kington to Knighton: 13.5 miles/21.7 km according to the guidebook 23.16km according to Strava.

I mentioned in my Sightseeing in Cyprus post that I thought the Tombs of the Kings were worth a post in their own right. This is a sprawling necropolis that was in use from the 4th century BC to the 3rd century AD. The Brasilian with the car dropped me and the other Brasilian off to view it while he went to forage for fresh olive oil, saying he'd seen it before on a previous visit to Cyprus and no kings were involved. He afterwards did admit that it was pretty impressive, lack of actual kings notwithstanding, but that acquiring fresh olive oil was a priority. Some of the tombs were labelled and numbered, but we never established to our satisfaction if we'd explored them all - there were at least 8 across a large site - and many others that were just holes in the rock.

( Picspam below the cut )

The plasterer who was making good around the new windows left the most phenomenal mess throughout the ground floor of the house. In his defence he had tried to mop up. On the other hand, I'm not convinced he really knew his way around a mop and bucket and I'm mystified by the lack of dust sheets. Most of the ground floor was covered in a thin layer of plaster dust but thankfully we only have carpets on the upper floors so it wasn't trodden into anything difficult to clean. Some things had actual plaster stuck to them - most notably an attachment that came with our toaster for making toasted ciabatta sandwiches which now has plaster stuck to each corner. At least we never actually use it, so I can merely be mildly non-plussed - did he think it was some kind of plastering tool? A dustpan? who knows? It was stacked on top of the toaster some way from the site of actual plastering, so I don't think it was just random plaster splashes.

The plasterer returns tomorrow to tackle replastering of the pantry where a leak had completely ruined the old plaster.

I have invested in dust sheets.

UPDATE: Apparently the plasterer won't be here tomorrow...

This is one of our new windows. Actually, as is probably obvious, this one is a door onto the garden. Plasterer failed to turn up today. Apparently he had had a fight with his missus. I'm not convinced I could get away with that as an excuse for failing to turn up to work.