The river Wye at the weir garden, near Hereford

I’ve spent the last two days visiting Herefordshire with a friend, Tessa, whose sister has a static caravan on a holiday park near Leominster. We’ve had a wonderful, busy time with many walks and gardens involved.

Today it was time to pack up and leave, but we decided to visit just one more site on the way back. I chose the weir garden (National Trust) because it promised a view of the river Wye and some interesting-sounding walks. We found the river , a rock garden, a bridge across the higher level of the garden, some Roman remains (apparently) an old boathouse with a gauge marking the levels of various floods from the 1920s to the 1940s. We played in an adventure playground and had a round of giant Jenga. We found a restored walled garden and a restored 1920s wooden-framed greenhouse where, amongst other things, fig trees grew tiny fruit. We did not sit in any deck chairs today, nor did we play skittles, though we learned that the Romans played a similar type of game, and I did tidy up the fallen skittles that had been left out. We ate our lunches on a bench and then, sadly we left, but not before we’d purchased some old road atlases at the second hand bookstall. We’d been getting quite fed up of the satnav sending us on wild goose chases!

We arrived back shortly after 3pm. Tessa went home to feed her chicken. I felt I had not done enough steps for today, so I went for a walk around the area known as the Heavens, behind the house. I unpacked and generally bustled around for a few hours before settling down to watch tv with Steve.

I will attempt to catch up with my entries: there are still some missing from my two trips to Scotland in March and May, as well as all the other gaps. Back to work tomorrow, and six weeks to go before my next holiday.