Pembrokeshire, Wales

I've been back from Wales for nearly a week and have not written this till now. It's the mark of a good book that can keep me picking it up at every opportunity, keep me from writing up my holiday, and even keep me from turning on BBC Breakfast in the mornings because I just need to read a bit more. I am of course re-reading the Harry Potter books at the moment. When I started them only about three weeks back I didn't think I'd be anywhere near the end before the last film came out, but I've just started the sixth book and it's only the beginning of July. I've come to realise after nearly 32 years that I have it in me to have brief obsessive periods about things. Doesn't do me any good though - I am beginning to feel depressed now because I'm getting near the end.

                      This is the town of New Quay on the west coast which we visited on our third day. On our first day we visited the National Showcaves Centre for Wales which had three show caves, an Iron Age farm, a Dinosaur park, Museum and Shire Horse centre and farmyard. It was excellent.

We walked from our campsite on the coast path along to Fishguard, which as Dad told me is where they filmed a little of Moby Dick. We watched the film after we'd got home, and I wasn't really getting along with it until the end when the whale won and everyone died except the narrator. Excellent. Not having ever read the book, I didn't know how it ended, and I just assumed that due to the arrogant nature of man at the time when it was written that the poor thing would get slaughtered and everyone would be slapping themselves on their backs. Not so! Dandad (my Granddad) did the catering for the cast and crew while they were there (he taught catering at the Westminster College), and we have photos of the cast with the cake that they made to celebrate the end of filming.

We moved down to Marloes on the penninsular west of Milford Haven and stayed in another campsite right on the cliffs. From here we took the boat over to Skomer Island to see the birdlife.

This was the evening after we returned from the island when Dad and I took a walk up on the peninsular. The boats which we could see all laying at anchor in the bay were waiting to go round into Milford Haven when called, and we saw them move round on their anchors with the tides - the second picture was taken early the following morning when we had to get up to apply for Olympics tickets.

(And what a mission that was. We had to get up at half past five to drive down the road to Marloes where we could get BT Openworld on the laptop, and then I found I had to run back up the road again to get reception my mobile so I could get the one hours credit we needed. Then I found I didn't have enough credit on my phone, so I had to come back to the car for my purse so I could buy some and then try again. It was gone six before we finally got online, but of course it had crashed anyway by then. We persevered though and eventually got our selections submitted, and a couple of days later found out we had athletics! Mission accomplished! And if this all sounded a bit unnecessary, like perhaps we could have got Lib to do it for us at her place, well...we did; neither Mum and Dad nor I got allocated tickets in the first round, so we both needed to try in the second round. Lib was signed in as me back in Birmingham trying on my behalf!)

When we came home we visited Usk and it's castle where we fed seed to the resident hens and cockeral. My last morning we went into Abergavenny and walked through the meadows and the gardens and up to the castle which I hadn't been to before in all my visits.

 

This is the Blorenge seen from the meadows.