Wales and stratford

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Yesterday we had a nice chilled start to the day chatting over breakfast with the owner of the place we were staying... Then charged with his self draw map, we headed for Bristol.

We discovered that Bristol would be a fun place on a weekend, but a bit dull on a weekday... We had a fair wander around though and checked out the sights that were there...

We headed off back towards bath for a canal cruise we heard about, but luckily we rang them as it was only on Sundays that it ran! So we quickly turned back around and headed to Wales for our night in cardiff.

We were staying just on the northern fringes of the city, so headed in to see cardiff castle and a walk round the town. Cardiff castle is pretty incredible but very showy... We were lucky enough to turn up on the first day they had full guided tours and audio guides and stuff, so that was a huge bonus as a lot of the interiors were very symbolic, so it was good to have that explained as we went along.

Afterwards we had dinner at a little cafe and I tried a vegetarian version of rarebits, a traditional Welsh dish. It kind of looks like cheese on toast, but is made with beer, cheese, mustard and worchestershire sauce... I think that was it! Hehehe... Anyway, it was ok but a bit weird tasting!

On our way back to the hotel, we decided to check out the town we were staying in, and discovered a really pretty castle, so this morning we went and had a look at castle coch, which is like a fairytale castle. The person that owned cardiff also owned coch and he rebuilt it as a replica of the original. This has been one of my favourite castles as it is quiet, peaceful and beautiful... It is exactle how you imagine the castle out of something like Cinderella or sleeping beauty...

After much distraction there, we headed towards stratford on avon, the home of Shakespeare and his family... First off we visited the home of Anne hathaway, Shakespeare's wife. It was a gorgeous thatch roofed house with a beautiful English garden in the front and large lands out the back as it used to be a farm. The guides there were great and took us right through the house explaining loads of idioms etc along the way. We went to do the maze but it was closed for maintenance, so instead headed towards Shakespeare's birthplace in the town center. Talk about Shakespeare world! The whole town is super commercialised with some shakespearean reference everywhere you turn! His house was ok, but both mum and I preferred our visit to Anne hathaway's house instead...

Once we had enough Shakespeare to remind us of high school, we headed to warwick where we are staying tonight. Checked in, and as it was 6PM and we still had 4 hours of sunlight left, decided we would drive an hour northwards to nottingham and the Sherwood forest to see if we could spy robin hood. We drove for ages around the Sherwood forest before finally finding the sign announcing we were correct... Then spent equally as long driving around nottingham looking for nottingham castle. Got there and were pleased to see a few robin goods and merry men around the place... And not just in the pubs! After some time there we headed back for the hour long drive back, and have now successfully done over 1300miles which is some ridiculous number of kms...

So very exhausted I am heading to sleep now so we have loads of time to run around Oxford tomorrow. Then we head to London and hit the halfway point of the trip as we head to new York!

Also can't load more than two photos tonight for ape reason so will add them separately tomorrow

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Photos

us at cardiff castle
Taken at the top of the keep shown in the other photo

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1,300 miles = 2,092.1472 kilometres