Llandogo

Llandogo

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May 29^th

When I drew back the curtain, the weather was looking bad. It was raining and it was windy. We had been required to wait until Roy was out of the shower, which was supposed to be by about 6:30 . At 7:00 , there was no sign of him having been around so I wandered down the hall and prepared for the day. Felicity followed and we eventually made it to breakfast.

Roy felt that B&Bs were trying too hard to make their establishments as nice as hotels and he had no intention of following that lead. Hot breakfasts were not to be served. There was cereal, toast, fruit and yoghurt. This was probably a good thing as the fat/carbo/cholesterol/sodium bombs of the previous couple of weeks were not doing anything to make me more fit. It sort of seems like Roy wasn’t real interested in doing a booming business. He had the least expensive place that we stayed, but only by a couple of pounds.

We threw our clothes in the suitcase and prepared to head south. Of course, first we stopped to say goodbye to Boy the dog. The further we drove, the more sun we saw, and by the time we entered the Brecon Beacons National Park , the sun was out for the rest of the day. The park made for a beautiful drive, but on this trip, we weren’t going to get to explore, so we just enjoyed the view as we passed through. We had stopped in Brecon for gas and some of those delicious petrol station sandwiches. At an overlook we sat and enjoyed our feast while the wind whipped around us.

On our way to the Wye Valley , we stopped at Raglan Castle . This is another impressive ruin and unbelievably easy to reach off the motorway. It was here we ran into a large American family which was made obvious by a child screaming uncontrollably about his aversion to visiting the toilet. It went on and on. As we entered the castle there was a cat lying in a seemingly lifeless state at the entry. She just turned out to be very relaxed and of course, Felicity had to play with her.

This weekend was a bank holiday in the UK so the roads were pretty busy. Making our way to the road to the Wye Valley was a challenge and we feared it would be as congested as the other roads. As it turned out, when we finally made it to the road heading south, there were very few cars. The drive into Llandogo was beautiful and a breeze but unfortunately we were looking left for a parking lot for our inn for the night and it turned out to be on the right. Places to make a U turn can be difficult to find on the smaller Welsh roads so we decided to continue down to Tintern Abbey . The town of Tintern was full of tourists and there was a wedding going on across the street. The abbey is a magnificent structure though there is nothing remaining that resembles a roof. As I waited for Felicity in the gift shop, the wedding party from across the road arrived for a photo session. We escaped just in time.

We took the road south to Chepstow to visit the castle there, taking full advantage of the last day of our heritage card. Chepstow Castle is an enormous structure sitting on the River Wye in the center of town. It’s a bit more work to get to than some, but the road signs are pretty good. There was a show being set for the next day that would include jousting and other such medieval fun. Much of it was ready to go and some of the participants were rehearsing their act. We were met at the entry to the archery area by the two guards posted to prevent unauthorized access. James and Aaron were in full medieval garb and despite their young age, appeared quite imposing. I convinced them to pose for an action shot or two, and they obliged. We saw them a bit later where they met in battle in the courtyard and I was able to photograph the terrible struggle. They insisted that I make it clear that the apparent slaying that takes place in the pictures on their own special page here (click the link above) was all acting and that indeed, they are good friends and would never actually try to kill each other.

It had been a long day of travel so we headed back to the Sloop Inn in Llandogo. It’s a pretty building on the outside and the bar was quite nice, but the room accommodations were marginal at best. We had dinner in the pub and then relaxed and packed up for our last day of driving the Bad Idea.

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