Our next home - Cornwall

Big day yesterday. the car spat a dummy and the rear wheel locked up with a brake issue. Took some time getting it repaired but got back on our way. We left Caynham, Ludlow rather regretfully and miss what became our home. Its interesting as we have no home now in Australia....just a block of land so home is where we lay our heads. But we felt excited about our next destination. We will be in Port Isaac, Cornwall (Doc Martin) for the next couple of weeks.

We cross the mouth of the Severn River as it enters the sea near Cardiff and Newton, Wales. Its a good sized bridge.

Our side yard. This little hamlet has homes tightly packed together....then bbeyond that just rolling hills with dry rock walls instead of fencing. We are about 600m from the ocean and there are trails yet to be explored.

And this is now home. A traditional Cornish cottage. This is a dreamy place and one of the highlights that I have been particularly looking forward to. There are some things that you have to do just once in your life, and for me this is it.  Absolutely brilliant.

Steph and Dad go for a walk

Steph and I went for a local walk. There are public rights of way seemingly everywhere. It feels wrong walking down a farmers driveway , crossing his field and even walking through their yard near the house, but there are signs with arrows you can follow. They date back many years. So we head off on a walk every now and then with the camera and have some fun....play with the images when we get back which makes for a good shared hobby. Here are a few of our favourites.

This church is across the road from us. The algae in the coloured brick kinda helps.

Shropshire people take a lot of pride in their towns. This is the front paddock of a farm...beautiful.

And this was the farm house. We are standing under a drive through section of a stone building in their driveway. The beams above our heads are littered with Show Event Awards for cattle dating back 40 years or so....so they have their wonderwall so to speak.

The stone work caught our eye.

While there are a few sheep about, the only lamb I could buy in the supermarket came from New Zealand. A dedicated butcher is better but dearer....and don't expect to find typical beef cuts like sirloin, scotch or porterhouse....not to be seen......just shelves and shelves of pork, some mince and chicken. That's been one disappointment as has been the lack of decent red wine. But on the other hand I bought Atlantic prawns for $6 per kilo which is amazing and the fishmonger had some great slabs of salmon which got cooked up last night.

It's odd as the locals are complaining about increasing food prices with their VAT (GST) rising but we are buying better than back at home. Markets are fun too. Many of these towns are narket towns with markets as often as every second day.

Weathers staying fine

Noah outside a church across the road from home.

A 13th Century pub in town. If you click on the image to enlarge it you may be able to make out the carved detail in the timber.

We finally visited our own castle here in Ludlow. We stayed til closing time and hadn't quite seen it all. The carved head in stone was an example of the fine detail everywhere in the construction. Sometimes the architect would put a carving of his own head in place somewhere as a signature. This one was one of many about 10 ft up on the wall. Its about 1000 years old!

They had way too much time on theirs hands. This carved detail in tthe stone arch of a doorway was everywhere. Beautiful stuff!

Inside on of the wings of the castle you can see fire places up in the first vand second floors. The timber floor structures are long gone. There werenarrow spiral staircases, dark cooridors, and views from windows to die for. The castle is situated on a high point above a river and the whole town had remains of fortified walls. In the wasll of the city only one of the drawbridge gates exists which is now a single lane road.

Cemetries are not often well kept. The earliest dates that are legible seem to be around the 1600's. Enlarge this pic and you should be able to see more detail.

Now this isn't Narallan Pools! Its a 2000 yr old Roman pool that the Romans filled in once they realised the Britain wasn't a great place to swim, so they stuck with the inddor thermal pools instead. Love the typical Roman shape to it.

Top of Ludlow Castle. I got a serious case of rubber legs and a fear of heights up here.

View from the top into the courtyard.

Not Crowded

There haven't been an corwods to speak of ...its too cold for that. This is Steph being dwarfed by ruins.

Day out in Shropshire

We are alternating between a day out and a day at home for home schooling and chilling out. The yellow insert is Shropshire, our county and we have spent most of our time searching the many villages and back lanes sight seeing farms and countryside walks etc.

We visited Britains 4th largest Roman City dated at 2000 years old. The baths are depicted in the image below.

The wall in the distant is the only remaining wall with much of the city still buried. Would love to visit the town of Bath to see the Roman Baths there but its a bit too far for a day trip.

A Roman toilet....it was treated as a social occasion and you would meet and talk with friends over a pooh!

This is at another locating.....its a manor house owned by the Bishop of the day who was an advisor to the King and built this with his visits in mind.

This is a Priory not far from the city of Telford (below). It was Roman Catholic and desecrated and destroyed under King Henry XIII when he had a falling out with the Pope. England became Anglican and the local towns would re-use the stone from the Abby's etc to build their homes! Free bricks

Great shots to be had with the amazing detail in the remaining craftsmanship.

The remnant buildings are immense and hint at their original size. Photos don't capture the wow factor.



Wales - Rhayader

Although there are some pretty spectacular castles in Wales, we opted for what we thought would be an hours drive to our destination....but the Tom Tom had other ideas adding about another hour, so we figure using our map as well will be a good idea in future. This was a little stop to stretch the legs. There was a time when you could see up to 50 or 60 salmon spawning in the river under the bridge, but now they are hardly ever seen. Over fishing and illegal poaching are to blame. Same old story hey.

The hills are beginning to become treeless.

There are a series of dams in the Elan Valley that are famous for the testing of the bouncing bombs depicted in the movie "The Dam Busters". In 1942 the British airforce were in given a dam to blow up for target practice in this area.

Below the dam wall is a small hamlet of occupied homes....why???

But they are great to look at

UK roads are not well sign-posted with speed signs. I hadn't research any of this so found myself noticing speed cameras everywhere with little indication of speed zones ....scary. I was to find out that it is a very simple system....not like in Australia where roads change speed limits all the time.

The system goes like this; will  if there are street lights the limit is 30mph...if not its 60 mph, unless its dual carriage then its 70mph. You will see only one 30mph sign at the beginning of the zone and that's it! If you miss it....look for the presence of street lights. When the street lights finish there will be a sign with a national speed zone symbol which we later found to be 60mph (or 70 if dual carriage).

The narrow hedged lane above is therefore a 60 mph zone and carries vehicles in both directions. Of course you can't do that but some of the locals seem to have a death wish on these roads! They are all fast drivers and more skilled than I. If you make a mistake there is often nowhere to go....oh, yes, oncoming cars overtake in your face and no one blinks.....and finally you can park on either side of the road facing any direction you wish....unless there are no parking signs of course. So someone coming in the opposite direction can beat you to a park that is in front of you on your side of the road.....they just drive across in front of you and pull up face to face....and back in....go figure!

In some cases there are 40 and 50mph zones but they have repeating sign posts every 100m or so, but I haven't encountered too many of them.

Rhayader - Pop about 2000

Fantastic expanses of treeless hills and valleys

And the 17th Century pub I couldn't fit through the door. And yes I have accumulated a small collections of skull scrapes. Well its back to my cheap French beer....a 10 pack for 3 pound 19 pence or abour $(AUS)5.

Odd Spot pics

Found in the supermarket

click on this to enlarge it ....no nudity please ...we are British! Yes these are chips and they didn't taste too good either.

You've heard of sister cities......now sister toilets ...what the????