"A little bit about me" ranger49's Profile

Manchester born, Welsh by adoption ...
I left my home in Manchester before my 18th birthday to come to Wales as a student - and stayed here.
During much of my childhood and teen years most family holidays were spent in Lancashire, Wiltshire, Derbyshire and North Wales but South Wales and the even less well known “mid Wales” were mostly new to me.
It is without doubt a land of well hidden secrets with far more to offer than most people who head only for Snowdonia and the castles of north Wales realise.
After working in Cardiff the Capital, in the industrial valleys of the Rhondda and Merthyr Tydfil, and in Swansea and the Gower coast I retired to a Market town in Monmouthshire.

Travels further afield

Sri Lanka 1988

Having close relatives who move to live overseas brings opportunities to travel to places one might otherwise never have visited. I made two short visits to Toronto and also to Montreal in the 1990s and loved travelling in Canada. US destinations that we have visited to see close relatives (mine and my husbands) are Vermont, New Hampshire, Boston, Philadelphia, Princetown NJ, Washington DC, and Virginia and lots of places in between because we liked to make a road trip between visits. In 2000 my sister left the East Coast for California opening up some of the west to us .Thanks to Icelandic ash in April 2010 we had a seven week stay so were able to see some of the great sites of Arizona including Grand Canyon.
Nearer home relatives and friends in France, Spain and Germany continue to give us a good excuse to visit Europe. My first real trip "abroad" was to Brittany in 1966 and France remains a great favourite.

Gardening

An early summer day

I love our garden and since we moved to this house - then new in 1991, we have had enormous pleasure creating a garden from scratch.
A lovely hobby that brings many rewards particularly through the changing seasons.
It is an outdoor living space, a place where our eight growing granchildren have all enjoyed to play.
It is a vegetable provider and apple orchard plus an extra dining area on BBQ days. And a place - sometimes - to relax and read.

Cooking

Salade Roulade

I love to cook - all types of dishes - traditional British as my mother taught me, of course. But also French, Mediterranean, Middle East - just getting in to vegetarian Levantine dishes. In fact I like to try all things new.

When the garden produce comes in and it is preserve making time seeing the larder shelves stocked up for a the year ahead is a good time.

Books, music - mainly classical & opera & drama.

Some of my books

These are amongst my interests.

Reading - After 12 and a half years I have just "retired" from the reading Group of which I had been secretary, organiser and facilitator. I feel this will give me more time to devote to reading books of my choice and already have a network of friends who enjoy informal, one to one , discussions of the books we are reading.

Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, 40 minutes away, provides a broad and diverse choice of entertainment from rock and jazz to Welsh National Opera - and everything in between. Newport and Brecon have thriving theatres and Abergavenny has its own theatre and cinema. In the Land of Song there are numerous local choirs and orchestras performing to a very high standard in some of the splendid churches and other venues in the town.

Travel and Family History

A corner of my computer room

When my husband suggested that we should get a computer "to keep up with our grandchildren" I was totally against the idea. We had not long retired , computers were only then being introduced to my office so they spelled "Work".
He is a quietly persuasive man and so we had a computer.

It was not long before we had one each and I have my own tiny computer room. Here I do my online family history research, plan our trips - we usually travel independently - and spend far too much time on VT!