Blogs from Wales, United Kingdom, Europe - page 6

Tuesday 18 July 2023. Day 4 of the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path. Alltrails app: 3 hours 12 minutes 7.47 miles. 348 feet elevation gain Started walking about 0945. Got to freshwater west about 1250. Garmin forerunner 25: 3 hours 14 minutes walking. 7.51 miles. 270 feet elevation gain. Our shuttle taxi driver for our pickups and drop offs has been great. He picked up the four of us at just past 0900. Deb elected to not go out in the rain and enjoy this lovely B&B, Yes, it is raining steadily. Forecast was for about 0.2 inches to fall at 0.01 to 0.03 inches per hour most of the day. Our call about the Castlemartin firing range indicated closed but was mostly unintelligible to us. So we searched for and found a website: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/castlemartin-firing-notice--2/castlemartin-firing-notice-july-2023 This website clearly ... read more

Sunday, 16 July 2023. Walk from Tenby to Manobier Castle Beach All trails app: 8.73 miles, 830 elevation gain, 4 hours 41 minutes of walking. Started from Glenthorne Guest House at 0915 finished at 1430. Garmin forerunner 25: 8.71 miles, 895 feet elevation gain, 4 hours and 40 minutes walking. Housekeeping items before the walk included: estimating when we would finish this stage and call Tenby Taxi with the time to pick us up. We agreed on 1500 at the beach car park. We also attempted to call to learn if the MOD firing range was open for us to walk through. Got no answer so we assumed it was. After our breakfast, which began at 0830, we assemble in front to start our walk. We passed from north to south to the beach and started ... read more

The rained lashed down, as I parked up on the promenade. It was our final night. The thermometer dipped for a brief spell, whilst the water bounced off the windscreen. In many ways, it was a relief from the scorching hot sunshine and high temperatures of the week. Complain? We shouldn't really, but us Brits always have one eye on the weather. How many times could you spend a week in North Wales and have wall to wall sunshine and temperatures in the mid to high 20s. It was 1976 all over again. We were booked in for a meal at Dylans on the foreshore. The splendid building at the far end of the esplanade has all the hallmarks of an art deco classic - the modernist architecture of the 1930s in the period leading up ... read more

Wednesday, 12 July 2023 Our first full day in Wales. (Note to readers, scroll down to see all the photos) Cardiff, the capital of Wales with nearly 360,000 population, was a clean modern city with a university and wide pedestrian streets. Between the Cardiff Central Rail station and the Queen Premier Inn there were nice indoor malls and shopping streets. We visited the central market much like the central market in Budapest and other European cities. We sampled the Caerphilly cheese. This, " crumbly yet flavorful cheese that miners ate to replenish salt lost through perspiration in the coal pits - provides a savory Welsh response to the ubiquitous English cheddar." There is a two story carousel at the intersection of two of the pedestrian streets; a large stadium and the castle mention in the legends ... read more

There was little to suggest we had crossed the border, as we skirted Wrexham. The scenery remained unchanged. The Hollywood A listers might have changed the landscape at the nearby football club, but it remains to be seen whether a Netflix documentary and a sniff of success can change things in the long term in this neck of the woods. I note a shirt sponsorship with United Airlines and a new category of membership - the International Dragon - suggests a confused influx of Americans might be just around the corner. Well 75 of them each home game to be precise .... the number of tickets set aside each match for this international brigade. I will watch with interest to see if they are also scrambling for the away trip to Mansfield on a Tuesday night ... read more