A Wale of an Adventure

Gretchen...stubborn?

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This is Gretchen with her stubborn 3-year-old face. She was tired of posing for pictures around the castle. Well, we see who gets the last word...

Yellow Shirt

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Gretchen was not happy that I wore this "ugly yellow shirt." But, when we came to London, I decided to pack lots of clothes that I didn't want anymore and that I could just leave behind so we'd have more room in our suitcases. This is a shirt that will not be hard to leave behind. In fact, Gretchen may have already shredded it since we got back from Wales last night. Behind us is a little chapel on the castle grounds. Pretty neat how we arranged for the sun to just break through the clouds at the right time for this picture, eh?

Pretty Big Castle

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Just to give you an idea of how big this castle was....The tree stump that we're sitting on was pretty big too.

Southwest of Abergavenny

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I believe that this picture is facing southwest from Abergavenny. It's hard to get an idea of the relief--how steep and how high--the topography was, but some of these mountains and hills were pretty tall. I think that part of the reason they don't look very tall is that there is so much farm land on the mountainsides--but that is because they aren't generally very steep, like the mountains in Utah and Colorado.

Abergavenny Castle

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This is the last picture of the castle on this blog, I promise!

And for you, Leanne...

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Leanne, I don't want you to feel left out. I thought you'd be thrilled to see this picture. Here in Europe President Bush is so extremely popular that a major bookstore chain has designed its sign to resemble W's logo. And many people here are also beginning to adopt the word "nucular" instead of "nuclear."

A follow-up from last week's blog...

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I mentioned in last week's blog how disgusting British food is. I told the story about Gretchen going to look at the pastry menu and being disappointed to see kidney pies, etc. Well, here is a picture that I took through a bakery window. You'll see, starting from the left, a corned beef pastry, steak bake, and a sausage roll. Watch out, Krispy Kreme!

A River in Brecon, Wales

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This river and bridge were about a half-block away from our Bed & Breakfast in Brecon, Wales (pronounced to rhyme with "reckon"). The sleepy little village of Brecon is located at the edge of Brecon Beacons National Park. As you can see, thanks to missing the bus, we got there a little later than we had anticipated.

PM Poppins

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I took this picture of the TV while we were watching the morning news. This is British Prime Minister (PM) Tony Blair. Gretchen and I both thought it was pretty funny to see him standing outside in the rain, in front of 10 Downing Street, holding an umbrella and a coffee mug, doing a TV interview. In fact, that evening, when we read the evening newspaper, there was a picture of this on the front page with the headline "PM Poppins." Next to the picture of PM Blair, was a picture of Mary Poppins holding an umbrella in a similar fashion. British pundits are great!

Ready to Ride...

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Gretchen took this picture of me at Brecon Beacons National Park, where Gretchen and I went horseback riding through the valleys and mountains. Gretchen says that I look like a member of the Chinese Cavalry--I have no idea what she means by that. On a completely unrelated note, you can see why I usually prefer to wear my glasses instead of my contact lenses!

Gretchen and Dylwan

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This is Gretchen, sitting atop her trusty steed, Dylwan. On Tuesday we went riding around Brecon Beacons National Park. The weather forcast had predicted some rain, but we had a perfect day--the clouds burned off in the late morning, and we had sunshine the rest of the day.

Home of My Ancestors

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This is more of the area around Brecon Beacons National Park. My mom's ancestors (on her dad's side) came from this general area--Glamorganshire, Wales. We couldn't locate the exact town on any maps, but this is the general area. What a neat coincidence--because we didn't realize that this was my ancestral homeland when we booked our horseback riding adventure! (No Brian, my ancestors did not come from the Yellow River Valley!)

A Mountain in Brecon Beacons

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I took this picture of one of the mountains in the National Park as we were riding past. The little blue and yellow hat in the bottom corner is our tour guide, Rhiann. Everything was really green--probably even greener than when we went to Scotland back in August.

Another Photo of Brecon

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This is another picture that I snapped during our horseback outing on Tuesday. By early afternoon, the fog was pretty much gone. By later in the afternoon, the clouds were cleared up, and we had blue sky.

More Brecon Beacons

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One of the cool things about being on horseback on Tuesday was that we got to explore parts of the Park that we would otherwise not have been able to see. We got to ride up onto the mountains and look out over some ridges.

The Valley Below

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This is a photo of the valley below. I took this picture on our way up the mountain.

Me and King

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My horse's name was King. Gretchen snapped this photo of King and I (wasn't that a musical?) when we stopped to let the horse eat a bit of grass. On a somber note, this picture could very well have been the last picture taken of me. About an hour after this picture was taken, my horse got spooked by a mountain biker who came up silently behind him. King reared up and then took off running and jumping! It was seriously all I could do to hold on. We were, obviously, riding English saddle, which has weird stirrups (as opposed to Western saddle), so my right foot came out of the stirrup at some point. Thankfully I was able to finally pull back on the reins and get King to stop, just in time. Poor Gretchen was just as scared--if not more scared--than I was. And I don't mean to sound overly dramatic, but it was pretty scary there for a bit. Thankfully we all made it back safely.

A View From the Top

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I took this picture from near the top of where we went in the National Park. It was a lot of fun cantering along this ridge with the view.

Brecon Beacons...still

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I took this picture from about the same place as the last picture. We were both impressed with how green the valley was. Between where I was and where the mountain on the far side of the picture was, there was a valley with a babbling brook that was really picturesque.

Yee haw!

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Gretchen really enjoyed riding through the National Park. She's anxious to find out about riding more when we get back to Tennessee. What is it about girls and horses?

Pit Stop

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Gretchen's horse, Dylwan, had to stop to relieve himself along the ride. Our guide told Gretchen to lean forward so that she wouldn't be sitting on the horse's kidney, to make it easier for him. I just thought this picture would fit in nicely with the overall theme of this blog entry so far...