what I did at the weekend

Hazel and I went up to my parents' place for a flying visit at the weekend - one of the few things we did apart from sitting around eating and drinking wine was to go for a short-ish walk around Grosmont, which is here.

Note that this is pronounced Groz-mont, unlike the place of the same name that we visited up in Yorkshire back in August, which is pronounced Groh-mont. You can see why Johnny Foreigner has so much trouble.

Anyway, the main points of interest were: a couple of old ruined farmhouses up on the hillside below the Graig Syfyrddin ridge, various interesting old tractors in advanced states of disrepair, rust and invasion by grass and shrubs (farmers, while theoretically horny-handed sons of the soil with a quasi-mystical empathetic connection to mother nature, are, in reality, scum), and finally Grosmont Castle, which was quite impressive in a completely shot to buggery and ruined kind of way. Some pictures can be found here.

Then it was off to the Angel Inn for some lunch and a couple of very nice pints of Butty Bach from the Wye Valley Brewery. The pub was the subject of a heart-warming rescue from closure by local residents a couple of years ago, and seemed to be doing a roaring trade when we were there. Nice chips, too.