Hi Everyone,

Well, it has taken me a fortnight to be able to write this and even now I don’t think I will be able to do justice to our beautiful retriever Wilson, who sadly died on Jan. 12th.

  I am sure all of you who met him will remember him at various stages of his life and for various reasons.  To us, he was a loyal constant companion seeing numerous ups and downs and changes in our lives over the 13 and 1/2 years of his life.

He was born and began his life on the Blackdown Hills, in Somerset, when he came to live with us as an 8 week old puppy with enormous paws , the reason Mike chose him!,  Mike called him Wilson, after his make of tennis racket, and over the years he grew into his name.  He was a bundle of mischievious fun but very defiant, and up until he was 0ne, I wondered if he would ever be trained. But then it just seemed like he got it,  and he proved to be the best dog we could have ever wanted.

His undying loyalty to Mike was incredible.  Even when he (Wilson) was struggling to walk, he would still try to follow Mike  to the garage or shed, to see what jobs had to be done. He would follow Mike everywhere from the very beginning, watch him painting the house, decorating the cottages, following him round as he cut the grass and of course he adored the beach and the wonderful walks in the woods around here that we all shared.

When we first came to live in Amroth he was 2 and his favourite activity was chasing seagulls or gulling, as we called it. He would plunge into the sea when they took flight and never gave up thinking he might catch one!!! I remember him once being fascinated by a shoal of fish in the shallow waters of the sea one day and he exhausted himself jumping up and down trying to pat one. He’d delight in finding a bucket lid on the shore line and Mike would throw it as a frizbee.

 He was rarely without a stick or a ball and I have, in the past, found numerous 1/2 balls in a bale of hay from our fields that Wilson had abandoned and they had been caught up in the cutter and baler, when our hay was made.

He absolutely adored the snow in his younger days, frolicing and rolling in it and chasing snowballs and it seems ironic that I think it was the snow and ice that brought him to his end. He had been struggling with his arthritis for quite a long time and the growth of the tumour on his back toe had begun to cause him pain for about a week beore he died, as he kept catching it on the ice and breaking the skin. When he fell over on the 11th and could not get up at all, Mike had to lift him and we knew it was time to let him go.

Any of you who have had to make this decision, know how hard it is, and at the moment I still have times when I question if we should have given him a bit longer.  It broke my heart to hold him as he slipped away, but he went with dignity as the beautiful dog he was. My friend with his digger came and dug a hole for me and Wilson is buried on his bed with his ball, over looking the sea, woods and coast path, that he so loved and where he had so many adventures. (Mike had to go out for the day, as he found the parting too hard)

If any of you have read Marley and Me you know how sad the ending is, and I knew that would always happen to us but I think we gave him a wonderful life and I hope he felt the same.  Someone in the village said they will always remember how majestically he walked with his beautiful white tail held high and one of our young guests referred to him  as the ‘polar bear’

So many wonderful memories.

Hopefully, my blog will be more cheerful next time but I couldn’t let his death go unmarked. He was too special to be forgotten and his life should be celebrated.

I am sure any of you visiting us this year will be sorry not to be greeted by him, he was a part of Amroth cottages.

Regards to you all

Ann (Amroth cottages)

Mike

Hello to Everyone from our snowy self catering cottages on the coast in Pembrokeshire.

Happy New Year. Well what a start!! The swim on January 1st from the beach in Amroth was a great occasion with several brave and hardy people taking part. Locals and visitors alike, some dressed in Elvis Presley costumes, ran over the sands, as the tide was out, to plunge into the icy water. It was a glorious sunny day and everyone seemed to have a great time. Mind you I wasn’t tempted as they looked so cold when they walked back up the beach. But it was a tremendous effort and a lot of money was raised for various charities.

It was the next day when the snow started to fall here and since then we have been pretty frozen up along with the rest of the country. However, it really is so beautiful looking out over the white fields from our self catering cottages to the sea, with the sun twinkling on the water and walking in Colby woods, the National Trust property next to our farm is magical. It is a shame in our busy lives that we don’t have more time to just enjoy the natural beauty around us but I know when everyone is battling with trying to get to work, get the children to school and all the other every day chores taking time out to just look can a luxury. I remember when we lived in Somerset on the Blackdown Hills and had a business in Taunton, travelling in bad weather was a nightmare for me, so I appreciate how many of you feel. However, those times are now over, and if  the roads are bad I either don’t go out or walk to the local Farm shop at Summerhill for essentials.

Some of our grandchildren live in Newcastle and of course they have had abundant snow. To begin with our daughter said they had a wonderful time playing in it, but now they are not bothered about being outside which is, I suppose, how children living in snowy countries feel.

News from the Farm

We have a wonderful variety of birds coming into the garden. Yesterday afternoon there were a pair of Lapwings on the big lawn in front of Granary Cottage and then a Sandpiper or Curlew with an enormous beak, was drilling down into the lawn. This morning there was a Redwing on the other lawn near Stables Cottage and we have more Mistle Thrushes this year than I have seen here in the past. Of course the huge variety of  Tits and Finches that we get, are enjoying the fat balls and seed and peanut caddies that we have hanging from the trees.

Well the animals are all keeping well, I am pleased to say. Jim, our little Welsh Mountain pony, has a new red winter coat and looks very smart in the field. He and Annie, our other pony, are both at this moment out in the field and I have been watching them this morning scrapping the snow away with their hooves to get to the grass. They do eat a lot more hay and haylage this weather, of course, as do the sheep and Dick and Harry, the goats. The ice on the troughs and water buckets is so thick in the morning and despite breaking it at 7.30 this morning it was iced over again at 10a.m., so I keep popping out to make sure all is O.K.

Charlie, our cat , who lives in the hay barn seems quite happy outside and despite Mike trying to bring him into the house several times, he is always so anxious to get out. Not like Bodmin, Boots and Hannah, who seems happy to stay holed up inside by the radiators.

Wilson, our dear old retriever, is struggling on the snow  as his legs keep giving way and then it is hard for him to get up on the ice. Such a shame as he used to love the snow and would chase snowballs and leap in the air to catch them and then roll in the snow with glee. Such wonderful memories. Still he is quite happy at the moment watching Mike paint in one of the cottages.

Well I must get back to my spring cleaning. My aim is to get all the cottages finished before our first guests of 2010 arrive on 15th January, so no time to waste!!!

Have a good day everyone and spring will soon be here. The snow can’t last forever!

Regards

Ann (Amroth Cottages)