Moving in.............

15th. December 2003.............moving in

 Neighbouring land - taken in 2001 - SSSI - Special Area of Conservation

The day we moved into Pantycastell Fach.    Chaos.  We had hired a removal company, thank goodness and my family were very much on hand too.   By the end of the day, the rooms downstairs were full to brimming with boxes, and we were all exhausted.   I felt so happy.  At last we had a home that was everything we had always wanted.   We also had exciting plans.   We wanted to have a small cattery in order that we could maintain our connection with animals and people. Our love of animals was in part the motivation to have a cattery, to have an income, to keep us active and motivated for as many years as we wished.  

First of many bonfires

Eddie was to continue working in Sussex in order that we would have the funds to not only set up the cattery business but also to convert the very sturdy and attractive barn as it would lend itself perfectly into two small holiday lets.  It would also help repay the relatively small loan we had taken out, as we wanted to use our own funds to get things going.  He was going to come up every weekend and I would have friends come to stay during the other times.  I would also be kept busy getting advice, obtaining drawings, planning permissions and sorting out grants and so on.  Certainly enough to keep me very busy.

The cottage was situated at the extreme lower end of the neighbours paddock within a couple of meters from it's boundary. The neighbours paddock was quite narrow being approximately forty meters wide,  the opposite of the paddock to our cottage opened out onto a small disused quarry.  At the top end of the paddock was a house an old disused cowshed, a farm building now used as stables and a dutch barn. The quarry, along with the entire neighbouring holding was located on a Special Area of Conservation, for which any owner of said holding had to gain permission from what used to be the Countryside Council for Wales, but is now Natural Resources Wales.  This means special permissions have to be given for any developments or operations as these sites are highly protected under European Law.  Alongside the rear of our cottage there was an unusually high, close board fence, (the type you'd see in gardens), which only ran the length of our dwelling. I had presumed either the person we had bought from or the previous owner had erected it for privacy.  It had the effect of separating our cottage from the paddock.  (I was later to discover why this fence had been erected and by whom).  I had a few small reservations regarding the cottage being so close to the boundary, having viewed another property with Leylandii growing exceedingly close to the windows.  But minus the Leylandii and not being able to fathom any other negative reasons why this would ever be an issue, dismissed them especially as the neighbours house was quite some distance away from us and I certainly wasn't contemplating there would be any problems.

Sally

Our cottage was in a relatively remote setting with our neighbour's house being some 100 meters away.    As our cottage was surrounded by fields and could be easily accessed from many directions, I felt a little vulnerable living here on my own, as in the past I had always been used to having neighbours close by.   A friend agreed to stay with me for a while until I became more comfortable about being on my own, especially at night.  The heating was not working as the pretty ancient Rayburn was completely clogged with soot, and clearly hadn't been used for a long time.  We did have a multi fuel burner situated in the sitting room, which was our only means of keeping warm.  We bought coal and kept it burning  day and night. The cottage gardens had not been tended to for a long while and had been left to become very overgrown.  There was a lot of work to be done.   It was the week before Christmas and Lorraine and I decided to spend time outside to get on with doing some tidying up.  As the days went by it was impossible to ignore the obvious continuous noise coming from the area which was directly opposite our cottage where the old quarry was situated.  Having bought a smallholding, in the countryside, it came as a bit of a shock to find ourselves listening to what appeared to us to be industrial noises coming from, what we believed to be a 'farm'. Having kept my horse at livery and having spent a lot of years in the countryside I was aware of the types of noise one would expect from farming practices.  These noises were very loud intrusive noises from plant machinery, generators, and what appeared to be breaking of rock and then being loaded onto lorries. The noise was disturbing enough not want to be outside for very long.   My friend Lorraine commented to me how very noisy it was here, and I commented back that 'hopefully it wasn't going to be the norm, and that hopefully it would stop soon'.

Millie the dog and Hilly the lamb

 
Christmas Eve, (two weeks after moving in) the phone rang. It was my neighbour. He was ringing to explain that the noise we were suffering was due to the work he was carrying out in having to create a very high earth bank, using a JCB.    It was necessary he said, in order that his horses could not escape into the field??  As I felt relatively relieved that he had at least acknowledged that the noise was interfering with our peace and quality of life, I didn't not question him on the validity of his strange explanation, but I was rather bemused as to his reasoning, given that he had a block of stables, a fully fenced paddock, and the other horses of which there were many, were across the way on the other land he owned.   Their horses that were living out were for breeding and selling on, with a very comprehensive website giving bloodlines also showing photos of youngsters coming up for sale.  They also had a few stabled horses in the yard adjacent to their house.  The earth bank he was referring to was to the rear of their property in the vicinity of the old quarry, approximately 40 meters away, directly opposite us!
I couldn't help but wonder what would horses be doing in this area?  Although his reasoning for creating this 'earth bank' did not make any sense at all, it was not for me to question. I just hoped that the noise would stop as soon as he had finished creating his bank!      It didnt!!