Monday 4^th August                             DUBLIN  -  HOLYHEAD  -  CHESTER  -  SHREWSBURY

Well, there are travel days when everything is marvellous and goes exactly to plan. This was not one of them! Still, we can’t complain too much, as we got where we needed to go without too much trauma, and life can’t be bad when I’m lying in bed, typing, and looking out the window at two genuine Tudor buildings…

Neither of us was happy when our alarm went off at 5.30am this morning in our Dublin hotel room, but we hauled ourselves out of bed, finished our packing, marshalled all our gear and got ourselves downstairs at around 6. It was very windy and rainy outside, as Storm Floris was making her presence felt. We were able to start breakfast nice and early, as did many others, so that by the time our taxi was nearly due, we were waiting in a sheltered area watching. The only cars out at that time of the morning were ALL taxis, so it was hard to tell, but ours turned up and parked around the corner, then rang Lex, so without too much trouble and getting too damp, we were on our way to the ferry terminal.

Like previous ferry trips, we spent a lot of time sitting around before being marshalled to walk onto the boat. We got a bench seat right down at the front of the ferry so we could watch ahead. We were off right on time, and the crossing really wasn’t too bad – just rather wobbly compared to last time. 

                                                                 Goodbye again, Ireland

                                                          Boarding our ferry - it's huge!
 The worst of the storm has gone to the north, so we were very lucky. However, that didn’t last – we were heading into harbour at Holywell under dazzling blue skies right on time, when we suddenly started heading backwards, and back out to sea! The captain came on and said that it was too dangerous to attempt to dock, so we would try again in half an hour. Everyone sat down again, and we all twiddled our thumbs until we made it in safely on our second try. Then it took ages for the foot passengers to get off (unlike other ferries such as the Shetlands one, where they were off within minutes). We sat watching the time tick by as we missed the first train we wanted to catch; the second train we might have caught….finally, by about 12.30 we made it onto a shuttle bus, then an excruciatingly slow bus ride back to the terminal, grabbed our bags, Lex went to the railway window to see about our tickets (fortunately the railway station is right there at the end of the terminal) while I dashed into the café and bought two sandwich rolls, and we just made the 1.05 to Chester.

                                           Hello Holyhead!  Then we sailed out again....

We were very happy to collapse into our seats and eat our lunch and relax on the two-hour trip. The holdups showed the importance of making sure you have an open railway ticket – the young Irish lass in the carriage with us was very emotional as she’d had to pay 70 pounds for another ticket because we’d missed the earlier train. We arrived in Chester at about 3, and easily got a taxi to take us to the Europcar depot. It took a while to do all the paperwork, but by 4, we were driving away in our big, black MG.

                                             Beautiful views of Welsh beaches from the train

The trip south to Shrewsbury was mainly on A roads, so only took about an hour. We navigated without too much trouble (only had to repeat our path once) through Shrewsbury’s medieval lanes to find our hotel, The Prince Rupert. It’s in a very old building, surrounded by many other very, very old buildings. Lex went off to park the car while I had a hot chocolate to stave off hunger pangs, and studied my map of Shrewsbury. We’d done three countries today; not a bad effort. And Jo texted to say that she was safely back in Australia and at her brother’s house in Brisbane, so that was good news.

                                                      The Prince Rupert, our hotel

                                                Tea was at the Old Post Office

                                We've never seen so many Tudor buildings surviving

                                     The old market hall building dates back to 1596

We’ve been out for tea – we both had amazing lamb shanks in the Old Post Office Hotel, a few blocks from here. Afterwards, we walked around the town to see the many beautiful old buildings. Shrewsbury has the most surviving Tudor buildings of any town we’ve seen; it is incredible. I’m so happy to be here, as this is where the Cadfael books are set, and tomorrow my aim is to do the Cadfael self-guided tour around town. Storm Floris does seem to have taken her rain north and only left us with the extreme winds.

                                                 Our new MG!