Showcase Wales
Cardiff, Wales
October 18-22, 2005
 

The morning of the 22nd, after a wonderful breakfast and heart felt thanks for such a peaceful sleep, we left for Harlech Castle. http://www.castlewales.com/harlech.html Built between 1283 and 1289 by Master James of St George for King Edward 1. Then it was off to Portmeirion Village. Now this was kind of neat and not at all what I was expecting...nor did I even remember that my husband was into the Prisoner and that this is where it was filmed in 1966-67. He is now the proud owner of a Prisoner hat as a result of this visit. Clough Williams-Ellis built Portmeirion from 1925 to 1975 on a peninsula off the coast of Snowdonia to show how 'the development of a naturally beautiful site need not lead to its defilement' I am sure you are all familiar with Portmeirion china - it was started by his daughter Susan Williams Ellis and there is lots here to buy, and there is also a wonderful hotel - we enter Portmeirion through the white archway. http://www.portmeirion-village.com/ once we had walked through the village and down to the hotel, they had coffee waiting for us, which was very thoughtful. Our next visit was to Ewe-phoria.. http://www.ewe-phoria.co.uk/ It was fascinating to see some of the different breeds of sheep (but I can tell you that those guys are smelly) After we washed a lot of the smell and lanolin off our hands, we headed inside for a tummy filling lunch...then back outside to watch a sheepdog working...that was so incredible and I never knew sheep could run that fast! Then just as we were about to leave we got to meet some new puppies that had just arrived that morning and were going to be following in some pretty important steps soon enough. For the time being though they loved being cuddled by us. The country has over 10 million sheep with 75 percent of the land used for farming.

After this we headed to Llangollen for some free time to walk around and grab some moments in time...look at those cute trains!

After that it was a short drive to our hotel in Manchester for the night and then the airplane home the next day...Wales is a country that is not very big - just 3 million people, but so jam packed full of sights, 641 castles alone, and the countryside is what I could not get over - 15,000 miles of rivers and 500 lakes...so beautiful and green and peaceful. Yours to discover! and by the way, the national flower is the daffodil and the national vegetable is - you guessed it - the leek!