So we are suddenly plunged from Indian summer into winter with biting cold winds and lashing rain. It must be the usual UK weather then, completely unpredictable.  When we were in New Zealand, (a little name dropping or should that be place dropping) their weather was so changeable and unpredictable they would often call it a 2 season or even a 3 season day. And of course they are our antipodes but the main difference is they are in the middle of the pacific with no land mass to protect them so it’s far more an exposed place than us. We were cycling around New Zealand at the time and it’s the only place where I have literally been blown off my bike by the wind and it was so windy we had to walk for some miles. We don’t really get that here although I have been blown off my feet on the mountain tops quite a few times; it’s quite scary.

So on with today’s story.

When we first arrived in Baavet land we came with little or no money and the first decision was, ‘do we buy a tractor or a Landrover for the farm’, we just couldn’t afford both. When I say Landrover I mean an old Landrover (or that would have been an old tractor). We thought the Landrover would be more versatile so that’s what we went for.

It was an old 1968 series 3, in blue; no power steering and very, very basic. But that’s what we needed for the rough jobs around the farm especially carting rocks and stones for our stonewalling. 

Sorry about the quality of the photo which was taken 13 years ago. It’s taken beside the first stone wall we rebuilt with the trusty old Landrover in the background.

We had just a small parking place away from the cottage then, next a semi ruined barn. Well almost ruined as the roof had mainly gone and one wall had collapsed. We had been here for some time when one day I took the Landrover over the fields. It started to rain so I turned the wipers on. This in itself is an experience in an old Landy. In fact in most of them you could work the wipers by hand. There was a scrapping noise on the windscreen as the wiper blades crossed the window. I stopped and looked and saw that one of the wiper blade rubbers was missing. Oh blast… never mind I’ll get another one when I go to town…Which a week or so later I did. 

Life continued, work was done with the Landrover then sometime later, I can’t really say how long, the same thing happened when another wiper blade went missing. Now on the old Landrover you can just replace the rubber in the wiper blade not the whole blade, lucky really because no sooner had I replaced that one than another one went missing. By the third time I noticed it straight away and got out of the Landy and looked around and there on the roof was the missing rubber.

I was beginning to get suspicious now, this couldn’t just be a case of old rubber blades coming lose, I was now onto 3 new ones. So I pushed the rubber back hard so it was really difficult to get it out and felt sure nothing would move the rubber.

Sure enough nothing did move the rubber because the next thing that happened was the whole wiper blade rubber and all went missing. Whatever had been stealing the rubber couldn’t get the rubber out so they took the whole bloody wiper blade. I just couldn’t believe that some thieving little magpie, or was it a squirrel, I will never know, had managed to get the whole blade off. So from then on I took both wiper blades off complete with the rubber and put them in the cab and only put them on the Landy if it rained! Huh try and get the rubber blades now you little critters.

Of course we eventually saw the funny side of things perhaps it was a squirrel with a rubber fetish. Can you imagine the cartoon image of a squirrel lazing back in the old barn on a nice cushioned bed of rubber!

That wasn’t the end of the Landrover saga. As I said we used to go out to different parts of the farm to work so we would go in it especially when stonewalling as we could take all our tools and buckets and so on. Gwen, our Border collie, was really quite freaky when she was young (what Collie isn’t). She was particularly frightened by any loud bangs or low flying aircraft (we are on the training path of RAF Valley) so she used to like to sit in the Landrover cab while we worked.

Now don’t ask me why, but on this particular day I had parked it up on a steep hill by the side of our stonewall job facing downhill I left the hand brake on, obviously, and I also left it in gear, you know the big old Landy gear stick and I know you can guess what happened next, why didn’t I see that?

It was a lovely spring day, everything was going fine we were into a rhythm with the wall (Roger was at one with his rocks! Lesley once bought a coaster with this on!)

Lesley and I were both working with our backs to the Landrover when I decided to go over the wall for a pee. I was just relieving myself and admiring the view when Gwen put her head out of the side window, she always sat on the front seat. There was a clunk and suddenly the Landrover lurched forward and started off down the hill gathering speed.

Now if it wasn’t so serious it would have been quite comical as the landrover gathered speed with Gwen quite happily looking out of the window. But for a moment it was far from comical as the Landy was careering now down the slope and heading for a very steep drop which would have trashed the Landy and been fatal for the dog.

Lesley had her back to the action and hadn’t noticed what was going on. I don’t remember doing my flies up as I screamed at Lesley, bounded the wall in one leap and raced after the Landrover but there was no way I could catch it I stopped and just stared in disbelief and just waited for the inevitable.

Gwen was just calmly looking out of the window as if to say ‘where are we going?’ There was absolutely nothing I could do, my heart was in my mouth as I watched, as almost in slow motion, and the inevitable crash to come as the Landrover would go over the edge.

Just at the very last moment a miracle happened, well not just a miracle, a feat of robust solid Landrover engineering the one without power steering. Just before the edge it went over a bump in the hillside which turned the wheels and as the wheels turned with the bump so the steering wheel went with them like an unseen hand. It would have taken another strong hand to turn it back. The Landrover changed course and instead of heading downhill it headed across the slope and actually turned slightly uphill and gently pulled to a halt just as if Gwen was driving it herself. I raced down heart pumping completely overjoyed and rushed up to Gwen who just looked at me as if to say ‘So where the bloody hell have you been, how did you expect me to drive this thing.’

But I must end this with a story with something I didn’t actually witness on the farm but it has been told to me by my neighbour about our predecessor old Mr. Evans. I always refer to him as old Mr. Evans it just seems fitting.

Now back in the 1950’s Mr. Evans liked the old ways and stuck to his horse and cart on the farm (we still have his cart minus the wheels) and he didn’t want one of these new fangled things called a tractor. The horse’s stable was the ruined barn I referred to earlier and just below it is a small well, it’s a spring really which has four stone sides and we are told the horse always preferred to drink from its cool clear water. Our young Border collie, Moss, always drinks from there now.

But as time went by he watched his neighbours buying and using their shiny new Fergi Bach’s. The Fergi Bach, Welsh for Little Fergi, is the immortal grey Ferguson tractor which became a legend throughout the UK but particularly in the hills of Wales where its small rugged frame could handle the rough going. It’s now a collector’s item and can be seen at all agricultural shows. I used to have one myself, they are brilliant.

So the day eventually came when even old Mr. Evans went and bought himself his very own Fergi Bach and he was really pleased with it.

This is a photo of a photo of my neighbours pride and joy the Fergi Bach he rebuilt and lovingly restored… not a bad photo of a photo really.

Mr. Evans hadn’t had the tractor very long when one day he was coming down the field to park the tractor up for the night. This field is immediately behind the barn and it has a particularly steep slope; it’s the same hill we toboggan down; and for some reason he stopped at the top of the hill to get off the tractor to do something. Now he must have either not put the brake on properly or he must have knocked the brake off as he get off. Whatever the case, the result was the same, the tractor set off on its own at an ever increasing speed down the hill. It quickly gathered speed, careering towards the bottom of the field and a hedge. But unlike our Landy it didn’t change course it just thundered on down. When it reached the hedge it was travelling so fast that it went straight through it. Now the hedge wasn’t the real problem for the tractor, it was the steep vertical drop straight down on to the farm track the other side of the hedge which was going to do the tractor the real damage. But luckily the tractor was now going so fast that it went straight through the hedge and shot into the air like Evel Knieval and sailed straight over the track. Then it continued its flight through the air and over the fence the other side of the track and eventually it landed upside down in a bog on the other side, completely unharmed I am told. Behold a flying tractor!

Can’t you just see the look on old Mr. Evans face!

More stories from the crazy people in the hills soon. You can see why we invented the Baavet can’t you?

Talking of which, if you didn’t see it on twitter, Baavet is going global, well abroad anyway, with sales to Ireland (the Irish just love their Baavets), France, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and America (it was taken as luggage). But the most amazing one was the Baavet that was sent to Australia a couple of weeks ago. We told the guy, by email, to buy his duvet locally several times but he insisted the Australian wool duvets were lumpy and insisted we send him one. Well what could we do? We sent him one, and you know what, it took no longer to get to him than to our regular customers in the UK! He emailed us to say his new Baavet was brilliant.