Here Be Dragons!

We decided today to spend the day in Wales as much as possible. Only just over the border, but the bilingual signs abounded. If anything Welsh is even more crazy in terms of pronunciation / spelling than Gaelic!

We passed through Chepstow on the way to the IMM yesterday, and the castle especially looked interesting. So it proved, a structure begun in 1067! Tintern Abbey was equally interesting, and then... the heavens opened once more. We stopped for a while in Monmouth, as the rain fell, and thunder crackled, remarkably finding a 30 minute break to take in the view from Symonds Yat Rock. But then the rains truly, properly started. It was certainly on the cards as the clouds gathered above a Tai Chi group at the abbey.

The half hour drive back to the vineyard for a tour and tasting was somewhat fraught. Especially when water got into the distributor, just a couple of miles from home, meaning a stuttering 'don't drop the revs' last climb. Only the third time that's happened in three years of owning the car (and one time was an ill-advised venture into a deep and long ford), which just highlighted how damned heavy the rain was.

Worth it for the (generous) tasting though.

(and the rain managed to take down a tree at the vineyard as well, which scuppered access to the three lodges - though unlike the folk staying in the other two, we walked the 500m to breakfast every morning, and the couple of dinners we had in the main restaurant - four different sets of visitors in the other two lodges all drove, so they were stranded tonight until a tree surgeon came out late to get it out of the way!)