What a difference a day makes

Today was the opposite of yesterday. Great sleep, body felt good, managed not to crack my head on the basin and breakfast was outstanding despite being served by someone who should maybe reconsider her career in hospitality as she clearly doesn’t like people. And she owns the pub:) lucky her husband is charming.

The walk today was FLAT so it was like a rest day. We spent all of it following the Montgomery Canal until we reached our most charming accommodation yet. Moor Farm just outside Welshpool. I’m a new woman.

One of the most interesting things about Wales so far has been their various re-wilding projects. We have seen a lot of areas that have been returned to meadow ecosystems with fields of grasses and wildflowers. Today we saw the results of re-wilding a water way.

Montgomery canal has been disused since the 1940’s but there’s now a short link to the Llangollen canal. When boats stopped using the canal people noticed a remarkable return of water plants and wetland plants, birds and animals. It’s now the best place in the world to see rare floating river plants. There are fish galore, insects and frogs. Just a wonderful recovered ecosystem.

The long term is to make it all navigable again, but as a fully environmentally restored waterway. An Act was passed in 1987 and the process is now overseen by a charity called the Canal and River Trust.

It’s an expensive business restoring a canal to boating as the locks need to be made functional again. They’ve already started replacing permanent low bridges (built after 1940) with very clever cantilevered ones where you can pull a chain and a big weight swings the bridge up. A gentle push and down it goes. Just goes to show it’s possible to negotiate change and the results are great for everyone.

We saw so much bird life, but the highlight was a pair of mute swans with their cygnets. There was a nest with an egg still in it! I’ve attached a video - didn’t get the egg but if you follow Grant’s blog he’s got a better camera so may have captured it.

Moor Farm is one of four farms owned by our hostess, Henia. Two in Wales and two in England. She’s a charming woman with strong ‘old money’ vibes. This one runs sheep and cattle but one of their main incomes is pheasant shooting. I learned so much that I want to share with you. Firstly I didn’t know that the game keepers that I’d read about in Austen, Hardy and Lawrence actually breed and care for the pheasants. A MILLION baby pheasants are hatched in this region each season in special hatching facilities and each farm’s game keepers rear their own brood taken from that population. 20 000 on Moor Farm. Apparently they are the size of large bramble bees when they hatch so very vulnerable and the game keeper literally sleeps with them. Once they are big enough they are released on the farm and ‘dogged in’ which means the specially trained dogs keep them on the farm!

The game keeper then runs the shoot. There’s a private airstrip near here for private jets, as this is a big thing here. They pay 70 pounds PER bird shot and a group can shoot 200 a day. Silly money. Henia says the average shooter spends 10 000 pounds. Better return than for sheep!

At the end of the season some surviving birds are recaptured and used for breeding to ensure good genetic variation. As Henia says ‘they live a great life and then suddenly it’s over’. Again, I realise I shouldn’t judge things I don’t know.

Tonight we go into Welshpool to a pub for dinner. Tomorrow looks a good walk again - a climb but not a crazy one, so I’m happy again.Read more