The Daily British Life of Jenny Mac: "We're WELL in WALES!"

Today James and I ventured beyond the point of no return.....Wales.

I have a thing about Wales.....everything is in Welsh, the locals are annoying, and in Cardiff the rip you off. As you can probably guess, the times I've been to Wales have not been good ones....well until James started easing me back into Wales and keeping me FAR away from Cardiff. I digress.

Today started with James making me breakfast while I got ready upstairs. He was cooking eggs and toast when I came down and when he served me up a plate then asked if I wanted anything else, and I replied, "Do we have any mushrooms?" the sneaky git pulled some already fried up mushrooms out of the oven. He had already cooked some and was keeping it hot for me. :) He knows what I love and I love him for it. :)

After breaky we set off for Raglan Castle in Wales. Raglan Castle is the last ancient Castle to be built in Wales. It was used as sort of a leisurely Castle, not a battle fortress like most castle were, and had many 'apartment' buildings to house loads of residents. The Castle was attacked sometime in the early 1800s, and soon after that, to make sure that no one else could inhabit the castle, the owners of the castle caused more damage to the castle trying to tear it down. And what was left is what James and I saw today:

Veiws of the front of Raglan Castle.

OMG this Castle actually has a moat! With actually water still inside it! SQWEEEEEEEEEEE!

We went up the tall tower, because there were stairs leading up there. These are the veiws from the top:

The inside of the tower.....basically a bunch of rooms. the holes in the wall you see are old doorways and fireplaces on different floors. Usually castles had 3 floors.

I can see our car from here!

oh Wales......why do you have to be so welsh?

James on some stairs. These were MASSIVE stairs for a castle. Usually Castle stairs are spirally and REALLY tiny.

Stairs down and to the left or to the right....which do we chooose??????

A stairway leading to.....the moat? oh no! Don't fall in!

Here you can see a bow and arrow(the cross) and gun (the circle below) ports in the wall. The first picture is the more original design. The second is clearly more destroyed after the castle was attacked.

Map of the Castle.

James by a set of stairs leading to a damp room.

The damp room (literally it was a stone roofing all around, but the water was seeping through like you see in movies).

Pictures of one of the courtyards outside the East end(I think) apartments.

The Castle When it was built.

The Castle after it was destroyed.

James 'The Waiter' outside one of the 'Service Windows' that they passed food from the service area to the Dining Hall.

This was cool....the gift shop/entrance was built off of the old castle wall. So in this picture you can see the stone wall of the old castle, and then towards the left you can see the rest of the 'gift shop building' which is obviously new.

After Raglan Castle we hit up the town of Hay-on-Wye, which is really famous for their book shops. We got their around 3:30ish, so things were starting to close up, but we got to look at some cool shops. One of the book shops we went into had a First Edition of Kiddnapped, the book I got yesterday(but not 1st ed), behind a glass case. Talking to the shoppe keep about it, I found out that it's a first edition, but the binding had been redone because the old one was so bad it was devaluing the book. Personally my copy looks older and cooler AND I on;y got it for 50p. this lady was asking for 300 pounds for the first edition.

After we shopped about the town for a bit we went into a pub in Hay on Wye called The Blue Boar to have dinner.

It was pretty good. James and I both had Game Pie Pastry with Chips and veg. It was actually really good. Kind of like a Steak and Ale Pie, but with Game....and by that it could mean anything from Guinea Fowl, Pigeon, Pheasant...yeah you get the point.