Ellie's Adventures in Wonderland

This weekend's adventure spanned over the whole weekend and was spent in Shitsville Birmingham. For this adventure, I was joined by the lovely Mike.  In preparation for my mammoth trek around the Brecon Beacons later in July to raise money for Llamau , we headed off on Saturday to Sutton Park . I will be taking on the Brace the Brecons challenge with Max (that in itself deserves a hefty donation). I will obviously post a blog of our adventures after the challenge - if we survive. Anyway, back to Sutton Park.  Our walk started off promising. We aimed to do a circular walk of the park, totaling around 7 miles. We stopped off after the first mile at a boating lake and took to the water in a pedal-powered steamer. Mike did most of the hard work, my pedaling was more of a token gesture.  After a lap of the lake, we disembarked the steamer and continued along the trail. I should point out here that Mike was chief navigator for our walk, and frequently consulted Google maps to...

For this week's adventure I was joined by brother dearest, in search of the fabled windmill of Leinthall Starkes .  Having no idea where the windmill was located, but assuming it wouldn't be hard to spot, we drove from one end of the village to the other (which took about 20 seconds, as the village consists of one road). There was no sight of the windmill, so we drove down the road to Ben Elton , where we came across a curious unmanned stall selling crap (presumably donated by the locals). Upon the stall was a sign stating whoever stole the cake cover should return it, or else the authorities would be informed, and they had CCTV footage. Somehow I doubt the local constabulary would waste their time on such petty matters, but then maybe I'm wrong and in these areas a crime of this level would not go unpunished. We left the village shop and headed back into Leinthall Starkes, determined not to give up on our search for the windmill. After driving through the village a second ...

  This weekend's adventure took us to Gloucestershire to spend the night living it up like a king and queen at Thornbury Castle .  We set off on a rainy Sunday morning, stopping mid-way at Frampton on Severn for a coffee at Ley Bistro . The keen-eyed among you will recall I visited Frampton during a previous adventure with Max and Emma. Much like on my last visit to the village, nothing at all happened on this visit either.  We left Frampton and headed for Thornbury, making a short stop off at Wotton under Edge to pay a visit to England's most haunted house - The Ancient Ram Inn . Although we were unable to go inside, the essence of ghost radiates off the place and leaves you under no illusion that inside is riddled with the spirits of the dead. Partly scared that one of these entities would attach itself to us and follow us home, but mainly because it was chucking it down, we decided not to linger. After snapping off a couple of photos, we beat a hasty retreat to the c...

This week, me and the fella took a trip to the mystical Wye Valley, in search of King Arthur's Cave . Fueled up with a full English breakfast, we set off on our quest in the pouring rain. Despite one missed turning (turns out Mike is just as rubbish with directions as Max), we found the car park relatively easily and set off into the damp woods.  The cave is actually really close to the car park and took us only a few minutes to walk to. And as caves that you don't have to pay to visit go, this one ain't half bad. There are two chambers, each stretching back about 20' into a dark abyss (you'll need a torch). Arthur was nowhere to be seen; however, we had a good poke about in his absence. Once we'd finished exploring the cave, we set off deeper into the woods in search of Bilbo Baggins Bridge , or BBB for short. The woods are very reminiscent of Middle Earth, with lots of gnarled trees, rocky outcrops of rock, and leaf-encrusted ground, where the trees have spewe...

Today, me and Mike headed off to the Elan Valley to see the dams. Based just outside the town of Rhayader in Powys, the Elan Valley contains six dams which are used to hoard vast quantities of H2O for Welsh Water . They stockpile this water and sell it back to us common folk to use in our taps, even though they themselves pay nothing for it. Not for profit my arse. Having visited the dams many times before, this trip was to one of the dams I had never seen before - indeed I didn't even know of its existence until recently. On route, we stopped off at some interesting looking rocks which formed part of a stream. We were greeted by a sign warning us of death, but we promptly ignored this and merrily skipped off onto the rocks. Some might call this utter stupidity. We called it bravery. Mike got a little upset when his pretty trainers got splashed by some bog water. However, the bog water was no threat to me in my flip flops (which are ideal rock climbing footwear).  Before continuin...

At the age of 41, I have finally found happiness. That’s not to say I haven’t been happy before in my life, it’s just that now I am genuinely happy with pretty much most of my life. 12-months ago things weren’t so good. I was in a toxic relationship and in a job I didn’t like. Coupled with that, it was at the start of the first Covid lockdown. I knew things were really bad when I would lie in the bath until it went cold, sobbing and wishing I wasn’t here anymore. I didn’t wish I was dead, I just didn’t want to exist. I wanted everything to stop. The one thing I really wanted to get away from was myself. But wherever I went, I was there. Alcohol only made things worse. Sure, I’d get a temporary high and think ‘fuck it’, but it didn’t take long for the low to kick in, and I’d feel like shit again, only the booze would make it feel 10 times worse. And there were the times I would just start crying for no reason. I would cry so hard I couldn’t catch my breath and thought I was choking....

 Today's little adventure took me and Max to the little known hamlet of Westhide . Twas here that we spent our childhood years, getting up to mischief (Max mainly) and doing things that kids today have never heard of - such as making dams or walking.  It was a gloriously sunny day, albeit slightly on the chilly side. We began our adventure at the farm, where we set off across the fields in search of what according to Max was something truly exciting - I don't think anyone will be remotely surprised when I say that it wasn't. But before we get to the boring part, I'd like to share this amusing video with you of Max in a hamster wheel. Why? I hear you ask - because this idiot will do just about any stupid thing you ask him to without question. So, back to the spectacularly underwhelming surprise. We first happened across a small man-made lake, dug to water strawberries in a neighbouring strawberry plantation. Now, anyone who knows me well will know that water is one of my...