Wales Day 3

Another busy day today: a slate mine, 2 castles a slate museum and a ride to the top of Snowdon on the train to look at the view of the inside of a cloud - not to be missed.
The slate mine tour was really interesting and nicely lit, they even store cheese down there while it matures.

I think we'd been here before.

The second castle was new to us and we found it wandering towards the slate museum because it looked like rain. The Hydro electric plant behind Geoff took bookings for tours but the next available one was Saturday.

 

We didn't really have time to see everything at this free museum.

 

The ride up the mountain takes an hour and the you get 30  minutes at the top to look round, it was cold (-1 with wind chill factor), windy and slightly cloudy while we were there so we ate do-nuts while we waited to come back down. The views going up and down were awesome, the railway had a policy of asking you to switch sides in the carriage so you got to see both sides.

 

 

Wales Day 2

Maddison had a problem getting out of bed for breakfast (8-9 am) and didn't make it for her full breakfast at any point during our stay! We helped her out by taking her to a wide variety of exciting places, today we visited a copper mine, Port Merrion, Criccieth Castle, Penarth Fanwr Medieval house and Nactol Falls. Despite trying very hard we failed to find the well we were looking for :( .We did find Tesco's (lunch sorted) and a petrol station.
The copper mine was a self guided walk round out of the rain followed by a walk to the lake.

 
 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

 Port Merrion was made famous when the TV series 'The Prisoner' was aired and is now a bespoke shopping centre with a number of eating establishments. There is also access to the beach were we found a very noisy oyster catcher, which we later found was a tactic to distract us from the chick. 

 

 

  

 A Castle

 

Medieval House

 

And finally today we found a waterfall.

 

5 days in Wales - Day 1

Last Monday (27th) we went to Wales for the week, driving there via: Wroxeter Roman Town, an abbey that was closed, a cantlop bridge (Telford built it), Acton Burnell Castle, Langley Chapel and finally Harlech Castle. The entrance to Harlech Castle was a wind swept gantry which was quite exciting.
Our B and B, Bryn Artro, was in Llanbedr 10 minutes down the road from Harlech, and was great.

 

 

 

 

Henley in Arden in the rain

The Church

The Castle - nothing left of it! Just wet grass to walk through as the rain came down :) The Time Team people were here in 2002 and found some bits from the fort.

 The Heritage Centre

Excellent displays and lots to see, free as well.

We both arrived back rather wet - hopefully not a prelude to the holiday!