A birthday wish

Today was my birthday and unlike last year when I passed the day alone, the family journeyed from points north and east to spend the weekend at home with me. As usual I've enjoyed their lively company, laughter and noise, as well as the gastronomic opportunities presented.

Today for example there were sourdough pancakes for breakfast, a three layer carrot cake for tea and for supper a Chinese banquet of which the pièce de résistance was steamed pork dumplings. All these culinary delights were masterminded and created by my elder son H, with the assistance of his girlfriend S and younger brother G.

Between breakfast and tea, and in glorious sunshine, we walked a circular route above the Clydach valley and below Carningli mountain east of Newport/Trefdraeth, dropping in on the stone circle and the ruined farm that I have blipped before, and paying a visit to this little-known wishing well, hidden inside a rocky cleft. Below the massive upper boulder, on the surface of the lower boulder are two cup-shaped depressions, one behind the other, little pools filled with clear cold water. It's said the level rises and falls with the ebb and flow of the tides on the shore it overlooks, a couple of miles distant. But, as my favourite old local informant adds scornfully, "they always say that!"

I forgot to make a birthday wish but Casey, on his first outing in his new winter coat, is making one instead. He has heard something that fills him with terror - the distant 'pop' of a Sunday rough shoot - and he has wedged himself in the rock recess, wishing with all his might that he were safely back at home. Which, to his great relief, is where we headed next. The sun had dropped below the ridge and the chill was rising in the shadows.