Not a birthday on Parys Mountain

It's great to have some friends to celebrate the standard milestones of life with. But this year Susan and Dean were busy in december, so weren’t around for my birthday, or the adjacent weekends. They suggested we do something the weekend before that. And I'm okay with that! And we had made a plan; we would either go underground, as they had become curious about what that's like. Or go to Parys Mountain, as they also were a bit curious about that. They know I take students there. And we would let the weather decide. If it was going to be raining, we would go underground! And it wouldn't be raining.

Martin drove us there. We had packed for a picnic. But it was very cold! Not that that was unexpected. We did the normal trip and I told them what I normally tell the students. And I think that quite soon we were starting to wonder where we could shelter from the wind and have our picnic. The most obvious option is the windmill, but that is traditionally the last thing you see. We also checked out two ruins, but they weren’t very sheltered. So in the end the picnic happened in the windmill after all! It was indeed quite nice and quiet in there. I had made a quiche, and Sue and Dean had brought cake. It was lovely!

Pic by Martin

After the picnic we went back. The initial plan had been to go to an Indian restaurant in the village, but it turned out that it had been closed for a while. We are clearly not very observant. So instead we went home, by the fire, drank tea, and in the end ordered some Indian takeaway. We had that by the fire as well.

By the time the others left I must admit I was knackered! I wasn't quite sure how much of that was because of the rather tiring week I had had, and how much of that was still from getting very cold on Parys Mountain. (I didn't put on my down jacket until we sat down for the picnic, but that had probably been a mistake.) But it doesn't matter. I quickly retreated to bed, and could look back on a lovely day with marvellous people!