Day 1 in Wales: fireplaces and sheep

Saturday, March 9 (and the night before):

First, I explored the house, which was no simple task.   The layout of Alexanderstone Manor makes my house seem simplistic.  (And if you've been in my house, you know that's saying something.)

Alexanderstone Manor is a fifteenth-century hamlet.  It has everything that comes with an old house that's been tweaked and twiddled with for the past five hundred years:  Bumpy floorboards, slippery wood stairs, musty drapes, oversized bathrooms, and multiples of everything - staircases, front doors, kitchens and single stairs and steps in odd places.  Antique wardrobes and dressers, elegant dishware, Persian-style rugs, and an ancient-sounding upright piano with a temperamental damper pedal.

Here's one of the living rooms:

The staircase:

The unpredictable piano:

When we arrived late Friday night, we started a real wood fire in the real wood stove right away.  (We spent a lot of time in this room during the next several days - reading, playing cards, roasting marshmallows, singing hymns, storytelling.)

Sonya (my roommate) and I scouted out the bedrooms and picked a small one to share:

On Saturday morning when I woke up I pushed open the drapes and looked out the window - rolling green hills and hedgerows, sheep and horses, and mountains.  I started laughing because the whole thing seemed like a storybook but it was real.  I found Marie and we ran outside and started up one of the narrow roads.  We wound along it for a good two hours.  What we saw reminded me of a book I have at home, an illustrated adaptation of James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small:  Stone barns and cluttered barnyards, grubby farmers leaning on fences and talking to each other, flocks of sheep baaing to each other.

That evening we all shared salmon alfredo and orange cheesecake and dandelion-and-burdock (a beverage) in the dining room.

We ate by candlelight and laughed and talked around the long table for two hours.  We did this together almost every night.  One night we played sardines (a game like hide-and-seek) through the whole house.  It was harder than it sounds, because everything actually got dark at night since we were out in the real countryside!  I took a couple of night-walks while I was there to see the bright stars and listen to the nighttime quietness and the owls.

When I went to bed I thought about how the whole place, inside and out, reminded of my family, and how they would enjoy it like I did.  It reminded me of home (except older and bigger and grander), which I think is partly why I liked it so much.