Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus  - Happy St David’s Day

A happy St David’s Day to all our friends! Living in a land of tradition, history and culture, we’ve created our own tradition of sending a St David’s Day greeting to all our friends and to bring you up to date with some of our news. We’ve stopped sending Christmas cards and made a donation to Caernarfon Food bank instead.

We enjoyed not one, but two major celebrations during the year. The first took place on 10 June when we celebrated 40 years of marriage with our friends and family. Celebrations started with a vintage coach tour around Snowdonia for the 30 or so people who had travelled long distances to be with us (see pic above) followed by a champagne trip on the West Highland Railway between Porthmadog and Caernarfon. We had a Welsh cream tea together back at Trosgol and then a party in the evening which included all our local friends. We finally finished with a barbecue lunch the next day for those who were travelling back far and wide.

The second celebration was Chris and Donny’s wedding which took place on 17 August. Donny and Chris arrived very stylishly in a horse and carriage for a beautifully moving ceremony at Islington town hall which was followed by a champagne reception across the road and then a magnificent wedding breakfast in a nearby restaurant. In the evening we adjourned to a pub where we were entertained by two uniquely talented musical artistes, Lady Imelda and CJ. Neither of us can remember enjoying any wedding we have attended (including our own!) quite so much as Chris and Donny’s.

We had made a journey down after the wedding to spend an incredible day out at the London Paralympics with Chris and Donny. We saw several world records broken in the stadium during the morning and spent the afternoon watching tennis and exploring the Olympic site. It was an inspiring experience.

Chris and Donny have added to their family already and are now the proud owners of a miniature schnauzer called Daphne. Daphne’s house training ran them both ragged but she’s settled down now. Chris has added trombone to his repertoire and plays in a London band. Chris’s website design business is continuing to do well and Donny continues to work long hours in the pharmaceutical business, often making overseas trips.

We made a decision together to try to get into the area more and to travel wider afield. We’re doing that by a combination of closing Trosgol from mid-September until the following Easter and by sneaking away for short trips midweek. So far we’ve managed to spend a couple of days at the Ironbridge Gorge museums and we spent a few days in Dublin looking at the sites associated with the 1916 uprising. We found a great hotel right in the centre of Dublin which was an easy walk to the Temple Bar area with its dozens of restaurants. We spent a really enjoyable short holiday on the Leicester canals with our good friends David and Jane although the weather was not at its kindest.

We’ve also managed trips out to Liverpool and Birmingham to hear Joan Baez in concert and a tribute event to Edith Piaf. Although our nearest cinema is 22 miles away in Llandudno, we have started going there regularly and then spending the rest of the day shopping or enjoying the seaside. We are really enjoying rediscovering doing things together and realise that the six years that we have operated Trosgol holiday cottages has tied us far more than we should have allowed it to. Trosgol is still on the market but there has been very little interest from prospective buyers. Ironically, the two properties that we really liked in Llanberis were badly flooded in December so we have decided not to look at any properties until we have a buyer.

Christine and I spends quite a lot of our time helping with Logan, Ethan and Dylan and Christine often goes down to help at bedtime. Three live wires under five years old are very demanding especially as Mark’s shifts often mean that he is not around for the evening meal and bedtime. Mark has been promoted to deputy manager at the Beacon Climbing Centre which has moved to modern premises and I still  help Mark with the youngsters climbing competitions. Logan was 4 in October and Ethan & Dylan will be 3 in June. Logan now goes to school 5 mornings a week and all three will be at school in September.

I help at the Caernarfon food bank every Friday which stretches my competence in the Welsh language, speaking with the clients. About a year ago, I became a trustee of CCPAS, an organisation providing DBS security checks (which used to be called CRB checks) for churches and other organisations. This took me to Kent on three occasions this year and I had fun making a training video with them.

Having been impressed by TV programmes like “Who Do You Think You Are?”, I have started tracing my family tree and to my delight have met up with a huge branch of the family that I didn’t even know existed who are only 20 miles away. I have more relatives living within a 20 mile radius than in the rest of the United Kingdom! So far, I have traced back to my great, great, great grandfather. The greatest problem to doing the research is there seems to be only about a dozen surnames and 50 first names in common use in North Wales. It is very easy to get confused!

So we wish you a happy St David’s day and, like St David, encourage you to do the small things!