Castell Rhaglan

This is Castell Rhaglan (Raglan Castle) just outside Abergavenny in Wales. It is a very impressive late medieval palace-fortress. The ruins are very impressive and you can still see the many fireplaces and beautiful windows that remain. There is a great moat with a walkway around it where roman god statues sat in little niches in the wall (the statues have long gone). The rich folk of the day would use this little walkway to get 'exercise and air'.

This is me in one of the many circular stairs leading up to the main tower.

Ben is standing in a little passage leading down to the moat. I don't know why they had stairs from the moat, maybe it's in case someone fell in.

The Hunters Moon

This is the Hunters Moon in Llangattock Lingoad near Abergavenny, Wales. We went on a detour when taking Liv and Downy to Bridgend and came across this gorgeous little pub in the middle of nowhere. We had ciders and ales but decided not to eat because being easter sunday their roast was all booked out. We have come to love our sunday roast at the pub. These little pubs in the UK are fantastic and we really enjoy going to them. The food and beverages are usually great and the people are lovely.
We heard a family speaking what we thought was Welsh but it turned out they were speaking Czech. By the way, to say hello in Czech you say "Ahoy"!

This is the pub's very friendly cat. You can tell I'm missing my Bobby.

Downy and Liv

Downy and Liv are here! They have come from Australia via Hong Kong and are going to be working 2 hours away from us in Wales. They stayed with us for a couple of nights in the Brum and we showed them the shopping delights of the big city and the smokey delights of the local pub (smoking will be banned in pubs from July...we can't wait). Then we drove them to Bridgend (Pen-y-bont) in Wales (Cymru) where they will be working. Jane directed us there via White Castle.

This is us sitting in the ruins of White Castle which was built in 1068!
Liv and Downy are living in a cute terrace house on Heol-Castell-Coity (that's a street name). The welsh names for things are crazy and completely un-pronounceable (that may not be a word either). They live in a nice quiet area with a great pub up the road and a great outlet centre up the road.

Jane

This is Jane! She is our new best friend and makes our travels around the UK much nicer. She is a Tomtom Go710 Satellite Navigation Device. Once the company was finally paid, we went straight out and bought one. We had trouble finding our way to just about anything because the roads are so complex. Now we can type in Castle Raglan in Wales and Jane will take us straight there! She is called Jane because the voice that tells us "turn right" is called UK Jane. She warns us about speed cameras, take us to ATM's and tells us how many kilometres and minutes it will take to get somewhere.

West Midland Safari Park

Today we went to the West Midlands Safari Park. The park is about 30 minutes away in Kidderminster. You get to drive through the animal enclosures and they come right up to the car and look in your window.

This is a white rhino. There were lots of african and asian animals like lions, tigers, elephants, giraffes, zebra, eland, wildebeast, wolves, deer, wild dogs, camels, nilgai, hippos and seals.



We had a fantastic time and you get really close to all the animals. When you drive through the dangerous animals like the tigers and wolves you have to keep your windows up and you drive into big gated areas like in Jurassic Park so the animals don't escape.



This is a Barbery Sheep who was a very friendly little fellow.

We both got to feed an eland, a giraffe and a nilgai. The elands were really funny and walked from one car to another to get fed. Unfortunately it was school holidays so there were huge traffic jams and people kept wanting to move forwards so we're going back when it's quieter.
Here are some of the animals in the park. They have a lot of white animals which people must think are great. They have white tigers, white wallabies, white deer and a large pride of white lions which are very rare and have been breeding. They had 4 cubs last year which is pretty impressive. I love the giraffes wandering among the cars. It was like watching dinosaurs walking past the car and when you fed they had to stretch right down over you into your window.