Saturday 21st August 10

Gill and I got up early to finish packing, do the recycling... we'd only produced a carrier bag of landfillable rubbish, four glass bottles, 2 glass jars, a few plastic bottles, several cereal boxes full of compostables, dealt with guerilla-style, and half a dozen drinks cartons which I brought home to put in the recycling here.

We'd ordered a taxi for 9.15 and the driver told us all about her house and grounds, which sounded interesting. The journey into Swansea cost £13.

The train was at 9.55 and the journey up to Shrewsbury, a quicker route via Cardiff and Abergavenny was still very interesting and pretty in places. However, we were glad we'd taken the four hour trip on the Heart of Wales line on the journey south, as that was really lovely.

We got into Manchester for about 2.10pm and then had a bit of a wait for our train to York. I chatted to a nice chap who was a driver of the Virgin Pendolino trains.

A non-eventful trip back to York, apart from managing to delete about 450 sent messages and inbox stuff. Altogether this holiday I've re-organised my computer substantially and deleted well over 500 messages and over 100 pictures and files.

I took the heaviest rucksack and several other bags and put them in my bike trailer, which I'd left at the station. Enjoyed the cycle home, popping in on Country Fresh to say hi to Rich.

When I got in, I found Melody (presumably) had not just watered our tomato plants but also tidied up a bit... how embarrassing but how lovely. A Yorky reward will be hers!

When the others came in (they gave up waiting for the bus and got a taxi) I visited Country Fresh again, and Rich had left me several boxes of desirable compostables. In a skip on the way back I found some copper pipe, lead pipe and a lump of wood. Nice!

I did a bit of compost bin filling and set the squirrel trap, as there was evidence of nut theft from the red hazelnut tree.

Dealt with 300 emails! Cut/pasted blog posts, written whilst on holiday on Wordpad. Lit the stove. Washed up.