There was a little bit of sun about today, made a change. It gave me the chance to walk down the valley to to look at the hay grass. A good deal of the grass has been flattened when the stream went from being two foot wide to thirty foot. The flattened grass is going to take a long while to dry, as it will be stopping the ground from drying underneath it. Could well be that we will not be able to cut the flattened grass. Unless this weather changes, we wont be able to cut any.
We have family staying at Minehead for their holiday, so with the weather being a bit brighter we went and had our fish and chips on the harbour with them. We have only been going to the harbour part of Minehead since we found the cottage for the family to stay in. They are getting on a bit and like the seaside. We found the cottage a couple of months back, when we had that really warm spell. We had purposely made our way to the harbour area to find a holiday cottage for them, and was fortunate to have seen a local fisherman, who we asked if he knew of any holiday accommodation. He pointed us into the direction of a lady’s cottage who had a holiday cottage next to hers. She only had this week available. It has turned out to be the perfect little cottage and location for their holiday. All the widows overlook the harbour, that is under twenty feet from their front door.
We sat out on harbour eating our fish and chips. We were sitting in the shade, it was absolutely freezing, so I suggested that we walked around the harbour wall, to the area where the sun was shining on. When you visit a place regularly you tend to take little notice of the area. Today we realised what a very pretty and picturesque little harbour it is. Looking straight over from the harbour wall you can see the cottages that they holidaying in, one of a long row of period fishermen cottages, that sit at the bottom of a massive rocky mound that levels out at the rear with the contours of the land, that must be a quarter of Minehead. Part of it has roadways leading up to homes, that I reckon that I would suffer from vertigo, if I lived up there. The side that their cottage is on, is nearly a sheer rock face drop, with pine trees growing out of it. From the distance of the harbour wall you can see a retaining wall behind their cottage, that you would hope would stop any landslide, although I was not convince that it would.
Walking back with the family to their cottage, we bumped into the Fisherman who had told us about the cottage. Every time without fail that we have gone for our fish and chips, we meet the Fisherman. A little bit of banter passes between us, finishing up with a little laugh. On one occasion we helped him lift one of his fishing boats, of which he seems to have many, a bit of a lump it was to. How come I keep on meeting you, what are you doing here today, he joked, I couldn’t stay away from you I replied. We got into conversation and I asked him about any landslides. Yes there have been a few he told us. He had lived at the harbour all of his life where he was born and bred, and earned his living from the sea, as did his family and most of the people who occupied the fisherman’s cottages. A stone fell on the cottage that your family are staying in, maybe a little bigger than a stone, more a rock, he continue, indicating with his hands, a rock of about three foot square and telling that the weight would have been about half a ton, went through the roof, smashed through a rafter and crashing to the ground. Had to use a jack hammers to break it up. He told of another incident when a rock went through the roof of the cottages that he was born in. The family who lived there at the time, were lucky to be alive, when a landslide of about three hundred ton crashed into their home. The occupants were found in a protected area, that miraculously somehow had been left around them.