Saturday, 31st May Taffs Well to Saundersfoot

Robyn writes: Today, as usual for Saturday, was moving day so we were up around 7 to pack and organise ourselves before bidding a fond farewell to Rob, our landlord. The family's Newfoundland dog (well, not much more than a puppy - she's only 18 months old!), Beryl, was padding around. She is the BIGGEST dog we've ever seen - Newfoundlands are basically like black St Bernards, in that they were bred to be rescue dogs in extremely cold conditions. Beryl is a huge and exhuberant puppy - I'd hate to make her mad though!

That's not a bear, that's a dog named Beryl!

We left around quarter to 10, and were soon on the road towards the Gower Peninsula - an area we really wanted to see but hadn't had the chance during the week. Being able to go along the motorway (M4) made this really quick and easy - we love the motorways! We headed for Swansea and the Mumbles area at the top of the bay Swansea was in. It was a lovely seaside area (not a sand beach - might be better described as "billy boulder" beach!) and we found a park, then walked to the pier at the end. We stopped at "Verdi's" to have Welsh cakes and tea then walked right to end of the jetty where the lifesaving building was. It was very hazy and overcast but no rain, and a pleasant 16 degrees, so a nice little break. It was a shame we couldn't really see Swansea across the bay, though.

 Morning tea at The Mumbles, looking back towards Swansea

Then we headed further south to Rhossili Bay, at the end of the Gower. Unfortunately this was nowhere near as quick as it was along several 'B' roads - winding lanes not much bigger than a footpath where you meet campervans hurtling towards you...the usual sort of thing! Anyway, due to Lex's skilful driving we reached Rhossili in one piece. This is a stunning area with the biggest sand beach we've seen in the UK, amazing cliffs and a huge stone outcrop at the water's edge known as the "Worm's Head". There is a stone causeway across to the Worm, and you can only cross at low tide - many people have drowned being caught when the tide comes back in, or have been stranded on the 'head' overnight waiting for it to go back down! We didn't have time to cross, of course, but walked right to the edge of the cliffs to see it. By this stage it was starting to clear quite a bit and warming up to an incredible 25 degrees. I was wishing I'd worn something cooler!

 Rhossili Bay - I'm sure that this house overlooking the bay was the inspiration for "Oxmoon" in Susan Howatch's novel "Wheel of Fortune"

 Overlooking the bay - stunning scenery and beaches

 The "Worm's Head"

 The slipway across to the Worm's Head

 I've wanted to visit the Worm's Head for years, as it's featured in Susan Howatch's novel "Wheel of Fortune" as the site of two murders in the book. It all seemed quite reasonable reading the book, but having visited it, I'd have to say if an enemy of mine was suggesting we meet up for a friendly chat on the Worm, I'd run a mile!

We spent a few hours at Rhossili but really had to leave to get on the way to Pembrokeshire. I would really, really love to go back and cross right over the slipway to the Worm, but looking at this week's weather forecast, I don't know if we will get there - wet weather would be not enjoyable and possibly dangerous on those rocks. Anyway, we had a nice lunch at the Worm's Head Hotel (Welsh Rarebit, salad and an amazing chutney which we think comprised beetroot, red onion and raspberries!) and set off again. We retraced our path almost back to Swansea then headed up to the M4 and had nice major roads again almost all of the way here, and we arrived at 4pm.

"Suedois", our apartment this week, is a mile from the seaside village of Saundersfoot. It's a self-contained unit built at the front of a family house, so we have our own lay-by to park in out the front and our own front door - the family go around to the back of the house! Drew and Nicky, our hosts, are really nice, and Nicky even put on a load of washing for us as last week's flat didn't have a washing machine and we thought we'd have to find a laundromat. It's now all hung out and as it's only now starting to get dark (9.44 pm) I'm hoping it will dry tomorrow before it rains again! The layout of the unit is unusual - it's basically a bedsit but has a mezzanine level above the bed with a sofa and the TV is up there! Quite spacious really.

 Saundersfoot Harbour in the afternoon sun

We went down to Saundersfoot to get some groceries - we just had to follow the street we're on which leads us straight there along another narrow, winding country lane (what else?!) We had a bit of a walk around the harbour area - lovely in the afternoon sunshine. Then we came back to cook tea and unpack as much as we can (living out of ports is a bit difficult, so we try to unpack on the first day) and get ourselves organised. Tomorrow is supposed to be another nice day so hopefully we'll get to see some more spectacular Welsh coastal scenery!

Friday, 30th May Newport

Robyn writes: A very busy day today! Yesterday evening was lovely and fine, but then overnight we had quite heavy rain again. The morning was beautifully fine, though, so Lex decided to go for a walk. He climbed the mountain which overlooks our back yard, the "Garth" - not quite to the top, but to one of the ridges overlooking the town. He met a lot of sheep and several other walkers. This feat took quite a while and he was rather hot and sweaty when he got back a bit after 10!

 Looking down towards Taffs Well

I spoke to Cait via Skype and pottered around, trying to get things organised as this is our last day here and we need to pack. Once Lex got back, we decided to head first of all for the famous "transporter" bridge near Newport. This was built during the years 1902 to 1906 to solve the problem of needing a bridge but still needing to be able to get tall ships under it. There are two huge supports, a walkway and carriage across the top, and a large gondola is carried across from side to side. It holds cars and people. It's an amazing piece of technology that still works wonderfully well. We didn't take the car across on it, but rode across and back in the gondola, then climbed to the very top and walked across. (270 steps to the top! That's a long way...) The view was amazing, despite it being overcast. We walked to the other side, watching the gondola move across underneath us. Then we climbed back down the stairs on the other side and went into the control room to chat to the bloke in there about how it's run, and watched him take the gondola across and back. We then took the gondola back over to where our car was parked. For 2.75 pounds each, it was amazingly good value and kept us occupied for two hours!

 Newport transporter bridge - climbing up to the top walkway

 We made it to the top!

 On the gondola going back

 Views of the gondola going across

We decided that our next stop would be the Welsh coal mining museum, "The Big Pit". We met with a decided problem though when our satnav totally refused to co-operate and kept telling us "No route can be found". I turned the phone off, restarted it, tried again...same response! With no other address to go on, we tried Plan B, and we headed for Caerleon, the ancient Roman city of Isca. ("Portia" seemed quite delighted to take us there.) It is home to an amazing amount of Roman remains - last time we were here in 2006 we'd visited the baths, but this time, after a quick lunch at a local bakery, we went to the Roman Legion Museum and saw the displays of the incredible things they've dug up around the area. Being a Welsh museum, admission is free, which is wonderful - I do love the Welsh! Caerleon was the home of a huge Roman fort - it stretched over almost the whole town area so obviously a lot of the remains will be lost under houses and other buildings, but some are still there in the fields around the town and have been excavated. The museum was really interesting, so we spent quite a bit of time there looking at the huge amount of finds and the replica Roman garden out the back then went out into the fields to scramble over the fort buildings and the amphitheatre. Both being very keen Time Team fans, we had a lovely time trying to interpret what was where (aided by the map in the book we'd bought!) and managed to get the scale of it into our minds. Very enjoyable, and despite the heavy cloud, the rain held off.

Above: the fun modern take on the Roman loo   and

below: what remains of one of the real Roman lavatoriums - Lex views the archaeology

 Me in the soldiers' barracks - eight men would share one room

 Views of the amphitheatre. The earth mounds were topped by wooden seating.

After Caerleon, we had one more place of interest to visit in the Newport area - the "14 Locks". This is an old canal area which had 14 locks in it in only half a mile to rapidly raise or lower boats. We started at the top which has one lock at the end of the long, flat old canal and from there it dropped rapidly. It's all disused now but some of the locks are in quite good repair, while others have totally disappeared. Would have been very time consuming and possibly scary going up or down that in a canal boat! The locks were built during the Industrial Revolution in 1799 and were an amazing piece of engineering for the time. After the railways became so popular, they went into decline and this stretch was finally closed in 1949. They started renovating in 2003 and I suppose it will depend on funding whether they ever get it completely reopened again. As we're going on a canal trip in northern Wales with Glen and Carol in a few weeks, we were very interested in the locks, though I believe (hope!) our trip will have considerably fewer of them! It was a lovely walk, anyway, and another interesting piece of history to finish the day.

 One of the top locks

The lower locks are in serious need of repair!

We got back home by about 6pm and as it was a (relatively) warm afternoon, we sat out in the back garden for a drink before tea (can of soup and bagel followed by fruit and yoghurt - easy and quick tea tonight!) Sooner or later we'll have to pack, but so far that's just not happening...tomorrow we are off to Pembrokeshire, and we're going to go via the Gower Peninsula, as we haven't got there yet and really want to see it. Fingers crossed for a fine day!

29 May 2014

Cardiff

Robyn had her hair cut in "Zen" hairdressers in Taffs Well today. It looks good too, though she was gone over an hour. I didn't ask how much it cost.

After that we decided to take the train to Cardiff. The train station is 10 minutes walk from our cottage - supposedly. at the After walking up to nearly the southern end of the town, we turned around and came back. We used the pedestrian walkway above the line, and looked south to see the station in the distance. It took ten minutes from there to reach the station.

The train journey took only about 15 minutes to Cardiff Central. We changed trains and went on to Cardiff Bay. It's a pretty place. The photos show a bit of it.

It only looks grey and rainy because it was. The weather cleared later, and was nice really.

 

The Pierhead building with a merry-go-round in front of it. The two are not connected.

We went to the Pierhead building - a bit of a mixed up museum. It was originally the offices of the Bute Dock Company. Today it is an exhibition centre for the Welsh National Assembly (Parliament). It contains an odd assortment of displays, which have no other home.

　

Lunch was at a very good Japanese restaurant at the bay. The food was the same as we'd had in Japan. That's the best compliment I can think of.

A short walk around the bay led us to the old Norwegian church. Roald Dahl was christened in this church. Robyn took photos, and later had a cup of tea here. Every tourist attraction in Britain has its own tearoom, and this one is no different.

The Norwegian Church which was moved around the bay a bit to its present location.

Our next stop was the Doctor Who experience. Instead of going into the exhibit, we went to the shop and had a look around. Really, it was no different to any other gift shop. There was the usual stuff, but it was all more expensive than usual. I suppose that just shows how popular the doctor is.

This Dalek is actually made of Lego. Who would have thought a child's toy could be intergalactically dangerous ?



I went on to the World of Boats, and Robyn went back to the previously mentioned Norwegian Church tea room. The boat place only cost a fiver to get in, and it was well worth it. There were many (dozens) small boats displayed, all with a board to explain what each one is. There were boats from the pacific, South America, Africa, and all around Europe. There was even a New Zealand-built replica of the launch that Captain Bligh was put into after the mutiny on the Bounty.

The replica of Bligh's launch. He sailed over 4,000 miles in the original boat to reach Timor (Indonesia).

There is a boat service from Cardiff Bay back to the centre of town. The boats travel up the mouth of the Taff River for about a mile. There were about 250 swans on the river, mostly feeding in the shallows. The bloke who checked our tickets said that a girl had count 285 that morning !

There were white swans - lots of 'em.

The city dock is at the back of Cardiff Castle; right in the middle of the city area. We got out there and walked around Bute Park a bit, watching the grey squirrels bounce and bound along on the ground. They really are all tail.


We decided to go our separate ways for an hour or so, to look around Cardiff one more time. I spent most of this time finding the railway station and then coming back to the meeting point. The reason I took so much time is that the GPS in my phone locked up (and has done this before). I was trying to put the train station into the phone as a favourite so that I could navigate back there. In the end I did, but I'm still not happy with the navigation of the phone.

By the time I met Robyn, who had of course gone to the shops, I just wanted to go home. Catching the train was simple, and the walk home at the Taffs Well end was OK. Another day in Cardiff has passed ( and I didn't mention the weather ! - which was goo today).

More tomorrow.

Lex and Robyn.

Tuesday, 28th May             Taffs Well

Robyn writes: A big day. We woke (early, for a change) to find that the Welsh weather was once again very, very damp. We spent ages looking at various options and finally settled on what we'd originally been planning to do - the Brecon Mountain Railway, and to cross our fingers that it wouldn't actually bucket down the whole time! In the end we were really quite lucky with the weather - although it stayed very overcast all day, there wasn't much actual rain at any time that inconvenienced us, and it got up to around 15 degrees which was quite pleasant really.

 Very small rail gauge!

We left at about 9 to head north to Pant, the little town north of Merthyr Tydfil, where the steam railway station is. With the help of "Portia" our satnav navigator, we easily found our way there in plenty of time to buy our ticket and have a cuppa before our train left at 10.30. The trains run several times every day and they are the Welsh small gauge (it's only about 2 feet). The trip took about 90 minutes in all - we went past the Taf Fechan Reservoir and right up to the top of the line, which is a logging area in the Brecon Mountains, then after a 10 minute break headed back down to a 25 minute stop at Pontsticill, where we were able to look at the steam museum there and have a cuppa etc if we wanted. As there are several trains every day you have the chance to stay and go hiking if you want, but the way the weather was, I think everyone stayed with the train today. It was a lovely trip and very enjoyable. The old carriages have been renovated to include big scenic windows so you can see well without having to suffer the vagaries of the Welsh weather. You could go out onto the end of the carriage which was open, so we did that a few times ( despite my sunnies, I got the obligatory cinder in the eye! )

 the reservoir

Welsh ponies seen from the train

After we got back to Pant at about midday, we decided to head to Abergavenny.
Right, for this part if you are a baby boomer or a bit younger, you need to summon up your memory of the Marty Wilde song "Abergavenny". If you are too young to remember this classic, you may visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzs8mSnSZ2A
to acquaint yourself with it (and see some very pretty pictures of the town). I make no apologies for the fact that this will stay in your brain for the next few days; it's been playing in my head for the past week! Lex is threatening to divorce me if I keep singing it.

Anyway, there we were, taking a trip up to Abergavenny, hoping the weather is fine...Abergavenny is a lovely little town nestled in a Welsh valley on the Gavenny River. (The prefix 'aber' means the "mouth of the river"). A lot of the town centre is still filled with medieval buildings, in fact, the "Hen & Chickens" pub where we had lunch was definitely medieval by the look of the interior rooms. We had a really nice lunch there (we both had Cajun chicken) and then set out to explore.

 The Hen and Chickens, where we had lunch

Part of the Abergavenny Millenium Tapestry, an amazing effort by the seamstresses of Abergavenny



We spent a few hours wandering around, looking at the shops, market, church, an old tithe barn (900 years old!) which houses the Millenium Tapestry, an amazing and huge local production which shows a thousand years of the town's history, and the ruins of the castle. There were lots of shops along the high street ( so many op shops - I counted about 7 just in the main town area!) and at "Edinburgh Woollen Mills" I found myself another long sleeved t-shirt for only 9 pounds (doubtless it will now turn hot...). My favourite place though was St Mary's church - it was actually the church of the Benedictine Priory which was there from the 1100s, but at the time of the Dissolution, Henry VIII gave orders to leave it untouched by Cromwell's vandals, as it was a family church (Tudors had worshipped there). It is filled with wonderful tombs and effigies that you usually don't see in a parish church because of this. Quite fascinating, and I wish I'd had more time to explore it. The castle is fairly much in ruins and a bit hard to tell what was where, but very picturesque!

 The tomb of Margaret Plantagenet, daughter of King Edward III. Poor love was only 13 when she was chasing her pet squirrel which had got away and fell to her death over the ramparts of the castle.

The castle. Very picturesque but not much left of it!

We left Abergavenny at about 5, and thought all was going well, until we realised that "Portia's" idea of the best way home was to take us down to Newport and back along the M4, instead of what would have seemed the most logical; going back through Merthyr Tydfil. This turned into a nightmare trip as of course it was rush hour so we got stuck in lots of traffic at lots of roundabouts and the trip ended up taking sooo much longer than it would have if we'd just retraced our steps. Moral of the story: don't trust the satnav too much! Anyway, we finally got home at about 6.

We went for a walk to try to find the local thermal spring which no doubt helped give the name "Taff's Well" to this area. We walked across the Taff River footbridge and were heading up the forested hill on the other side when luckily we talked to a local bloke walking his dog and discovered that the spring is actually on the other side of the river! Apparently you can walk up the (very steep) path we were on to the top of the hill and a little pub and village up there. Lex looked interested but I bailed! We went back across the river and found the springs, but unfortunately they are covered by a rock building (1800s) and only open at weekends, so we didn't get to see the spring at all.

 Railway bridge over the Taff River

Stone building over the thermal springs. In the 1920s they built a naturally heated public swimming pool in front of it, but there's no sign of it now.

It's now nearly 8 and our tea (sausages) is nearly ready. It's still quite light and will be for an hour or so, I guess. Hoping for some nice weather tomorrow; it would be nice to go down to Cardiff Bay. Will let you know!

 

27 May 2014

Taffs Well/Cardiff day 3

A cold morning kept us in the house for longer than usual this morning. Also, Nikita rang us using Skype for the first time. We adored Louie from the other side of the world, and spoke to his mother too. Jim came home from work and said hello. The call was quite successful, so there will be more of the same in the future.

We finally left the cottage just before 10 AM, and walked down to the local hairdresser in Taffs Well. Robyn is having her hair trimmed there on Thursday morning. We will set the alarm for that one.

The train station is about 10 minutes walk from our place - we caught a bus at the stop about 2 minutes walk away. It took us right to the heart of Cardiff; and dropped us opposite Cardiff Castle. Because we'd already seen it in 2006, we checked out the city mall instead.

 The day was still cold and rainy, so we spent time in shops, looking around. After grabbing a local map, we looked around some more and then found some lunch. That was served by the good people in "Revolucion de Cuba". The tucker was Spanish Cuban cuisine. And it was really good. The lunch special was only 6 pounds each. I had empenadas, and Robyn had chicken (of course!), on skewers. The highlight though, was dessert; churros. These are thick sweet donut fingers served with two sauces. One was chocolate, and the other was caramel butter with rum in it. Delicious ! Too soon all eight of them were gone. Sigh. Robyn was talking about coming back; and I'd like to try some of their drinks. Their main bar is about 15 metres long, and the shelves behind are crammed with spirit bottles. Plenty of cocktails there.

 Empenadas with Rum sauce

 

Churros and rum flavoured caramel -Yum ! (oh- and chocolate sauce too)

After lunch we headed for Cardiff museum & art gallery.

The art gallery was quite impressive. It had 3 main themes; painting, statuary, and ceramics. The paintings included portraiture from around 1500 to the 1800s. Many of these had been done on comission by a rich man, and the subject was his wife, or children, or himself. I thought there were too many portraits at the expense of other paintings - Robyn disagreed.

They had an exhibition of a Welsh painter called Innes. He painted the same mountain about a hundred times. Some of his other paintings were good though, even if Robyn didn't stick around to see them. She spent about one minute in there, and shot through. I looked around them all and liked some of the landscapes.

The impressionists also had a room to themselves. Manet, Monet, Pissaro, and others I can't remember all painted stuff. The paintings looked like the stuff they painted. That was good - full marks there.

 

Monet's Waterlillies

We didn't bother going into the "Contemporary Art" section. I've had experiences in modern art galleries before. I'm afraid I need the guide book to work out what three or four lines on a canvas mean to me. Anyway, we were running out of time.

The ceramics were mostly homewares - bowls, plates, dishes, teapots, glass ware etc. All of it was very nice, but the gallery had tons of it. a man by the name of De Winton had donated his entire collection, which was huge; and they had more besides that. I looked at it until my eyes glazed over (get it?). It has to be said that it was lovely stuff, but there was simply too much of it.

In every corner and nook of the place, there were marble busts of people. Almost all of them were men, and most of those seemed to be local Welsh businessmen, politicians, peers, and military officers. Again, the pieces were expertly crafted, but there were too many. Really, one bearded marble guy from 1850 looks just like another after a while.

Someone famous from the 1800s!

The gallery did have a number of pieces by Rodin - both carved statues and cast bronze. They were impressive. A famous bronze called "The Kiss", from Dante's "Inferno" was there. It is larger than life size, and must weigh a ton. I don't know how they got it up to the first - just glad I wasn't around when they were moving it.  

There were a few dozen other bronze castings, most of the recognizable as people or animals. There was only the shapeless occasional blob of metal (or porcelain) which had cost the tax payer a fortune. I wish I'd done one of those.

After a cup of tea, we walked back to the middle of town. There was a town market; this offered meats, fruit and vegetables, sweets, teas and general foodstuffs. Also, of course there were stalls displaying clothing, jewellery and accessories. Best of all though was the record shop upstairs. They had quite a lot of CDs and DVDs, but also thousands and thousands of second hand LPs. They had everything from classical to rock. What a pity I couldn't buy any of them. It was good to look just the same.

From here, we walked along the mall a bit further, dodging the rain until we came to The Royal Arcade. More of the same stuff we get in Australia. There was a deli though - selling everything from "Welsh Caviar" (it's bloody seaweed !) to local beers and spirits.

Finally, after looking through another arcade, we headed for the bus stop. The one we were waiting for never arrived, but luckily, there are two routes going through Taffs Well. We ran after a "132", and caught it just before it left the stop. After that we could relax until we got off at Taffs Well Inn. No, I didn't go in.....   Actually this was one stop too early, but it was only a short walk home.

My feet are a bit sore after a day on them. It is time for the domestic stuff, and some rest before heading out again tomorrow.

Lex and Robyn say nitey night.

 

Medieval loo with a view - the garderobe at Caerphilly Castle!

Monday, 26th May               Bank Holiday                             Taffs Well

Robyn writes: Today is the Monday of the Bank Holiday weekend and finally, some quite nice Welsh weather! Not exactly clear blue skies but definitely much warmer and, more importantly, no rain at all! We decided to visit Caerphilly Castle which is only about 10 minutes drive away. Cait called on Skype this morning so it was lovely to talk to her and catch up on all of the news.

I must say that Caerphilly is the most impressive castle I've ever seen (and I've now seen a few!) It is one of the few remaining ones which has water in the moat, and what a moat! When it was built during the 1200s by the Norman lord Gilbert de Clare to try to keep the local Welsh under control, there was no high enough hill nearby to give him the usual strategic advantage of height, so his workmen diverted a river instead. It's the most amazing moat/lake system and of course is now colonised by water birds galore (I was wishing I'd thought to take the crusts to feed the ducks and geese!) It's in the middle of the town so is an incredible sight in the middle of this otherwise very ordinary looking town and the locals obviously love the area around it for playing, walking their dogs etc.

We got there around 10 and met up with Glen and Carol, then walked right around to the entrance. As we are English Heritage members, we got in for half price (it's owned by Cadwr, the Welsh heritage organisation). Glen and Carol got in for free as they've both been members for more than a year.

The castle was at one stage the property of Hugh Despenser the younger, the great "favourite" of Edward II. He aquired it through his marriage and spent several years throwing his weight around, aquiring more and more property and being extremely nasty to everyone before Edward's wife Isabella and her lover finally ousted him and he then met an extremely nasty and grisly death of his own. It's incredible to think of the history which has happened on the site.

We had a great time exploring the castle. As it's a bank holiday, there were special displays of medieval life on - weapons, weaving, cooking etc. Some of the castle is in very good repair (having been restored by Lord Bute in Victorian times) and other parts are gone or in a perilous looking state. Some of the towers were blown up during the Civil War and half of one sits looking like a mini leaning Tower of Pisa! I'm assuming they keep an eye on it and it's safe enough, but I really didn't like standing beneath it....there's a statue there "holding it up", though we did notice that its hands don't actually touch the wall. Glen's theory is that if at any stage they notice the hands are touching the wall, they know they're in trouble!

 Looking down from the top tower

Glen doing his best to make sure the tower doesn't fall down!

The Great Hall was a magnificent room - today there were lots of craft stalls there which were nice to look at. It is in really good condition, with a proper metal roof put over it to keep it waterproof. Some of the other rooms in other towers showed that they've been leaking quite badly over the last few rainy days. (Mmmm, what fun it must have been in medieval times in the middle of a rainy Welsh winter!).

 This chamber was in the eastern tower. You can see damp patches on the walls.

 Lex and Glen got to try on a medieval helmet - very heavy!

 Chatting to Ian

We really enjoyed chatting to Ian, one of the volunteers who was displaying armour and weaponry. He's a retired teacher (sigh) who's living the dream - he now works as an actor in lots of TV shows and is currently filming the new Doctor Who series (all he could say is he plays a medic). Amongst his hobbies are restoring vintage cars and bikes, building trebuchets and volunteering for Cadwr (and getting to dress up in medieval clothing). And we thought WE were living the dream!

We had an enjoyable lunch from one of the stalls there (roast wild hog in a bun!) then said a fond farewell to Glen and Carol who had to head back to Leighton Buzzard. We went for a wander around the town, had a cuppa and did our grocery shopping at the local "Morrison's", one of the big grocery chains. It's not like Australia where we really only have Coles and Woollies, there are lots to choose from here.

When we got home, we put away our groceries and had a lovely cuppa out in our garden. Then Lex decided to go for a "bit of a walk", which turned into quite a hike - he made it to the top of one of our nearby hills (About 6 km) for some great views of Taffs Well, our little village and towards Cardiff.

 Looking towards Cardiff

The view of Taffs Well from the hill

It's now just after 10 pm and it's finally got dark (almost). The length of the days is amazing here and we're still nearly 4 weeks away from the longest day!