Hot, hot, hot ..

in a Welsh Castle!

We’ve had a great day out with the girls and the temperature has climbed well in to the 30’s centigrade.

When I was here a couple of weeks ago we passed through Chepstow on the way to Puzzlewood in the Forest of Dean. The girls seemed thrilled to have briefly visited Wales and as Chris and I had visited Chepstow Castle before we thought they would enjoy a visit. We didn’t plan the heat!

Hats on and well covered in high factor sun cream we headed off mid morning, it’s only about a 40 minute drive across the Severn Bridge. We are English Heritage members and Cadw is the Welsh equivalent so we didn’t have to pay to go in, to my surprise they didn’t charge for the girls either.

There were lots of activities for them which they enjoyed on our route through to the top of the castle. It’s situation is on top of the cliffs above the river Wye. Extra. We paused here for a photo but it was too hot to stay sitting in the sun. Fortunately we found another bench in the shade to have our picnic overlooking where we played a game of Cornhole with bean bags. The girls were familiar with it as they played at Beach in the Park in Victoria Park in Bath last Sunday. We built a castle from odd shaped pieces on a slanting platform that we had to hold straight and the girls coloured badges in the great hall.  We also visited a lady who was demonstrating a printing press. 
A great day, Eda said ‘the best ever’!!

The only downside was there isn’t a cafe or toilets on site but we’d been told they were available in the car park, so after the inevitable visit to the shop! we headed back down there. Toilets fine, the cafe for coffee and ice creams was unbelievably ‘Closed for lunch’!

No matter a short walk to the river found us a riverside cafe with shaded seats so we all indulged in ice creams.

We then set off back as Eda was all packed and ready to go to her friend from yesterday for a sleepover.
On our way we got a message asking our eta and would we like to call for a cuppa and let Jude join them as they had the paddling pool out. She was thrilled, maybe Eda not quite so much but we dropped in at home to get swimsuits, towels and more sun cream. We had a lovely chat about books we liked as this lady is an illustrator. Hamish Macbeth and Agatha Raisin French editions in particular as well as children’s books. In her studio I immediately recognised her work for London as they are available in all the royal palace shops on all sorts of goods and a poster of Bath that I have as a fridge magnet. She also lent and gave me a couple of books.
A delightful end to our day and we only had one child to bring home.

Extra 2 is a collage of some of today’s events.