A weekend in Wales, May 2008

Caerphilly Castle.
One of the few castles in Wales that was actually built by the Welsh evidently. It's massive, covering 16 acres. They also have four replica ye olde weapones set up in the outer bailey...pretty cool.

Caerphilly

Not sure if these were geese or some kind of large duck, but they had lots of cute babies. Frolicking in a small part of Caerphilly's extensive water defenses.

Amazing feats of strength at Caerphilly.

Inside the great hall at Caerphilly. I'm reading these books about medieval Wales (by Sharon Penman. They're really good.) and people are always going to sit in "window seats"....so I had to sit in a window seat.

More Caerphilly.

Pembroke Castle.
Looking down into the dungeon in the dungeon tower. The Earl of Pembroke apparently left someone he didn't like down there for seven years. I thought that the fake rat was a nice touch.

Pembroke Castle was coooooool. Caerphilly was imposing and austere, while Pembroke had more of a party castle feel. Well, except for the whole dungeon thing.

You can just make out Renee and Bianca atop this tower.

Open air living. Awesome.

The Atlantic Hotel, Tenby. This is where we stayed on Saturday night after a long day of castling.

Tenby is beautiful.

Who says it always rains in Wales eh?

Pretty flowers growing in some steps in Tenby. Stuff grows everywhere in Wales.

St. Catherine's Island off the coast of Tenby. There was no public access unfortunately. If you Wiki this you will read that the island was sold for 500 pounds at the start of the 20th century.

Another view of St. Catherine's.

On the road from Tenby to St. Govan's Head.

Green. Everywhere.

St. Govan's Head. About the most southern point of the Welsh mainland.
Stunning.
(Update 22/5. Not the most southern point at all....stupid road atlas had no north indicator and, now that I look at a proper map of Wales, is obviously rotated d'oh! Still stunning though.)

Near the top of this photo where there is the big pile of rubble at the foot of the cliffs is where some religious nut built a chapel.

The grass and flowers grow right up to the cliff edge.
So lovely.

Some rare kind of orchid. It only flowers for two months of the year so our timing was fortuitous.

St. Govan's Chapel.

He had a good view.
That little building is his "healing" well. It's dry now.

We stopped to look at some cows not far from St. Govan's.
This one took a keen interest in Renee.

Cows freak me out.

The tea house in Bosherton, not far from St. Govan's.
Even the use of "Ye Olde" didn't piss me off in Wales.

There is a little shop next to this tea house. The lady who runs it is 87 years old and showed us a photo of her and her parents outside of this building when they first started it up.....in 1937.

Carreg Cennen Castle in the Brecon Beacons National Park.
The castle is quite ruined, but it has some caves underneath and is in the most beautiful spot.

There were sheep and goats grazing around the site of the castle.

The exit of the castle poop chute. Interestingly, I had no luck finding the entrance.

Nice view.

I really wanted to pat a lamb.

I only managed to get a quick pat of this one. It was really fat and couldn't run away fast enough.

There was a shop at the bottom of the hill.

I bought the most beautiful sheep skin rug. That'll teach those lambs to not let me pet them, hah!

So they are just the photos from Renee's camera. I may put more up when I get the ones from Bianca's camera.

Wales
is
awesome.