Saturday, 24th May Bath to Cardiff

Robyn writes: Today was undoubtedly the rainiest day we've had! It was raining when we got up in Bath, it rained all the way, and it's still raining now...hoping for much better things tomorrow, according to the Met Office.

We were up at around 8 to start thinking about finishing our packing, and were ready to go by 10. We called in on Janet, our landlady, to give back the key and say goodbye, and bade our fond farewells to Bath. We headed off towards the south-west in the direction of Bristol and the M4. The trip was really quite straightforward and at that stage our phone GPS direction was working nicely. We travelled into Wales via the bigger of the Severn River bridges - this one was over 5km long - massive! It's a toll bridge and it cost us the princely sum of 6.40 pounds (that's about $12 Australian!) On the plus side, if we want to go back east over the same bridge, there's no toll to go that way. It massively slowed us down - traffic was flowing freely over the bridge and on the M4 until we got to the tolls, which slowed us down dreadfully at the tollgates (they do have e-tags here but they obviously don't push them as every lane was backed up).

                                           The very impressive new Severn River Bridge
We stopped at some "services" near Newport for morning tea / lunch, then had to decide what to do as it was only around 12 and we couldn't book into our accommodation until 3. And it was still pouring with rain.

After checking out various brochures, we decided to visit the National Trust property of Tredegar House near Newport, which was nearby and on our way. It started life as a Tudor house and was rebuilt during the Restoration years of the mid 1600s as the home of the Morgan family, the Lords of Tredegar. They owned the house right up until about 1960 when it was sold to a group of nuns and used as a school for many years until the National Trust took it over and have restored it beautifully. It's a stunning house - the bottom floors are mainly still very 1600s, the bedrooms upstairs are 1930s and the housekeeper's and butler's areas are very early 1900s (extremely "Downton Abbey"!) A great place to while away several hours, and I would like to get back there if we get a chance later on in the week, as we didn't get to see all of it or into the gardens at all.

 Tredegar House was quite stunning

Looking out into the gardens but it was too wet to go out there 

We left there at around 2.30 to make our way to our new accommodation, in the little town of Taff's Wells north of Cardiff. After the usual fun with our satnav (which had left the building and refused point blank to have anything to do with navigation for the rest of the afternoon), we had to navigate ourselves and finally got here (only got lost once or twice) right on 3 pm to be met by Rob, our host. Our home for the next week is a lovely little apartment at the back of their family home which is right next to the railway line into Cardiff. We look out onto a mountain and lovely trees and garden, and it's all so peaceful...except for the trains which zoom past every 20 minutes or so! Rob welcomed us warmly and had a bottle of wine waiting for us, the heaters on, and brought us warm Welsh cakes for afternoon tea. Yum! (He's promised me the recipe.)

 Welsh cakes - yum!

Lex and I in the lounge area

Glen and Carol were on their way down from London and had hoped to arrive at the same time as us, but got stuck in the huge traffic jams due to the Bank Holiday weekend and the huge footy game which is on at the Millenium Stadium tonight. They finally managed to get here a bit after 4, having crawled along for miles and miles. We walked up the road to the "Co-op" for some groceries and have been out to the pub three doors up the road, "Fagin's Ale & Chop House", for a lovely meal for tea (witnessing a wedding party of about 20 roaring in and having a great time) and are now settled in nicely in the warm of our little apartment. Tomorrow we're hoping for nicer weather so we can get out and about and see a bit of the area.

Glen in front of our peaceful back yard - except occasionally trains zoom by at great speed!



Glen and Lex in the pub. Their drinks are Scrumpy Cider and "Dirty Stopout Smoked Oak Stout"!