Joyous holiday in Wales

Well we've been back home a few days now and viewed the photographs and talked fondly of our holiday memories, here are a few snippets of our week away in Wales. More in depth posts to follow on a couple of things we went to see another day.

Wales is somewhere I went on holiday a lot as a youngster, easy access from the West Midlands where I grew up, but this was Imogens first trip there. We had lovely weather despite my memories of rather indifferent weather in Wales - I know it can be lovely and sunny some times but is very prone to wet weather. I'm pleased to say we only had some drizzle one morning which soon cleared, and all other rain was overnight a couple of nights.

In short we visited New Quay, Harlech Castle, Centre for Alternative Technology, Llanaercharon, National Wool Museum and Aberystwyth ... think that was most of the main places anyway, with little stops here and there. Fun filled days and relaxing too. Here's what we did and saw ...

 New Quay Harbour and beach

 Excited and thoughtful on our boat trip

 Rock pooling with her beloved net!

 Exploring Castles

 Taking in the views at the top of Harlech Castle

 climbing many steps to the top

I could go on for hours about the next place (there will be a blog post dedicated to this soon)

- the National Wool Museum - a wonderful visit, I thought maybe we'd spend and hour or so there and move onto something else but we were there for hours and delighted with what we saw, not just me!

Imogen with the Great Wheel

Mastering blanket stitch on the childrens story of woollen cloth activity card

Look at this pro carder!

beautiful room of spinning equipment and more

watching the weavers in the working weaving mill next door

We drove past beautiful views
and up in the clouds

We visited the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth

visiting CAT and loved this dome

painted bunting in the straw bale theatre

enjoyed the spectacular view

 and the Forest garden amongst the other gardens

What a wonderful place CAT it to visit, it had been almost 7 years since we were last their on one of the members conferences we attended, much has developed since then and we all loved our visit, learning and exploring.

We visited Llanerchaeron - a National Trust property that was an 18th century self sufficient estate.

there was dressing up to do

 gardens being renovated and to explore

 wonderful old orchards and gnarly trees like above (what do you see?)
and one of my favourite apples below, the Worcester

 beautiful mosses and lichens on the ancient fruit trees still heaving with fruit

 glorious medlar

and old knotted vines

We returned to the beach ...

 more beach fun at Aberystwyth
and collecting seaweed

... many different types of seaweed to identify later

seaweed collection and sand castles

and spotting fantastic cloud formations
(something we do a lot whilst out these days - seeing what we can see in the clouds)

I think she had a great holiday ... no, I know she did! I asked her what her favourite thing was
and her reply after a little thinking was ... EVERYTHING!

Imogen especially enjoyed visiting these neighbours of our farm location cottage, feeding them grass and giving them names - we looked for them and visited them on our way out, on our return and before bedtime.

 Alice the horse was a firm favourite and a very placid horse

Sammy the Ewe
Alex the Ram

 

we didn't name the flock of white sheep (a few in the picture above)!

Billy the goat!

A great holiday, lots of fun days out and adventures, and memories to take home with us. We were also delighted to see many Red Kites in the area - just a few miles from the cottage was an official feeding station which we passed a couple of times at feeding time, how glorious to look up and see up to 30 Red Kites flying above. I didn't have the opportunity to photograph them at that time so you'll have to take my word for it, I did take a few but they were further away.

Red Kites

... and of course we saw many sheep, and photographed a few like these hill dwellers, and no I didn't bring any wool back with me!

So that was our Summer holiday of 2011, great memories.