Month: May 2017

Wentwood Forest & Tretower

Parc Seymour and Wentwood Forest

Today our walk took us from Parc Seymour to Wentwood northeast of Newport.

There was a cold wind and it felt like winter again. But there’s only one word to describe this walk ‘Bluebells‘! We headed southeast and on the road passed a neat woodland, a donkey and a group of beautiful horses. Then a little later we spotted a couple of shire horses ploughing in a field of bluebells. Now we followed the lane northeast and a field of bluebells appeared on our right stretching into the distance. We couldn’t help but stop and take photos and Misty (a dog) frolicked. We walked amongst them for ages, they were so thick that even the lane was covered in them and we were unable to walk without treading on them. We emerged into woodland which had been cut back hard and replanted.

Heading west we passed Hill farm and then went northwest towards Cross Green. Now picking a zigzag trail travelling generally westwards through Wentwood forest.

We soon found a tree known as the ‘Curly Oak’ an old tree which has split down the middle so that you can walk through its trunk.

The woodland was filled with English bluebells so that we were surrounded. Trees of beech and oak were in new leaf and the lime green and yellowy tones provided a perfect counterfoil to the purple blue of the bluebells. We just drank the colour in, wonderful. Unfortunately because it was cold there was little scent from the bluebells, just a waft now and again.

We came down alongside Bertholau Graig in a southerly direction and as we came out of the wood could see the Bristol Channel in the distance. The colours of the trees here were reminiscent of autumn there was so much yellow. Our route now travelled west until we met a road where we turned south.

We passed an old farmhouse with a dilapidated VW van and as we continued saw at least 20 abandoned old cars and farm vehicles on the property. We entered a large field where a herd of bullocks took some interest in Misty but eventually ran off uphill. Back at Parc Seymour we saw 2 carved wooden chairs on the green one dedicated to the AD and the other AD2000.

We had walked 8½miles and 1100ft. Map 152/OL14

Tretower

We started at the Cadw site in Tretower on a lovely Spring morning.

Tretower is the site of a medieval fortified manor house and castle. The Picards and Vaughans were influential Welsh families who created sumptuous accommodation reflecting their high status as Welsh gentry. The Vaughans left in the 18thC and Tretower Court became a working farm. It is an interesting site and Cadw have created a suite of rooms as they may have been in 1470.

Tretower is on the Agincourt Wales trail which tells the story of the people and places across the region that played a role in Henry V’s famous victory. It starts at Trecastle and visits Brecon, Tretower, Abergavenny, Raglan, Monmouth and St Briavels before ending at Caldicot.

Having seen Table mountain and Sugarloaf in the distance we set off walking south east towards Cwm-gu and then northeast to Cwm. We were soon high over Tretower and had an excellent view of the castle.

On the moor land we followed the Beacons Way and soon realised why it’s so called as we spotted Pen y Fan and its neighbours to the west. After reaching Cwm we headed generally northeast towards Llewenau Draw and Llewenau.

We were delighted to hear a cuckoo at 3 separate times and then spotted it flying across the valley, confirmed as the sound of its call came from behind us now. Unusually the hawthorn trees in this area had mistletoe growing on them.

A flock of sheep (mostly ewes with their lambs) were grazing ahead of us on the path and as we arrived they kept moving ahead of us despite the fact that there was a large open hillside above. Eventually most of them moved to the side but still some continued until we stopped for lunch when they ‘gratefully‘ stopped for a good munch of the grass.

 

 

At lunch we sat on the hillside and gazed at the vast range of mountains around us. Then we noticed a large bird swoop into the field below; it had a distinctive red glow and black markings on its wings; the forked tail confirmed that it was a red kite. We watched as it swooped to ground level and back up again, all the time working its way down the valley. Wow!

Continuing towards Llewenau we could see the Dragonsback mountain ahead of us and as we got closer spotted the iron hill fort which forms the dragon’s head. We turned southwest towards Cil-helyg.

This walk had been designed with the aim of visiting an ancient oak tree which had been found last year. According to the ancient register of trees it is possibly the oldest in South Wales. Now as we walked along a country lane most of us walked straight past it while distracted by a horse in the opposite field. The tree is huge (its trunk must have a diameter of about 12ft) and awe inspiring.

At Cil-helyg we turned north for a while before heading towards Cwmdu and picking up a path leading in a generally southerly direction towards Tretower.

What a wonderful walk full of the awe which nature inspires.

The walk was 7.5miles and 1400ft. Map OL13

Chicken in Lemon and Garlic

Chicken in Lemon and Garlic


4 large skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces
5 tbsp olive oil or lemon flavoured oil
1 onion, finely chopped
6 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
grated rind of 1 lemon, finely pared rind of 1 lemon and the juice of both lemons
4 tbsp chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
Heat the oil in a large pan or wok, add the onions and fry for about 5 mins or until softened, not browned. Add the garlic and fry for about 30 secs. Add the sliced chicken and fry for 5 – 10 mins, stir-ring from time to time until chicken is just brown and tender. Add the grated lemon rind and the lemon juice and let it bubble. While cooking deglaze the bottom of the pan and stir into the juices. Remove the pan from the heat, stir in the parsley and season to taste with salt and fresh ground black pepper. Transfer the chicken to a warmed serving dish. Sprinkle with the pared lemon and serve piping hot.
Serve alongside pitted Spanish olives, sun dried to-matoes, lemon wedges and fresh crusty bread to mop up the juices, and not forgetting a good Spanish wine. Enjoy the evening air, CHEERS.

Potato and Tomato Tortilla

Potato and Tomato Tortilla

1kg new potatoes, Jersey Royals scraped or washed, cut into small cubes

2 tbsp olive oil

1 large bunch spring onions, chopped

120g cherry tomatoes, halved

6 eggs

3 tbsp milk

2 tbsp fresh parsley

salt and ground black pepper

Boil the potatoes in salted water until just tender. Drain and set aside. Preheat grill to medium. Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Add the spring onion and fry until just soft. Add the potatoes and fry for about 3-4 mins, until coated with oil and hot. Smooth the top and scatter over the tomatoes. Beat the eggs together then add the milk, parsley and S & P in a bowl, then pour over the potato mixture. Cook over a low heat for about 10 – 15 mins, until tortilla looks fairly set. Place the frying pan under the hot grill and cook until the top is brown and set. Leave to cool before sliding out onto a chopping board, Cut into wedges and serve.

 

May Letters to the Editor

 

I would like to say a big thank you to the ladies of Wenvoe WI for their donations and the hard work they put in at our recent table top sale. We appreciate all the help from so many people, from those who hired tables to the kind gentlemen who moved the tables and chairs about on the morning. Due to the success of the morning we are able to make a generous donation to this year’s charity, the Cardiff and Vale branch of the National Autistic Society

Madeleine Rees, President WI

 

 

 

Once again, I wish to use the What’s On to pay our thanks to a lot of wonderful supporters, to many to name.

My granddaughter Rhian, aged 8 years old, had an open day on behalf of the breast cancer unit which is treating her Mum since last May 2016. Over the year, she has made bookmarks and bracelets to raise money for cancer on her open day. Recently she presented a cheque for £1413.00 to the doctor and staff at Llandough Breast Cancer unit thanks to everyone who supported her open day.

All, her dad, grew a beard and had a lot of support from his works, friends and neighbours. He raised £1,000, with Rhian’s four hundred and thirteen pounds to total the £1413 which was much appreciated by the unit.

Also, a special thank you to Dr David Bosley who gave a cheque for £200 in memory of his mother, our neighbour and good friend, Mrs Joan Bosley and it will be going towards raising funds now for Velindre Hospital which Joan would appreciate as she always supported Rhian’s fund raising days. We feel privileged to have had everyone’s support.

Thank you everybody, and not forgetting Rhian’s hard work for a good cause, well done Rhian.

Marilyn and Terry Ankin

Fiery Rooster Challenge

 

If you are at a loose end during May and fancy some outdoors activity why not try the Fiery Rooster challenge? It is the Chinese Year of the Rooster and at each of the following five sites you will see a poster on the noticeboard with a question. To get the answer go to the next site. The five locations are The Upper Orchid Field, The Community Orchard, The Elizabethan Orchard, the watercress beds at Goldsland Farm and the Wild Orchard. You can start at any point but then need to follow them in order. First correct answer wins £20 of Garden Vouchers; second gets £10. Check Facebook to see if the prizes have been won. Take pencil and paper or some other means of recording the answers.

On Thursday 25th May we shall be leading an orchard walk as part of the Vale of Glamorgan Walking Festival. We start at 11am outside the church and the walk of around 5 miles will take in the Community Orchard, Elizabethan Orchard, Wild Orchard and Upper Orchid Field. No booking necessary but bring lunch and wear stout footwear. If you know your way around the area and 5 miles seems too much you can join us for a while and then make your own way home.

Pupils from Wenvoe Primary School helped us again this year to spread wildflower seed on the bed in Grange Park. They were impeccably behaved and found out, amongst other things, how bees are saving wild elephants in Africa. Elephants have an aversion to bees so by placing hives around the perimeter of the village the elephants are deterred from muscling in and consuming the crops, hence reducing conflict and the prospects of villagers taking retaliatory action.

This month the group has arranged for the erection of another noticeboard and bee hotel, this time at Goldsland Farm (featured on Radio 4's Farming Today). We have put up four new raised beds, 2 insect homes, 3 butterfly boxes, 3 nestboxes, 4 hedgehog homes and planted 3 Rowan, 3 Wild Cherry and 3 Crabapple along with the native Yellow Water Lily, Flag Iris, Flowering Rush and Purple Loosestrife.

As always there is masses to do around the sites so if you fancy doing a bit of conservation work, do get in touch.

The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty

 

The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty

The Doughty Family lives on the oddly named Scribbly Gum Island, a short ferry ride from Sydney Australia, and so called after the Scribbly Gum Eucalyptus trees that grow there.

The Island and the family becomes famous because 70 years previously, teenage sisters Connie and Rose Doughty had found an abandoned baby girl whose parents Alice and Jack Munro had mysteriously vanished. It created a media sensation which captivated Australians, and turned sleepy Scribbly Gum Island into a tourist attraction offering guided tours, cream teas, souvenirs and a carnival atmosphere. In time both Rose and the baby, who had been named Enigma, get married and have children and eventually grandchildren. The dynasty which becomes very wealthy but rather inward looking is held on a tight reign by matriarch Connie. The scene changes when Connie dies and bequeaths her beautiful home to Sophie Honeywell, an outsider, who she had met just twice. Family infighting starts and traditions begin to unravel.

The book was given a high score and enjoyed by one member. Another thought it readable and interesting as alongside the saga of the unconventional Doughty Clan, Moriarty allows us a peep into their thoughts, fantasies and secrets, giving us a somewhat surreal understanding of their characters.

However, this was not the opinion of the majority of the group who variously claimed it to be boring, written for teenagers, compared to an Enid Blyton children’s adventure story, naïve, rubbish, lightweight, predictable, with characters floating around disconnectedly. The average score was a miserable of 3 out of 10.

The evening was sweetened with a lovely fresh raspberry tart.

Apples

 

If you visit the orchards in May you should still see plenty of blossom around, the majority of the trees being apples. But what is an apple and where does it come from? The first distinction is between the crab-apple and the sweet apple that we eat. The crab is our native apple and you can often find it growing in hedgerows around the parish. It usually has spines on the branches and the fruit is small, hard and very sour. But it has been used for thousands of years by our ancestors cooked and fermented. Crab-apple jelly is still popular to make at home or buy.

The sweet apple originally came from the Tien Shan Mountains in Kazakhstan thousands of miles away and it took many centuries to work its way along the silk routes to the Middle East and Europe. If you plant the pips from, say, a Cox’s Orange Pippin you will get a variety of different apple types, many of them of little use so to get another true Cox’s you have to graft them, a skill that was well known to the Romans. You may hear people referring to hybrids between a crab and a sweet apple but this does not happen and DNA analysis of the origins of the sweet apple has found that crabs were not involved in its evolution.

Because of this great variability you never quite know what might pop up and many new varieties were chance discoveries. Claygate Pearmain (which grows in our Community Orchard) was found in a hedgerow in Surrey but once discovered grafting ensured that that tasty variety is still available to us these days. In the heyday of apple development in Britain there were thousands of varieties. Farmers would spread the mush from cider production around the edges of their fields to see what new varieties might appear and if you look out of the window of the car or train you will see apple trees growing from the cores lobbed out of the windows by passengers – there are several on the link road past Pencoedtre. These are known as ‘wilding’ apples.

Commercial orchards have little value for wildlife as the trees are kept short, grubbed up after around 7 to 8 years and sprayed regularly through the season. In a traditional orchard the trees are allowed to grow to their full size and may live for 100 years or more. These are a haven for wildlife attracting many of the species that would have been common before our orchards were destroyed, including rare beetles such as the Golden Chafer and birds like the Wryneck. In 1900 there were about 15 orchards in Wenvoe but little evidence of these remain other than in the names of some houses and streets.

So enjoy your apples whether you plant a tree or two in your garden or visit one of our traditional orchards in the parish. There is increasing evidence that the older varieties may be better for you and being locally sourced you avoid the air miles involved in shipping your fruit from other continents to your supermarket. And wildlife will benefit.

 

Wild Mushroom Tartlets

This month 2 easy Veggie recipes.

Wild Mushroom Tartlets

375g block of all butter puff pastry

25g butter

300g pack mixed wild mushrooms, wiped clean, [don’t wash]

50g parmesan, finely grated

Handful of chopped parsley

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1 egg beaten

1 small ciabatta roll, blitzed to crumbs

100g pitted green olives, finely chopped

Roll the pastry on a floured surface and cut out 4 cir-cles about 15cm in dia. leave to chill on a lined baking tray in the fridge for about 15 – 20 mins. Heat the oven to 180C Fan. Heat a large frying pan add the butter and gently fry the mushrooms for about 5 mins until all liquid has left the pan, [don’t burn the butter]. Re-move from the heat, season, add half the parmesan and the garlic. Score a 1cm border around each tartlet and divide the mixture between them. Mix the crumbs, olives and the remainder of the parmesan, sprinkle over the mushrooms. Brush the edge of each tartlet with beaten egg, then bake for about 20 mins until puffed and golden. Serve with buttered baby new pota-toes and green peas.

Re-roll the pastry into a rectangle, sprinkle with more parmesan and black pepper. Fold in half and re-roll. Cut into stripes twist a few times and bake alongside the mushroom tarts

Leek, Ricotta & Gruyere Tart

Leek, Ricotta & Gruyere Tart

500g pack all butter shortcrust pastry

Butter

2 large leeks, thinly sliced

250 ricotta

100ml double cream

2 eggs, beaten

2 tbsp chopped tarragon

100g gruyere cheese grated

Heat the oven 180C fan. Butter a 23cm loose base tart tin. Roll the pastry, line the tin, prick the base and blind bake on a baking sheet for about 10 mins. Re-move the parchment and beans and cook for a further 5 mins until golden in colour. Reduce oven to 160C. Melt the butter in a large pan and gentle cook the leeks for about 10 mins until softened. Beat together the ricotta, cream, eggs, tarragon, salt, black pepper. Stir in the leeks and the grated cheese [leave enough cheese to scatter over the top]

Pour the mixture into the tart case and scatter the re-maining cheese over the top. Bake for about 25 – 30 mins until set. Leave to cool and remove from tin. Serve warm

RHS Flower Show

Having been to the RHS flower show in Bute Park, it made me realise just how good some of these exhibiters are. To be honest, a few of the show gardens would not have come up to the standard of some of the gardens in and around Wenvoe. I have asked a few residents for some tips, if only to share the blame if things don't work out as they should. Gerry Crump, of Rectory close, always staggers the sowing of flowers and veg to prolong the the season. Most years he's still picking runner beans in October. If you can make room for a wigwam of beans in your garden its well worth it. Gerry's garden is lovely, especially with the summer bedding in place.

Another lovely garden is Sylvia Davies's which is opposite the Walston Castle as you turn in to the Village. Sylvia's tips include labelling containers of mixed up plant feed and pesticides as mistakes are costly and the use of more perennial plants to cut down on the extra work of bedding plants. Sylvia also points out that with longer days the temptation to do more is always there but remember that the garden will still be there in the morning.

Adventurer Joyce Hoy's tip for saving your plants from slugs and snails is to put slug bait or traps on prepared ground a couple of days before planting out. I would love to hear any tips you can share. I'll be manning my table at the Wenvoe Spring Craft fair on 14th May and am around the village most days.

A lot of the perennials are really starting to grow now, the taller of which will need support, especially perennial poppies and peony. Day lilies are a good bet for a dry spot in the garden. They will need a bit of room as they will eventually form clumps. That early, yellow flowering shrub Forsythia will need pruning now if you want it to keep its shape and to flower next spring.

Roses, the favourite in a lot of gardens, take a bit of looking after. The mistake I used to make was to wait until I saw an aphid or a bit of black spot, go to the Garden Centre to get a remedy and then take action. Now I spray before there is any sign of pest or disease at all and it works for me.

I have just read that now is the perfect time to divide daffodils. Dig up the clumps and pull apart by hand, trying not to break off roots and leaves, and re-plant at the same depth.

Look after those tender young plants. The temptation to put them out may be great but they will need to be hardened off by putting them outside in the day and back under cover at night. When all risk of frost has passed, put them into beds and they will soon catch up. Sadly the Tulip tree, positioned at the front of the Community Centre, had to be taken down as it had outgrown its space. This should be a reminder to us all when considering the positioning of larger plants. It's not just about the damage they may cause to structures in the future but they can be expensive to remove. Wenvoe has lots of lovely large trees but in my experience they look a lot better in other people's gardens. If you're tempted by the lovely Acers in Garden Centres, they do suffer from wind damage so a sheltered spot is ideal.

Last thing, if we do have a dry spell don't skimp on the watering, especially near to the house where ground can be drier. Happy gardening

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