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We have been to three different cities since our last post so it is time to catch up! After we left the lake district we spent some time in Liverpool, which I might add, is a city that has a lot of bright character, but is also still kind of scary at night. It used to be a very poor city, and that definitely shows in most of the town architecture and in the feel of some neighborhoods.
For those of who do not know Liverpool is the hometown of The Beatles. There is a famous street, Mathew street, where the Cavern Club is located. The Caver Club is a small underground bar where The Beatles made a name for themselves. They played 241 shows in that bar and slowly rose to fame because of that place. It was pretty busy, full of tourists I'm sure, but it felt amazing to stand in front of the stage where it all began.
We also visited Stawberry fields, which is only a closed gate now, but when they were kids it was a popular park in their neighborhood. We managed to capture a picture of us standing next to Penny Lane on our way to strawberry fields as well. Nothing really interesting is on Penny Lane nowadays, it is merely a street name, but after visiting it I often wondered what significance this road had for the Beatles as kids.
On the last day we got a tour of Anfield, Liverpools famous soccer stadium. Surprisingly enough the stadium is quite small. Kinnick stadium is definitely far bigger. That being the case the waiting list to get into a Liverpool game at Anfield is over a year, which is crazy because the soccer season spans from August to May, depending how well the team does that year. The coolest fact we heard on the tour was the dual functionalitly of the soccer field. It is part soccer field and part grave yard, minus the bodies. Anfield is only one of two soccer fields that allow people's ashes to be spread across the grass. Even Man U fans!
-Nathan,
onto Sarah...
After Anfield, we spent two days in Chester, a small Cathedral city about halfway between Liverpool and our first wwoofing site. The first night we stayed in a hotel for the first time, that was unfortunately in far poorer shape than any of the hostels we've yet to sleep in-even the bedbugs one! I'll apologize in the middle and in advance for all the Cathedral hubbub you'll probably read about and see in pictures from this trip, I am a medieval art history student, after all. Anyway I drug Nathan through two REALLY amazing cathedrals in Chester, and afterwards we found ourselves in the mist of the audience of a midsummer parade in the cathedral square.
Yesterday we entered Welsh country for the first time and after about 10+ tries I learned to prounounce my first Welsh word-Caersws ("Car-Sews" in a british accent), the name of the train station we had to get to where Kevin, our host picked us up and took us to our very first Wwoof site! After arriving I've been mostly baffled by the much more challenging pronunciations we've come across including the name of our little village "Llanidlous" (which begins with a "Ths" sound that is mostly a hiss) and "Aberystwyth" the nearest town.
I'm honestly a bit concerned that we're to be disappointed from here on out by our other wwoof sites because our first is so truly epic. Old Chapel Farm perches about half way down a valley in the middle of sheep-strewn picturesque Welsh hillsides and includes two stone circles, an ancient renovated chapel, an 800-year-old yew tree and the farmhouse the family lives in that dates to the 1600's. Here each Wwoofer is given their own plot of land and animal to take care of during their stay. I've been given Dylan, a motherless lamb to bottle feed twice a day and Nathan has been given a flock of 30 sheep, ten mothers and their twins to (wait for it) count twice a day and check for any sickness. We are looking after the topmost garden on the farm, which is actually fairly large and includes a small potato field and beds of many different kinds of herbs and vegetables. Nathan and I are bunking in the loft of the barn, which is quite nice minus the bugs...
After being shown our accommodations on our first day we really jumped into things by meeting our respective animals and being given the task of herding the whole of Nathan's flock into a small pen and then checking them for worms. This, my friends, involves peering closely at their bottoms to see of they, in plain terms, have just gotten over, or are currently experiencing a bad case of the runs. Once you have noticed said runs on said lamb or sheep, you then capture them by getting one person to straddle the sheep in the small pen and hold onto their horns while the other (Nathan) measures and squirts medicine down their throat. On his first day as shepherd Nathan noticed a tiny lamb looking quite unwell by the outer fence and notified Fran, our other host who took him into the sick pen. To our dismay the little guy, who is actually Dylan's twin sister, died this morning, but as is life on the farm I suppose...
Today was our first full day here and for breakfast we got to try the butter we had helped to make the previous night on our toast and had milk from the cow 100ft away in our cereal. It rained (yep) for most of the time we were in our garden, and after lunch we began preparations to cook dinner for ten strangers. During their time here each wwoofer has to cook dinner once, and on our second night here we were called upon. Having only the contents of a farmer's kitchen and little to no inventive cooking skills, we panicked a bit, but came out in the end with large portions of Tikka masala and baked potatoes to share. We have heard that during our short week here we will make cheese, dandilion wine and hopefully get to see a bit of progress in our overgrown garden. It's been a very busy day and a half and I'm sure we'll have far too much to share for one blog post in a few days. For now, did you know that a cow produces 4 gallons of milk a day and that a lamb can explode if it sucks too much air while being bottlefed? Wish us luck!
-Sarah
I wish for you not to experience exploding sheep.
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