We had a couple of days at Lynette's house in Shifnal, Shropshire enjoying the country side, delicious home cooked meals, a little bit of English history and a wide variety of English beers!
Andrew in charge of the pyrotechnics in Lynette's back yard, accompanied of course by an English beer. This was the most delicious barbecue I have had for a long time.
One day Andrew chose to go into Ironbridge and to the Iron museum. This is the first ever iron bridge built by Abraham Darby in 1779. He was the first person to figure out how to smelt iron from iron ore using coke instead of charcoal. The bridge is still open for foot traffic and looking amazingly beautiful.
Lynette and I chose to go to Mosely House. A beautiful old heritage house whose main claim to fame was that Charles the Second was hidden there for a couple of days when hiding from the Cromwellian army. It was an interesting visit as the medieval society were there that day, all dressed up in fantastic clothing, cooking interesting dishes, playing lutes and generally living a medieval day. They were fascinating to talk to. Apparently they had no idea that they could eat food uncooked. They knew an apple would rot when it dropped to the ground and they thought all food would do the same if eaten fresh. So everything they ate was cooked or preserved in some way!
Then it was into NW Wales to the mountains. This is one of Lynette's favourite places; she has climbed every mountain twice!
On one day we walked up to the the 'Devil's Kitchen', below. Above is the view from Devils Kitchen across a little lake called Llyn Idwal and up to Pen y Ole Wen.
It was interesting trying to get out tongues around the Welsh words! We stayed at Betws y Coed, another absolutely beautiful ittle village.
The castle was built as military fort by Edward 1 in 1330 as part of his plan to subdue the Welsh.
Driving home we diverted to another of Edward's enormous castles, Conway. This is very similar to Caenarfon but is a little smaller and the towers are rounded rather than the hexagonal towers of Caenarfon. A huge amount of money time and effort was spent to control Wales, something that seems still resented by the Welsh today, according to our tour guide.
Beer was never far from Lynette and Andrews minds and we saw the inside of many a quaint pub and tasted all sorts of interesting beers.
Another engineering miracle that caught Andrew's eye especially,was the Llangollen canal. This is one of Thomas Telford's many engineering feats. We stopped to walk across and watched canal boats negotiate the skinny waterway with a terrifying drop on one side.
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