Thursday we went from Oxford on the A40 west to past Gloucester and then southwest to Bristol to cross on the beautiful Second Crossing suspension bridge across the Severn Inlet. We went to Caerleon to the Roman Legionary Museum, to St. Fagan’s village museum of the history of living in Wales, and had relatively cheap big suppers at the Fairwater Pub in Cardiff, where Dad got to try Brains ale. We arrived after dark at the B+B in Peterchurch back in Herefordshire. Sandy and Pat Gilmore, our hosts, welcomed us in and after the children were in bed offered us drinks and explained how they were restoring the old house, which had black exposed beams everywhere, low doorways, and bedroom doors with big locks. We forgot our camera, though! It would have been good to have had a photo of the kids at the Roman ampitheatre, or of Benjamin with a Roman helmet on his head. I’ll see if I can link to some commercial photos.
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| The Caerleon Roman Ampitheatre |
Friday we went to the Children’s Bookstore in Hay on Wye and to Booth’s Bookshop, the most famous one (which indeed was quite a store). We bought books at both, including a Jennings book, some Shirley Hughes, and 1967 boy’s annual that Benjamin liked.
(click the picture to enlarge it)
We went up Hay Bluff . Mama stayed at the car with Faith, who was asleep. Dad carried Lily up most of the way on his shoulders. There was a strong wind, but the walkers became very warm very soon. Dad didn’t think they’d make it up all the way, but they did, Benjamin, Elizabeth, and Amelia doing even better than Dad. Lily fussed on the way up, but she was better on the way down. We saw sheep below us on the hill, and tiny mushrooms near us. We really missed having the camera, since Mama could have taken a picture of the tiny figures halfway up the hill. The hill was covered with grass in portions and brown half-dead bracken in others. It was very steep. Coming down, we went very fast, with Benjamin running carefully.
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| Hay Bluff |
We went to Llanthony Priory. It was suitably gaunt and isolated in the hills. Part of it is a pub now, but it was closed during the hour we were there. We ate a chilly supper at the picnic table, of Red Leicester cheese, chicken drumsticks, bread, and potato chips.
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| Llanthony Priory |
On this trip, our GPS satellite mapper was very unreliable. It lost the satellite signal frequently in Wales, it became confused about routes, and it couldn’t locate turns quite on spot. Also, it had poor judgement on the size of roads, something very important when so many of them are single-lane country roads going through hedges. Something we realized was that in England the big motorways might be the best way to see the countryside. The smaller roads have high hawthorn edges on each side, usually obscuring the view entirely. The smallest ones are the worst of all.
Saturday we went to
Raglan Castle and Tintern Abbey. We went on a fruitless search for the opening Hunt of the season, which the Gilmore’s told us about, at a fancy estate. We did turn into two different estate drives, going past gatehouses and lines of big trees, but they were the wrong estates.
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| Tintern Abbey |
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| Raglan Castle |
Here are some notes from the children about Caerleon:
Ben, Amelia, and Lizzy write: First we went and saw the ampitheatre. The ampitheatre was awesome. It had really big hills that you could climb on, with stone in them. It had a staircase that led up and you could go on the grass, but Dad didn’t let us. We played that we were people in a Roman ampitheatre, and that we were archeologists.
Elizabeth writes: First of all, Amelia shouted, “We present the gymnast”, and I came out doing lots of cartwheels and roundoffs. Then Amelia shouted out, “We present the bull,” and I came out pretending to be the bull and Amelia and Ben ran away. And then we did some marching with Dad.
Amelia and Benjamin: In the archeologist game we played that we were archeologists and we stepped on grass that took us back through time. There was a slave who found us hiding and tried to send us to the back room because he thought we were in the next part, except we ran away and went back through time. The slave said we were barbarians, and then he said we were Christians *and* barbarians and that we were going to get eaten up by lions. Then he tried to put us in, but Benjamin tried to fight him with his rock hammer. (This was all pretend. It was Dad acting as the slave.)