The Pits

This morning we went hundreds of metres underground at a coal mine. Our tour guide told tales of rats and all sorts as he kitted us out in hard hats and helmet lights. What a job it must be to be a miner. Often had to bend down to walk without banging our heads - not too bad for me, but a challenge for the taller people. We had to surrender everything we had on us that had dry cell batteries, so watches, cameras, phones as well as lighters had to be handed over before we could go down. I forgot all about my pedometer, which has a battery, but fortunately I didn’t blow up the mine! It was really interesting, and a completely new experience.


One more Castle in the afternoon (for Allan) while I poked around the local streets, then an aborted trip into Cardiff. We’d been planning a tour around the Millennium Stadium, but the traffic was diabolical, and there was a game on so we ditched that plan and carried on to Wells (near Bath), our home for the next two nights.


Our GPS gave us a bit of grief as we got into a monster traffic jam in Bristol, when we should have bypassed the town. Added an hour to our journey. Although the GPS has sometimes led us on ‘short cuts’ that have been somewhat remote and often tortuously narrow roads, it has been a great help getting from town to town, and finding what we’ve been looking for, and we’d have struggled without it, especially since I am navigationally challenged at the best of times!

But wait, there’s more … (Castles!)

Welsh ones this time! We visited Conwy and Caernafon. Both are in ruins and both in pretty coastal settings. From what I can gather they were built on a whim of King Edward 1 who wanted to secure his empire - even though it wasn’t under threat, at a cost in today’s currency of something like $NZ115 million each! He built seven of them around teh Welsh coast!

The Welsh Coast was lovely - we could see a North Sea oil rig in the distance, and the roads, to this point were great six lane motorways. However, once we left the coast, we were on very narrow and windy hills with lots of blind corners and crests. British drivers do not pull over and let faster traffic pass! The roads often have solid stone walls, up to 1.5 metres high on both sides, so there is nowhere to go if you meet someone coming the other way. Still, we made it safely, even though it was a slow trip. Stopped somewhere halfway down the middle of Wales for the night.


We actually started our day in Chester with a tour on an open topped vintage bus. Once again, the guide was a real character and added to the experience.