Wales

Today (August 14) was an all-Wales day, except for the tiny part of road between our Telford hotel and the Welsh border.  First we drove past a little glass workshop called the Glassblobbery; the name of it was so funny we had to stop.  The artists who work there make beautiful glass torchwork sculptures, then tint and stain them afterwards, which is a process I’ve never heard of.  (Yes, that sentence ends with a preposition; I stand by my usage!)  Of course, with fused glass (my medium), the glass is purchased already colored, so there is no need to add color afterwards.  I purchased a small glass dragon which shades from amber to blue to a little bit of green.  Thought she’d look good next to Detro.  Her name is Daphne.  (Nothing to do with Jack Lemmon!  It’s because she’s diaphanous.)

After leaving the Glassblobbery, we stopped to admire the scenery at this lake.  Naturally, I can no longer remember the name.  Bald Lake?  Bear Lake?  Something with a B, four letters.  Aha, Bala Lake.  Yes, now I remember it reminded me of “balalaika.”

Between this lake and our first stop at Blaenau Festiniog, we drove through some awe-inspiring patches of countryside.  There were long stretches of road where the only manmade things we could see were the ‘giants’ (big metal things holding up the electrical power lines) and our car/the road we were on.  No houses, no other cars, no sheep (which is amazing because Wales is sprinkled with sheep everywhere you look).  Nothing but big rocky mountains and trees.  Gorgeous.  It was hard to capture this with my puny camera, but the picture of the lake above (although you can see some buildings and a bridge in it) is fairly representative of this feeling.

At Blaenau Festiniog we stopped to watch the steam train get under way.  For some reason which I now no longer remember, we were unable to ride the train.  It was drizzling this whole time, so we also stopped in a cafe to get some coffee and dry out.

We moved on to Caernarvon Castle.  This castle originated in 1283!  I have been unable to determine, after viewing ruins and old buildings over the years, why the roofs and floors always seem to be gone.  I guess the roof caves in, and then when the floor is exposed to the elements it rots away.  Here are some pictures I took.  If you look carefully you can see Chris, Alex and Ant up there.

  Yes, he’s quite far away.

The Royal Welch Fusiliers have their museum in the castle.  We took a look through there and saw lots of interesting things and historical explanations.  We saw a taxidermied goat!  The goat is the mascot of the RWF.  The one that had been stuffed was the original one that Queen Victoria had gifted to the regiment.  His name was Billy.  I kid you not.  (Oh, dear, I hadn’t even realized that pun until I was proofreading my entry…)

Who wants to be a fusilier?  I do!

Well, this very full day was going to get fuller yet.  We walked around the town and discovered a small fair in progress, so Alex got to go on the giant slide (they call it a Helter Skelter over there, but I never heard that term applied to a carnival ride before) and the swings.

 I liked the juxtaposition of carnival and castle in this one.

We walked around town a little bit more before heading to our hotel.  I stumbled across a little yarn shop.  This was very exciting to me, until I went inside and saw that all their stock was Sirdar, Rowan and Plymouth!  However, I asked the lady if they had any local yarns and they did; I got 10 skeins, seven of a rough grey (undyed) wool and 3 of the natural undyed.  Not sure what I’ll do with it, since it’s so scratchy, but it would be good for felting, I think.  It was fairly inexpensive.

A walk along the old city walls was pleasant, and we saw a regatta taking place in the Menai Strait.  None of us had realized it was a regatta until we were all startled by a cannon report from shore!  After peeking around we saw the officials on top of a tower, signaling the boaters.

When we got to Beaumaris (the town where our hotel was) we dumped the stuff in the rooms and went for a walk along the seafront.  I tried to make a stitched picture of the opposite shore, but my program is failing to stitch them.  None of them are interesting enough as a standalone.  They are very distant and hazy.

Alex with Welsh cows.

Here is a picture of Beaumaris Castle.  I loved that it was just plunked down here; it doesn’t rear up like Caernarvon, and there were no big plaques pointing visitors to it – it just sits there unobtrusively.  Very nice.

That day was our tenth wedding anniversary, so Ant took the babysitting duties in the evening while Chris and I went for a nice dinner.  Unfortunately, the hotel restaurant wouldn’t let Chris in while he was wearing shorts, and he had no long pants to change into!  Rather than try to find a pants shop at this hour (ha ha), we went in search of a different restaurant.  We had almost decided to settle for Chinese takeout (with a promise of a nice anniversary dinner at Coho when we got back), when we stumbled across a beautiful little restaurant in a hidden courtyard.  It was quite elegant, the fare was delicious (Chris had lamb something and a beer, and I had a salad and Strongbow) and we wandered around town for a while before heading back to the hotel room.  I feel very lucky to have been married to Chris for 10 years and can only hope we have many more hilarious years together.  Never a dull moment!

And to my great delight, I found that Amazon Fresh delivers Strongbow, so there is a six-pack chilling in the fridge at this very moment!

Tomorrow, a little bit of York with a long and lousy story!

Bristol Zoo and More

First thing, we geared up for the Bristol Zoo.  Funny…when we discussed it the preceding day, Chris and Ant said it was a really big, involved zoo.  Then this morning when we talked about it (before we got there) they said we could do the whole thing in a couple of hours.  Well, in reality it was pretty small, about like Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle.  Nice place, good for kids, but, I feel like “You’ve seen one zoo, you’ve seen them all!”  Of course, I haven’t been to San Diego zoo yet, so that might be the one that makes me change my mind.

We got there a little early.  If you look carefully in the window reflection above you can see me!

I won’t bore you with the animal descriptions, except to show this one posing seal.  I have some movies of the seals, but I can’t yet figure out how to get them into the blog.  I’ll work on it; they were really funny to watch.

 

But the grand thing about this zoo is the rope adventure thing they had set up, called Zooropia.  It was a series of high-wire walking adventures, where the participants are clipped to a safety wire and make their way all around the zoo, high up (their feet were about 20’ off the ground).  Alex did this, and here are some pictures of him.  He really, REALLY liked it!

Trust me, he’s in there somewhere.

It ended with a long zip-wire ride down to ground level.  Truly the highlight of his day…and it’s a good thing, too, because we jumped on the highway to get to Colinette before they closed – so, nothing of interest to Alex at all for a long time.

Colinette was a Mecca trip for me.  Ever since I’ve started knitting, I’ve been trying to use their yarns; sometimes I can get them, but more often, they are either (a) too expensive (as much as $20 a skein) or (b) too scarce.  It’s hard to find enough matching yarns for a sweater for me, and they won’t ship to US customers because of their current distribution agreement.  So, I spent a few minutes drooling over the store stock, then ran around grabbing stuff off the shelf to buy.  Chris amused himself by wandering around looking at the knitted-up samples and commenting on the yarns that he’d seen me use through the years.  In the end I spent a respectable 165 GBP, enough for two and a half sweaters (about $9 a skein).  (Not sure what I’ll do about that half a sweater, yet…)  While we were in the store, Alex and Ant went and looked at the narrow-gauge Llanfaer Caereinion steam railway next door, but we were unable to take a trip on it due to scheduling.

Good news for US knitters, Colinette tells me they are taking over their US distribution in a few months.  Prices should drop, and yarns should be more readily available!

We made it to the hotel shortly thereafter.  Since we had been stumbling around the zoo all morning and sitting cramped up in the car all afternoon, we decided to briskly walk to the Iron Bridge and find a place for dinner.  Our chosen pub was pricey, but absolutely delicious and also quite relaxing.  Then we came back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep.

View from the top of the Iron Bridge:

 

Tomorrow…Wales, Caernarvon, and Anglesey.

Wincanton, Cheddar and Bristol

Before we left the Weymouth area the next morning we drove along Chesil Beach, a shingle beach on the other side of the Weymouth Bay.  We took a few pictures from the scenic overlook there.

 

Following on, we drove up to Wincanton, stopping to look at the Cerne Abbas giant on the way.  It’s hard to see from my photo, but it’s a caricature of a man carved into the chalk of the hills.  Some say it’s ancient; some say it’s a caricature of Oliver Cromwell!  Apparently cows are too vicious when it comes to trimming the grass around it, so only sheep are allowed to graze up there.

Wincanton is a small town that we wanted to stop by because it’s a twin city with Ankh-Morpork, a city in the fictional Discworld of Terry Pratchett.  It also happened to be almost directly on our route from Weymouth to Bristol.  Unfortunately, the one store I wanted to stop at (The Cunning Artificer) was closed for some reason, at noon on a Wednesday, so I simply took a picture of it, and of the Wincanton town sign with the Ankh-Morpork logo, and we drove on.

 

Moving right along, we drove through Cheddar Gorge.  Yes, this does conjure up unpleasant lunchtime experiences!  However, this was a beautiful road that meandered down to the bottom of the gorge, where we (yes) stopped to have lunch at a pub.  Alex and I had burgers with cheddar, and I got my first taste of Strongbow cider.  Yum!

  

Alex and Ant played a round of minigolf while Chris and I looked around at the tourist shops.  I got some beads to make a necklace, which I have made, but have no picture of (yet).

After this pleasant diversion, we continued on to our hotel in Bristol.  It was actually in Clevedon, with a view of the Severn Estuary.  Here is the view from our room.  The beach was completely mud.

At this point we decided to drive into Bristol to see the SS Great Britain.  Unfortunately it closed to the public about 10 minutes before we got there!  We weren’t even able to see it because they had it hidden (more or less) behind big signs and part of a building.  Hard to believe such a big ship could be hidden from view.  Guess even the views cost money these days.

 

So we drove off to find dinner.  The hotel lady had given Chris and Ant some info about restaurants, so we let them take the lead in finding them.  After we’d left the Great Britain parking lot, we ended up in downtown Bristol rush hour for a LONG TIME.  Very frustrating to all concerned.  Eventually we somehow got out of the traffic, found a parking garage, and grabbed some dinner.  Why is service so slow in British restaurants? 

Tomorrow, Bristol Zoo and Colinette!

The New Forest and Weymouth

We started off from Rudgwick not too early, and got caught in a little bit of rush hour traffic, but not much.  Our first stop was the New Forest (which is actually really old).  Much of it is gorse and heather rather than forest.  Wild ponies roam the Forest, just like Chincoteague and Assateague, clogging up the roads at times.

There was a mother horse & her pony near the side of the road along a deserted stretch of road, so Ant stopped the car, giving us a chance to get out and look more closely at them.  I immediately scraped my sandaled foot along a pricker bush – not quite sure what type, but I was bleeding a little.  We walked fairly close to the pony but the mare got a wild look in her eye, so we scarpered.

Further along we pulled into a parking area so we could all get out and stretch our legs and look around.  Here is a pic from this particular area.

Almost immediately after this picture was taken, I felt a sharp poke on my chest.  When I looked down, a bee was struggling inside my shirt!  I flapped him away, but his stinger remained. so after I pulled that out, I took a Benadryl and we motored on.  Darn, that New Forest is vicious!

A while later (during which the Benadryl put me to sleep) we arrived at Weymouth, to Alex’s great delight.  It was a gorgeous sunny day and we had a beachfront hotel!  What more could you want?  Here’s the view from our room.

 

At our end of the beach it was not so fiercely populated, but starting at about the middle of the promenade (concrete boardwalk 🙂 it became so ridiculously crowded that there was no elbow room at all.  We really got lucky, happening to choose a hotel at this end.

We went to the beach almost immediately.  Alex and I went in the water, while Chris and Ant sat on the beach and chatted.  The water was COLD!  We stayed in for about 20 minutes, then came out to get warm; Alex then went back in for a while, and I tried to air-dry because we had no beach towels.  I have learned that bathing suits with skirts take a LONG TIME to air-dry!

We had our first fish & chips meal here in Weymouth.  You saw the picture of it in yesterday’s post.  Alex ate all his food!

After our beach sojourn, we went to McDonald’s just for a comparison with USA restaurants.  This McDonald’s had a lot more salady items on the menu, and not so much fried meat. 

If it hadn’t been so hot we might have walked around town more, but it really was blistering.  We drove around for a while to look at the town and when it finally got to evening, we went for a walk around the town and looked at all the restaurants and ticky-tack shops you find at beaches.  Alex and I shared a hotel room; Chris shared with Ant, and we had an early evening to prep for our next day’s jaunt.

Tomorrow, Wincanton, Cheddar and Bristol!

The Weald and Downland Open Air Museum

Surprisingly we somehow ended up without a single picture of this place!  Sorry.  I’ll put some generic trip pics at the bottom.  Click here to read about the museum on Wikipedia.

The museum is a collection of buildings from times gone by that have been dismantled and moved to the site in Singleton for preservation.  Alex and I were still jet-lagged, but we took him, Maddie, and of course our chauffeur Ant, to see it.  It was another scorcher. 

Actually, other than feeding the ducks at the mill pond, I’m finding my memories are sort of hot, hazy, and indistinct.  We saw a lot of old buildings.  Ha ha.  The mill is a working mill and they sell wheat grains to throw to the ducks and fish in the mill pond.  We sat there for a good hour, lazily flinging wheat to the ducks, looking around at the scenery, and relaxing; Alex perked up during the wheat-throwing and got his second wind to enter some buildings with Ant and learn about what was going on.

One of the areas was a brick-drying shed, which had placards about the different ways to lay bricks in decorative courses and also had a hands-on “build a brick wall” exhibit.  Alex liked that.  I liked that it was in the shade!  We also saw some examples of decorative stonework, metalwork and glasswork from the region.  There were thatched roofs in abundance, and it was interesting to look at them up close and see how the thatching was done.  Alex had never even heard of, or seen, thatched roofs, so he quite liked this.  We could also see inside some of the tiled roofs where wooden pegs were poked through the tiles, into the interior of the building, to hold the tiles in place.

One of our last stops was the dyeing shed, where I wanted to go and see what they had to say about dyeing yarn with natural dyes.  Mom has experimented with this at times, and all I could think about was Dad laughing about how fugitive these dyes are (meaning how quickly they fade).  “Some of them can last for months!” he always laughs, quoting some woman that taught a class they took.  Well, yes.  The man on the dye side of the house told a story about how woad (plant used for blue dye – I’m not sure if this is the same as indigo or not) needs to have a special mordant, and he said that in olden days, that mordant was young boys’ pee!  Since Alex was the only young boy in the room the man beckoned him to the front and handed him a porcelain jug with a wide “spout” on it (to urinate into).  Of course, Alex was still a bit fuzzy mentally because of the heat and jet-lag, and the man spoke with a heavy accent, so Alex just smiled weakly, not understanding, and the man took pity on him and sent him back to the audience while continuing his explanation.

On the other side of the house, a lady had little pots of all the major plant-based dye colors, and kids could paint a little picture on a square of linen.  Alex painted a grass-sun-sky landscape.  I will scan it later and put it on this entry.

After this we had all about reached maximum tolerance, but Maddie and Ant took Alex back to the car while Chris and I whipped around to see some of the other things like the farmhouse and charcoal-burner’s camp.  One thing in particular astonished me and made me think about history a lot.  At home growing up we saw a lot of “early American” preserved sites like the Daniel Boone Homestead and whatnot.  These were almost always a one-story building, small, with 2 rooms, one a kitchen, one a living/sleeping area.  The DBH was built in 1731.  The farmhouse at Singleton, by contrast, was built in the 1500s and was much bigger and more elaborate.  I commented on the discrepancy, but Chris pointed out that English building infrastructure was securely in place by that time, so you could easily find carpenters, joiners, bricklayers, whatever, within reach of your project, whereas in the US it was pretty sparsely populated and you’d have to do everything yourself, or get your neighbors to help, and maybe your neighbors weren’t bricklayers or joiners.  So it makes sense, but it really made me feel that America was quite primitive for a very long time.

Some generic photos for you:

 

 

Tomorrow, the New Forest and Weymouth!