Designer Village

Chris works exceptionally long hours in the week. So weekends remain very much chillout time for him. He spends long periods relaxing- horizontally watching Miss Marple-ish tv and the like...
Today he decided that midsommer murders didn't tick his box, so to speak, and he organised a walk and a picnic.
We took the Welsh out with us (George is too slow for a long walk and Constance is again in season , so her coquettish behaviour and lax moral code means that she also is confined to barracks) and braving the welcomed showers we set off.

We walked up over The Gop and down past the large Elizabethan House called "Golden Grove"
Then through the woods where blankets of wild garlic are now in flower

Like school kids on a day out, we ate our sandwiches early then walked into the picture perfect village of Llanasa. Now I have a soft spot for Llanasa , as a child I spent nearly every weekend there at the Howatson Farm playing and riding my sister's horse, an old brood mare called Rona.
The village back in the mid 1970s, was more a "working" village than it is today.
There was a shop, post office and a working farm either side of the village, although the school as I recall had already closed and the village was always pretty, in a kind of natural and relaxed way.

Today the Howatson farm with its slightly shopworn outbuildings has changed beyond recognition. Sure the beautiful old farmhouse with its set of uneven sash windows remains at the head of the courtyard, but it is now surrounded by a whole plethora of barn conversions and "sympathetic" new builds, a fact that literally breaks my heart..When I was a boy, those old barns , pig stys and stables was a playground to beat all playgrounds......it was a magical, dusty old place with charm and style.


The "old" Howatson farm house



The old farming sense of the village has all but gone, and in its place  there is a pretty film set that shrieks of money.There are designer ducks on the village pond, and probably designer bantams pecking around neatly manicured lawns and gravel drives.....and although the whole village retains much of its inherited beauty, I am glad I live in the slightly scruffier Trelawnyd which is populated by a less upwardly mobile population.

The pretty Norman Church in the centre of the village

We ate the rest of our "butties" in the grounds of the Church , then made our way past the Homes and Gardens village houses to amble back to Trelawnyd.as the sun came out