Wales

Why have I not registered the wonders of the mountains south of Snowdonia? We drove from rain and mist in Holyhead into sunshine and glory - through the mid-Welsh paradise and into Shropshire for lunch with friends... Wasps attacked the lunch while we did. We heard the buzzards calling. We walked around their Douglas Fir woods. The tiny river at the edge of their garden is the English/Welsh border.... each year the huge boulders are re-arranged by the floods into new formations, but at this time of year all is quiet and convincingly gentle.

Driving on to family in Oxford we made great progress until our schedule was smashed to bits by the outwash of an earlier pile-up on the M5 south of Birmingham - thus it took us nearly an hour to fail to get east of the motorway at Tewkesbury - we diverted to Cheltenham to take the A40 instead, which was fine until a BAD MAN driving a lorry for a company called Gammonds got in front of us.  We had been doing a steady 60mph, but he averaged 35 mph, varying for no reason between 20 and 47mph with no place to pass, and a huge queue built up behind him......   So inconsiderate.   All he had to do was look in his mirror and see what was happening.

And, whoever caused the M5 crash, earlier in the day, could have affected the lives of a million people.... a moment's indecision, or wrong decision - the knock-on effects go on and on and on.  I do think motorways should have frequent egress points, so that thousands of people don't get stuck. Of course, it will be the crash on the Sheppey Bridge which will be recorded for yesterday - 200 hurt and 8 seriously - but this other one in the Midlands also did damage to the social fabric.  We are all expected to just put up with it. I say 'No!'

Here we are, the next day, having lovely breakfast, talking about Chinese porcelain, and getting ready for the trip home later today.