NANOWRIMO break

Short blog, but with pictures! Just so I can get back to NANOWRIMO. Friday James and I went to Caerphilly Castle, the largest Castle in Wales and second largest castle in Britain. It’s pretty big. The most amazing thing about this castle is that it’s so big—it was meant to be a fortress for the Prince of Wales if he ever needed to protect himself, but it didn’t. The Castle was built as a fortress, but it was never really attacked. Most of its ‘ruins’ are because of age and because no one took care to look after the castle. People just started stealing bricks from it and it came apart from there.

This is a drawing of Cearphilly. This Castle is so massive, you have to take an aerial shot of it. In this picture you can see from the left, to the right...1 moat, the outer defensive wall, a lake that acted as another moat the entire way around the castle, then the inner defensive wall, and THEN the gate house that led into the Castle courtyard. BIG CASTLE!

Me in the Banquet Hall. They rent it out for weddings and such. Cool place. It was designed to be the church of the castle, actually.

The veiw of the back end of the castle court yard.

View of the surrounding town, part of the lake and outer defensive wall from the west tower of the castle.

James on top of the West Tower, with a rainbow behind him. :) Yes, it did rain while we were there.

And the rainbow evidentally came from Morrisons (a grocery store). We lol-ed.

Me, standing in the courtyard, with the gate house of the Castle in the backround.

There was a door at the back end of the castle. I posed, "Get me outta here! I'm lost! It's so big! I'm lost!"

Picture of the moat and the lake parted only by a small stripped of land and rubble that was once another defensive wall.

James, standing on the outside of the bridge leading up to the Gate house of the castle.



After the Castle, we wandered the nearby shops in town and we came across a Store Twenty One. So….since I work for the company, I thought I’d take a picture and show you guys what Store Twenty One is.

By the way, this is the coat I bought from work. But I got really jealous when we walked into the one in Caerphilly because they had my coat in more colors, including red and navy blue which I REALLY wanted as well, but I’ll only need the one coat so there’s no point in spending more money on them.

That night, since we had the whole day off together, James took me out to dinner at The Scrumpy House Restaurant. It’s a restaurant at Weston’s Cider Co. Brewery. Great food, reasonably priced, and yes…we had some delicious Westons Cider. Yum yum!

They had loads of old Westons factory signs in the restaraunt.

Me, sipping on some Perry(pear cider).

James looking at the menu, the whole of the restaraunt behind us. Oh yeah...the restaraunt is basically a converted barn shed, so it's quite small, but we liked it all to ourselves.

The other thing I wanted to tell you guys about is Bonfire Night. ‘Remember Remember the fifth of November’…and that’s not just a line off that crappy movie V for Vendetta. The fifth of November, otherwise known as ‘Bonfire Night’ or ‘Guy Fawkes Day’ is a MAJOR Holiday in British history that is highly celebrated, as big as Fourth of July for Americans, but more sadistic.

Basically every year on Nov 5th, people get together all over the place, have BBQs, light fireworks, BIG BIG celebration…oh yeah, and they throw a dummy on top of a HUGMOUNGOUS pile of wood, timber, extra….and light it on fire. Yes, Bonfire night has little children and adults alike cheering for a lit-le scarecrow or potato sack dummy (symbolizing a real life human being at one point) to be lit on fire. Fun holiday, but when you think about it, very very sadistic.

The real story is years and years and years ago, this guy, which everyone just calls Guy Fawkes, tried to blow up the English Parliament on behalf of the Spanish to bring down the government. For attempting such treason, he was burned at the stake, which is why we light bonfires every year with a little dummy on top.

The big thing to do in Ross Vegas is go to The Chase Hotel. It’s got tons of open field land, perfect to be sectioned off and have a huge old bonfire on the middle of the lawn, and still house the hundreds of people that pay to come and watch the bonfire being lit. A charity called the Ross Lions organizes it every year, charges admission, does food, drinks, glow sticks, sparklers, candy, etc and turns it into one big party that lasts a few hours. James and I went on a double date with his workmate Lyndsey and her boyfriend Greg. It was fun, but I forgot my camera, so no pictures of the huge bonfire.

Anyways, we watched the bonfire be lit, watched fireworks go off, had a few drinks back at the Kings Head, then went for some late night Chinese take-away. We might go out again for a proper Chinese buffet and a movie with Greg and Lyndsey on Wednesday because we’re all off work and school in the evening. So I’m quite looking forward to that.

Anyways, I best get back to NANOWRIMO. I’m on track, but barely. I’m glad I took those first few days of November to OVERshoot on my word count because since Friday, I’ve been barely making my daily word count, but I DO write enough to keep me on track before I go out(ie: to the castle, or out to bonfire night, before I have to go to work, etc.).

That’s all I got for now. Ta ta.