Probably the last of the summer wine

still some flowers and butterflies around

track through the fields

Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles, lived here

almshouses (built for poor widows etc) in a village we walked through

country lane back down to where we parked...

...by the old manor house

squirrels everywhere

Summer's last gasp, 21 degrees when we did this walk.  Since then it's been about 10 degrees colder and mainly rainy.  We did a 2 hour walk just over the border in Derbyshire and had a pub lunch (cider not wine).  Now we are sorting out our stuff, got our train tickets to London....will be back in NZ soon.

Leaving Wales

mist and cloud low on the slopes of the mountains we are driving past...

...all the way through Snowdonia

The reason I look so happy is because I thought I was going to get a coffee at this café called the Ugly House but it wasn't open for another 15 mins and 'the coffee machine hadn't warmed up'!!  So we continued on our way, eventually leaving Wales and driving back through Shropshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire and into Nottinghamshire.

We don't climb Mt Snowdon

Lligwy Neolithic Burial chamber

Welsh people lived in this village in the Iron Age to the end of the Roman occupation period

another hut site in Din Lligwy

Hen Capel Lligwy (old Lligwy chapel) 

Cemlyn Bay on the northwest coast of Anglesey

This road was so narrow I was sure it was a bike track, there were no road signs, just bike route numbers, then we drove into a village so it was a road after all!

another group of about 20 huts, near South Stack lighthouse...

...late Neolithic-early Bronze Age

Malcolm was just about blown off the mountain taking this photo - his hair was blowing behind him - made him look like Einstein!

2 standing stones about 10 feet tall

The main reason we went to Wales was because we wanted to climb to the summit of Mt Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales.  The weather looked good for Saturday and Sunday but unfortunately, although Sunday dawned sunny where we were staying on the coast, Snowdonia was cloudy and drizzly.  There is not much point in spending six gruelling hours in a cloud so we decided to explore the Isle of Anglesey just across the Menai Straights.

Here the weather was better, sunny until late afternoon, though windy in exposed places!  Anglesey has a main road running across it to Holyhead, where ferries go to Ireland.  Holyhead is actually on Holy Island, which is a smaller island on the northwest of Anglesey.  We didn't go on this main road but the minor roads which wandered everywhere, many just going down to bays and beaches.  The roads were single track, stone walls at either side or low hedges,some had grass growing in the middle - and thank goodness there was hardly anyone else on them!

We found that the island had scenery similar to what I imagine Ireland is like, lots of cottages hunkered down against the wind, green fields and rugged coastlines.  There were also a lot of prehistoric and ancient monuments to be found.  We discovered standing stones dated to 2,000 BC, Neolithic burial chambers, fortified huts in 2 locations dating from the late Neolithic, to Iron Age and early Roman times.  Near to one Neolithic village was a ruined chapel from the twelfth century.  So we had a lazyish day driving round these crazy roads looking at the old stuff then headed back to our B&B at Caernarvon. 

A Walk around the Welsh Borders including some of Offa's Dyke

Along the Montgomery canal...



view into Wales

probably part of Offa's Dyke in a wood (we didn't have a map for this bit)

one foot in Wales, the other in England

looking out into Wales over a display board with Charles Darwin on it

winding mechanism for carriages from a quarry - down an incline into England

over a canal bridge and through fields...

...across a heath

...past cliffs

Wales

This was a 4 hour walk starting in Llanymynech (which has the Wales- England border along its main street).  The walk was circular so we had lunch in the Dolphin Inn here when we'd finished.  There was a canal that had been superseded by a railway, now no longer in existence, an old quarry and winding house, a huge lime kiln...all this amongst farmland, heath and woodland.  And we joined part of the Offa's Dkye trail for the last part of the walk, though there were some other parts of it that we think we found too.
 
(Offa's Dyke is a massive linear earthwork, roughly followed by some of the current border between England and Wales. In places, it is up to 65 feet (19.8 m) wide (including its flanking ditch) and 8 feet (2.4 m) high. In the 8th century it formed some kind of delineation between the Anglian kingdom of Mercia and the Welsh Kingdom of Powys).  So says Wikipedia. 

We go to Wales

Inside Chirk castle

18th century room in Chirk castle

castle entrance

the reason the towers are so short is that the defenders used the stones to drop onto attackers during the civil war

Pontcysylite aqueduct from below 

...and from above

4 poster bed in our room...

...in this 300 year old farmhouse

breakfast room

We went to Wales.  First we went to look around Chirk Castle which we had seen from the Llangollen canal when we did a boat trip a few years ago.  Then we went to look at some of Thomas Telford's engineering, two aqueducts we'd been over on that canal trip.  We went into the town of Llangollen and had Welsh Cakes at a café (we forgot to photograph them!)  The B&B we stayed in was fantastic, really old but boutique style accommodation.