Framedlight

  My parents were married during the Second World War when they were both very young. My father was stationed near Hereford, and as my mother was living in London during the blitz, he brought her down to live in a rented cottage on an estate in the Golden Valley. This is an area on the border of Herefordshire and Wales running between two rivers and butting up against the Black Mountains. I was reminded of the area when rewatching "Shadowlands", the film about CS Lewis, and so we decided to take the campervan down to visit. The day we travelled was glorious sunshine. We stopped to take the dog for a walk by a long barrow known as Arthur's Stone and there were some people packing up their picnic as we arrived. The woman had very loud verbal diarrhoea and the husband kept posing on the top of the stone while the kids sat morosely in the car! We went for a walk so that we could return after they had left. The following day the weather had deteriorated but this was to my adva...

 We had some lunch in Browns Canyon and then left to drive north to a small place called Evergreen, not far from Denver, where we would be spending our last night in the US. The afternoon sky was stormy as we rolled through the miles. Evergreen had a large lake next to it where we walked the next morning, killing time before we drove into Denver for our flight home. It was very cold and part of the lake was frozen over. We relinquished the Ford at the airport and spent some time in an open lounge area from where we had a view over the arrivals and departures. Finally as the sun was setting we boarded and took off for Manchester and home. And that was it. Six weeks in the USA was over and only the diary to create! Coming in to the UK Over London

  Moving on from Salida we were driving north to our next destination and last night in the US. The road followed the Arkansas River for some way. Looking for a walk Alan found a place called Brown's Canyon not far from Salida. As we turned off onto a track to the canyon we saw a snow storm coming across the mountains. Luckily it did not venture on to lower elevations but did look very dramatic. The canyon has been carved out by the Arkansas River and is fairly high, the base lying at 7,300 ft and the park rising to 10,000 ft. The geology is mainly granite but we found some chalky outcrops. It has only recently acquired National Monument status under Obama's presidency. It was a good place to shake off the morning cobwebs.

We had had some lunch looking at the sand dunes then we set out to drive across the Saint Luis Valley and on north towards Salida. The valley floor was very flat but we stopped by an irrigation ditch to look back at the dunes and mountains. It was 86 miles to Salida and we finally arrived in the late afternoon. We were staying in a little motel so drove down into town to try and find something to eat. There was nothing we fancied, and we ended up going into a supermarket and buying some bread and frankfurters as there was a microwave in our room. Oh the glamour of travel!