Day 3 - Wales

Been awhile since I've had a chance to update, will try to do some catching up.

From my previous entry - forget to mention the cathedral - Chester's cathedral is awesome, it and it's attached monestary managed to avoid Henry VIII's pillaging. Particularly impressive was a series of giant mosaics of various biblical scenes. Shared the catherdral with a whole bunch of English school children there learning about monastic life.

Anyway, on to Wednesday. Headed out to Caernarfon to see the castle and it is damned impressive fortress. Built in the 1200's it is now ruins, but the walls and towers are mostly intact and it was obviously built expecting to be attacked. Views from the walls also beautiful.

Afterwards intended to take one of the little steam railways up to the top of Mt. Snowdon, but the railway was closed, presumably because of the somewhat sketchy weather. Instead did some driving about Snowdonia and had plenty of slendid mountain views from the road. Lots and lots of sheep.

Continued our country drive crossing over the straight to Angelsea, probably the most Welsh part of Wales. More beautiful, if somewhat desolate scenery. Angelsea was home to K's ancesters so we drove about the area of her roots. Saw a pheasant :-) Also stopped to see a neolithic burial chamber which has been opened up and saw the ancient stone carvings inside.

Then back to Chester and to a pub for dinner.

Day 4 - Wales

Todays mission is to drive from Chester to Cardiff via central Wales. Not many stops, but lots more beautiful scenery. Did stop around lunchtime at Portmeiron, a fantasy Italian style village built by a crazy person on the Welsh coast. Known for being the setting for The Prisoner TV series. Very strange place. After that more Snowdonia scenery. Drove through the ancient Welsh capitol of Machynlleth, but didn't stop. Did stop for tea in the mountain village of Rhayader. Then on, driving through Brecon Beacons national park, to our hotel in the Cardiff burbs.

Day 5 - Wales

Our accomadations not nearly as nice as the B&B we had in Chester, but they will do. In the morning a harrowing drive into downtown Cardiff so N and K can stop at the train station to make arrangements for the rest of their trip. Then we head east and across the Severn river into England to meet up with zammis's cousin, Peter.

Peter arranged to meet us at the White Hart tavern (we can hear your snickering all the way over here) which is a little country town, quite a bit off the beaten track. The pub is incredible - my envisioning of the ideal English pub would not have been as cool as this place was. Very Hobbit-like, many rooms of coziness. I could've happily spent a lot of time there. Anyway, the Francis reunion is successful.

Next stop is Tintern Abbey. I've seen many pictures of the place, but they don't really do it justice. The ruins are massive, can easily see how Wordsworth would've found them inspirational. I would've liked to be able to drop mossneko here with a case of black & white film.

Was particularly interesting after seeing the Chester cathedral earlier in the trip as Tintern was built around the same time and in the same general layout. It however was quite throughly pillaged by Henry.

After that the weather began turning nasty as was the traffic heading back to Cardiff, so we're calling it an early day. Which gives us a chance to rest up and for me to update here. Tomorrow is our last day with N and K.