This week was work experience week for Beccy at school. She originally wanted to do her work experience at the London Aquarium and sent an application and CV. She never received a reply. She also tried various football organisations but, again, no luck (but one was decent enough to reply). While she was looking I got a message from my nephew, Joe, who said he was WWOOFing in Australia. Realising that if I asked him what WWOOFing was it would take ages to find out as he only has intermittent internet access, I looked it up on-line. I then remembered that my friend Viv had done the same thing in New Zealand. Both Joe and Viv seemed to have had a good experience of it and so I suggested to Beccy that we try it for her work experience. She would actually work for a week, while we lived with the family on the farm (WWOOF - Willing Workers On Organic Farms), our work would be our payment for food and accommodation. This way she could use her work experience week to improve her spoken French (she has indicated that she wants to do French at A level). I joined the organisation and started sending out requests. We were accepted by Claudie and Bernard at their farm in Bretignolles-sur-Mer in South West France.
Our second working holiday of the year was at Llanddeusant Youth Hostel in the Brecon Beacons, South Wales. We were volunteer wardens for a week (we have been doing this for about 10 years now but this was the first time at this hostel). The hostel was very remote (7 miles from the nearest village, 12 from the nearest town) and so very quiet, peaceful and relaxing. Again, no mobile phone, TV or internet (although the hostel did have a landline). There was room for 22 guests but the most we had on any night was 10. The kitchen was large and extremely well equipped and I was able to bake bread on a couple of days. We took all our food with us as we had realised that we wouldn't be able to just pop out to the local shop!
Deciding to drive there, as we needed to leave on Sunday after Beccy's army cadet testing for 1 star, we caught the 6.30pm ferry from Dover and drove from Calais to Rouen to find an F1 hotel. We had no sat-nav and our map was too large scale to show individual roads, so we had printed out directions from Google maps. The directions were perfect until we got near to the hotel when it started to use road names rather than numbers. We didn't see a name sign on any of the roads and got completely lost by about 10.30pm. It was dark and, after a while, we started to give up hope of finding the hotel (which I had booked in advance). Suddenly, we had a brain wave and used the address to guide us, we found Sotteville (the right area of town), then Parc des Expositions and then is was just a case of finding the right road, which took about 5 minutes - phew!!
After a good night's sleep we drove on (5 hours) to Bretignolles, which we found very easily from the directions and with the map. We were welcomed by Claudie and Bernard and were shown the caravan where we would be sleeping. The caravan was clean but had no electricity or water, it was just for sleeping in. We found it difficult at first to adapt to the way they had food constantly out on the table, many flies and how they re-used and re-served everything. By the end of the week we had learned to value this greatly. Very little was thrown away and the family lived with very little material comfort. We did, however, eat very well and were treated like guests. A German boy (16) was doing work experience the same as Beccy and the family had 4 teenage children. The atmosphere was great, the work was good (we helped out at their factory where they made jams, preserves, vinegars for local shops, local markets and their own farm shop, we cleared weeds, picked strawberries, planted seeds and helped with chores around the house). One evening, Bernard took Beccy and me to the concert of a friend of theirs at a local campsite, another evening we all went out to the Bastille Day celebrations to see fireworks and eat ice creams. Beccy went swimming with the other children and we had loads of time to read. No phones, no TV, no internet, peace and quiet. It was great.
Voluntary wardening - July 30th - August 6th
Beccy and her friend Allison came with us and they went out on their own for three of the days we were there. This involved driving them 25 minutes to the nearest bus stop for a bus to Swansea and then picking them up again when they got back. The hostel was extremely easy to clean and we had a reasonable amount of spare time in the afternoons. We visited Swansea,Gelli Aur, Llanelli beach, Camarthen, Llandovery and spend one afternoon walking up to a mythical lake near the hostel (well fairly near - it was a 7 mile walk altogether). We met some lovely people who were walking, motorcycling, cycling or just touring and the view from the hostel was so lovely you could just sit a look all evening. We had the odd red kite flying over and we were able to watch bats. There were plenty of sheep and we learnt quite a bit about cattle droving (we had wondered how the hostel we were in, a converted pub, had ever managed to survive as a pub in a place where there were about six houses in the immediate area. Having read books in the hostel and some information boards in Llandovery we found that there was a string of droving inns where the drovers got their food and lodging and the cattle were fed and shod.
On our final day at the hostel, Brian took the girls out fishing all morning and most of the afternoon. This left me loads of time to do a good clean of the hostel before we handed it over to the next warden, to bake some bread and to walk down to a nearby cafe in a local farm (3km away) for my lunch. I had a platter of three local cheeses, salad sprinkled with seeds, oatcakes and home made bread. To drink I had a pot of Earl Grey tea. I rested for a while after eating then started to walk back. As I did so I had the most enormous sense of well-being that I ever remember having. Whether this was as a result of walking in the country on a warm, but not sunny, day with a full tummy I don't know but I could understand why a good number of hostel guests had been very enthusiastic about the cafe during the week. A number of them went there for breakfast and were very impressed.
Ben's trip to South Africa - 26th July to 13th August
Ben and his scout group went back to Mpumalanga province where they had been four years ago. This time they were going to build a library in an empty room in the Mlilo school. A number of his closest friends were on the trip and he had the time of his life. The work went well and they had plenty of time to do other activities like caving, mountain climbing and biking, swimming, kayaking, camping with South African scouts and sightseeing in Kruger National Park. Ben came home full of enthusiasm for South African food and cooked us a bobotie. They visited the project they worked on last time, in Sandzile School and Ben said that their work had made a huge impact on the school. This time, the money they raised for the trip was used to complete the library and to buy the books and equipment needed. Again, a huge impact has been made.
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