Caught in a Downpour!

My father-in-law died in May last year and after the ceremony we collected the ashes and put a handful on our rear garden flower bed before taking the urn for them to scatter the rest at Margam Crematorium, Neath, where my wife's parents are from before they moved to Chepstow some 45 years ago.

Over the last few weeks, an oak sappling suddenly sprung up on the small flower bed but it offered no room to grow into an old oak. We eventually managed to dig it out and planned to plant it on the mountain in the village.

I also needed to recce some mountain tracks as the mountain bike club in the next village, Rhiwderin (Newport), have asked me to take some photo's of them in action this coming Thursday evening.

We are looking after my son James dog for the week, so the three of us set off on the steep climb. We found an open area on a track and buried the oak sappling behind a stone seat. It's off the beaten track a bit so hopefully it'll grow without being disturbed.

We got to the trig point at the top of Machen Mountain and on descending a track you could see the swirls of rain over the slag heap. This is more than half a mile long and can be seen easily from Cardiff and Penarth, some 17-20 miles away. Shortly afterwards, it belted down hailstones, soaking the three of us.

I grabbed a blip photo which shows you what we were experiencing.

On getting home, the sun was back out a bit. The dog was straight in the bath and me in the shower. The forecast is better weather as the week goes on. I hope so as I don't want rain spots on my lens Thursday evening and I'm off to Nottingham on Friday with Olympus Cameras and Steve Gosling.