Monknash visit

I was lovely to share our Saturday pancake breakfast with Owain this morning. Clare packed up a picnic lunch and when the early morning cloud began to lift we headed west into the Vale of Glamorgan to visit Monknash with its vast beach and 70 metre high Jurassic cliffs, somewhat inappropriately named 'Smugglers' Cove'. as it's not in any sense enclosed, but an open expanse of coastline. 

The journey through narrow lanes with high hedges and small villages from the A48 to the coast is rather lovely, and we were fortunate not to need to stop to let on coming traffic pass too many times. There were a couple of dozen cars in the parking area a kilometre above the beach, down a narrow valley. Less than a hundred people bunched in groups were scattered on the vast expanse of grey flat bedrock and golden sand which stretches for miles at low tide, and we were there at low tide.

The upper part of the shore is a bank of large pebbles and bigger stones, tricky to negotiate before bedrock and sand is reached. The Jurassic limestone shows remnants of fossil shells, and occasionally dinosaur footprints appear in big slabs which have fallen from the often dangerous cliffs, or been exposed by the action of the sea. Although the rock is hard it has a tendency to fragment over time so the cliffs are subject to a considerable amount of erosion over decades. The Vale coast and inland is rich in bird and insect life. On the climb back up to the village, I recorded a song thrush hidden in a bush nearby. Exquisite!

We stopped for a drink in the garden of the Horseshoe Inn in the neighbouring village of Marcross on the way back, then drove to IKEA in Grangetown so that Owain could buy himself a summer duvet. My fit-bit told me that we walked the same distance around the store as we walked from the car park to the beach and had to queue for ten minutes to pay and get out. Waiting in a long zig-zag snake queue reminded me of going through airport security.

We bought takeaway fish and chips for supper, then watched Paddington 2, a delightful comic fantasy movie, which mocks Britishness in a whimsical way and makes superb use of computer generated imaging to tell its story. Over and above that the editing and production of the film used a vast array of sequences shot in crime drama or action movie, mocking every kind of filmic cliche - a masterpiece of cinematic parody. To finish the day I walked for three quarters of an hour while the sun was setting, and so did Owain, who decided to go out after I'd left. A lovely day all round.

Coast path outing

No pancakes for breakfast today, just our usual breakfast after a lie-in. Mid morning, we drove over to Penarth and enjoyed a walk along the coast path, as far as the east side of Lavernock Point, and then we negotiated our way down a steep and muddy path to the beach to eat slices of Clare's bara brith washed down with a flask of coffee. Although there were magnificent dramatic cumulus clouds, the sun shone brightly and the air was so clear the coastline on the southern shore of the estuary opposite was sharply visible, making me wish I'd brought my DSLR camera with wide angled lens, but I brought only the Olympus, for which I don;t have that kind of lens. It did however produce some nice sharp photos in high contrast situations. It's a simple pleasure to handle and much lighter to carry. Additional lenses however, will be rather expensive to buy. I can't find any of interest available second hand.

We walked eight kilometres there and back, and Clare bought fish and chips for our lunch from the kiosk at the pier. I stayed with the car as we were just over the two hour stay allowed in our sea front parking place, and we'd noticed a couple of wardens patrolling and issuing fines a distance away. When I saw them turn in our direction, I drove the car around and met with Clare opposite the pier, just at the right time. then we parked on the headland overlooking Cardiff Bay. There'd been a brief shower as we neared the end of our walk, but the sun shone through clouds moving very slowly, producing a fine rainbow that persisted for the next fifteen minutes while we were driving home. Clouds were overhead, but both ends of the rainbow arc were visible over the townscape at the same time, a wondrous sight. I didn't bother to get the camera out, but just sat and enjoyed,  as Clare drove the final leg of the journey home from the Tesco filling station. That's our first tankful of petrol since the end of February, just 285 miles on the trip meter, two hundred of which were journeys to and from Bristol for treatments back in July-August.

After supper I watched the 2016 feminist re-make of the 1980's Ghostbuster movies, which is partly a homage to the original movies and partly satire on NYC disaster movies, with some hilarious slapstick sequences and feminist memes thrown in. Sheer entertaining scifi horror rubbish, perhaps even mocking nostalgically the original, which became something of a cult movie. Dan Akroyd who produced, I think, as well as starring in the original, also produced this one, and made a vignette appearance as a tough Yellow Cab driver in the midst of the crisis saying "I ain't afraid of no ghost", his catchphrase in the original script. When Owain was about eight years old we had a Ghostbusters home computer game, which Owain enjoyed. I think I may have taken all three of them to see the first movie. After that, the much darker, violent last double episode of 'The Valhalla Murders' on BBC Four, with high level police corruption, murder and child abuse revealed as interlinked in the Icelandic winter.  It was complex and not always easy to follow. Fine for feeding pessimism about sheer human nastiness, as opposed to the kind of weakness leading haphazardly to crime which is often the picture painted in crime movies these days. 

Next week, the final series of Parisian flic series 'Spiral' begins. Fast moving, more daylight, and a mix of nastiness and weakness, integrity and corruption in the French legal system and law enforcement. It's been running with the same principal actors for fifteen years and is to my mind a masterpiece of social and moral comment on pour post-modern world.

Coast walk

Yesterday, I delivered my accumulation of electronic waste products to the SFX Tech office over in Newport Road. I had difficulty finding it, despite the accuracy of Google Maps, as the 'Dominions House' building had no name plate. The building seemed to host only a Thai Massage Parlour. I rang the office to check I had the address correct, and found that I did. The office was on the first floor above the Massage Parlour! A strange location for an electronic recycling depot. The guy who came down to relieve me of my stuff was evidently in a hurry, so there was no time to chat and find out a bit more about the organisation. Most importantly, it's there and offering a valuable service to people with a bad conscience about electronic waste. When the CBS office finally closes there's somewhere we'll be able to take kit that can't be re-purposed.

We made the most of the beautiful weather today and drove to Penarth with a picnic, and took a walk along the coast path along the clifftop as far as Lavernock. The last time we did this was in April, just after my birthday. The hedges along the clifftop are overwhelmed with blackberry bushes. Unlike in Bute Park, there's a smaller proportion of fruit here ripe for picking at the moment. It's more exposed and peak fruit will probably come in a couple of weeks time. The berries here are smaller than ones inland. Even so, Clare with little assistance from me gathered just over half a kilo, which produced a beautifully sweet fruit syrup, perfect for Sunday's apple crumble.

The tide was right in when we arrived and slowly went out as we walked, revealing a red sandstone bed of rock at the base of the 100 foot cliff, decorated tastefully by the sea with a scattering of grey limestone pebbles. The fields behind the cliff path are awash with nearly ripe pale golden barley, and I spotted three different species of butterfly, thought I'd be unable to identify them. I watched a flock of several dozen finches burst from a garden hedge into the air, flying in a cloud formation with tail-enders zig-zagging to distract predator's attention from the majority of birds. This behaviour I've only observed at close quarters once before, at the Rio Aguas in Mojacar. Sadly, too quick for photos.

A Chinese family was out exploring the path. One of them quizzed Clare about the blackberries she was gathering. They hadn't seen them before, back home in Hong Kong, wild or otherwise.

We stopped for a drink in Cioni's, at the town end of the managed parkland area of clifftop, before a visit to Asda while heading for home. Clare needed some medical grade olive oil to soften earwax, but was unable to find any, but I came away with a couple of bottles of wine anyway.

We treated ourselves to supper at Stefano's Restaurant, before settling down for the evening. The last two episodes of Danish thriller 'Below the Surface' were aired on BBC Four. There was a sinister twist to an apparent islamist kidnap plot with  Russian spies succeeding in duping some extremist would be jihadis into a botched attack which then becomes a hostage crisis, whilst at the same time duping a top Danish military intelligence official in collusion. As ever the savvy hero saved the day and there was a happy family ending with another series to follow most probably. (Yawn)