South Wales day two.

Day two in Wales...August 23, 2008.
We started out by having the traditional Full English Breakfast which is offered at most British B&B's. This consists of but is not limited to: 2 eggs, usually over easy, sausage links, bacon, sliced tomato, mushrooms, sometimes baked beans, (but not at this one), and instead of baked beans they served black pudding. Now the consistency was nothing like pudding that we know and the other times they use the word pudding is meant to be a dessert. But this was a small round blackish spongy thing (Ed likens it to a hockey puck but not that hard) that the slice of tomato was perched upon. We didn't order that the next two mornings.We took off toward the coast line which is called the Gower coastal drive. There are a number of beaches along the way and we took in three of them. It was an overcast day so the water was grayish in color and it was windy and a bit cool. But the scenery was beautiful just the same. This beach is called Three Cliffs. We had to park at a farm and walk down a fairly steep bank to get to the beach. I'm assuming that these three rocks are what it's named after.
This is a view of one of the embankments around the beach. The tide is out and so the beach area is really big. The picture has some castle ruins at the top which we were going to go explore but the area to walk over to get to it hadn't dried out enough.
This is the third beach. The formation of rocks in the distance is called Worm's Head. Worm is the name of the dragon that is on the Welsh Flag and it is said that this looks like worm as he is laying down on his stomach at sea. During low tide many people hike out to explore the island. Our foot gear wasn't good enough as I was wearing flip flops and some of the area which you can't tell from here, were of jagged rocks that have lots of mussels and shells on them. Many people take out picnics or do some fishing. The area around there was very lush.
Here are some rock climbers. This was walking along the embankment to get to the beginning of Worm's Head. At the bottom of where he started is a grassy area and then crashing waves.
This is the path that we took to get to worm's head. These stone walls were all over Wales. If there aren't stone walls to separate fields, then they have miles of hedges. I rarely ever saw a fence like I am used to seeing in Kansas.
As we were driving from place to place, the road were soooo narrow that at times when you met another vehicle from the other direction, you either had to pull as far over on the bank as possible or back up as often there were hedges are these walls to contend with.

More of South Wales in Mumbles

Here are a few more pictures of our first evening in Wales. This is just across the road from where we stayed. The Bay is big and it has one of the biggest tides in the world. The tide here is coming in but has a ways to go.

This is looking to the West as the sun was setting. Lots of people were fishing.
We walked past the large pier that is shown in the 2nd picture and walked down a long flight of steps to this rocky beach. In another hour it will be covered with water. When the tide is out, you can walk across to the large rock in the distance. We walked up a large rock face and looked over the top where the waves were crashing onto the rocks. Oh yeah we found out that Catherine Zeta Jones grew up in Swansea, the town just to the North of Mumbles. Her picture was in the local paper. She had come home to attend her Nana's funeral. Here I am walking back down the rock wall. All of the beach area in front of me will be covered with water in an hours time. You can see the water line on the wall behind the people.

A trip to Wales

So when you drive from England into Wales all of a sudden all the signage is in two languages: English and Welsh.
I need to say what led us to go to Wales. Every year at the end of August, there is a Christian Arts Festival in Cheltenham on the grounds of the horse race track. Most of the others at the Centre go to it and help man the London Mennonite Centre's stand. Most of them camp on the grounds with port a loos and no showers, etc. That's really not our thing so we drive them there, help to unload and take a long weekend vacation. It gives us a chance to get away from the Centre and everyone else to air out so to speak.
We decided this year to visit a part of Wales. The Gower peninsula has a number of great beaches and castles to explore. We stayed in a small Hotel called The Shoreline Inn in the village of Mumbles. This is a shot of the street standing on the sidewalk right outside of the Hotel.
This is the view across the street from our Hotel looking at a nice kids playground and behind the playground is the Swansea Bay. Swansea is a bigger city just North of Mumbles.
The first day we arrived was a very nice day with blue sky and pleasant temps. The is the Bay with some sail boats and fishing boats anchored.
We walked around to get the kinks out of our legs. About 1/2 mile up the bay is this pier with a restaurant where we ate two different nights.
After a walk we took some time to relax by watching a bit more of the Olympics then headed out to find a fish and chips shop. To date, it was the best fish and chips we've ever had. We ate it in a park and just enjoyed how calm the night was.
I have a lot more pictures and stories but will save them for the next few entries.

Daughter #2 is 23!

I don't have many pictures on this computer of Erica but this is a good one taken at Emily's wedding in Oct 2006. She turned 23 on 15 August. Wow that went fast! My favorite story of Erica is when she was about 4 years old. She was over at Megan Gerbers playing for the day and I went over to pick her up to take her home. Pam and I went into the bedroom where they were playing and of course the room had toys and clothes strewn all over the place. Erica had her socks off (the usual) and so I asked her to find her socks and put them on because it was time to go. She was sitting on the floor and started to look around to locate her socks. She picked up a sock and said "is this my sock?" Then she held it up to her nose, took a sniff and declared... "yeah, this is my sock." I can still see that scene vividly in my mind.
We picked some strawberries about a month ago and the place we went had what they call "table top strawberries." The plants are in containers about four feet off the ground which makes for easy pickin'.
Here's a picture of Harrods. Harrods is a department store in London that is famous. It's always very busy but mostly with people gawking at the prices. When we went there the first time, I looked a a scarf.....well I passed it up as it was 250 pounds which translates into $500. There are always lots of high priced cars, limos, and taxi's outside having escorted the rich and famous to Harrods. They do have anything you could possible be looking for, even polo equipment.

Wood Green Mennonite Church Fun Day

Our church has a fun day now and then where we just get together and eat and play games. One of the games was a digital camera scavenger hunt. This is our team. We couldn't think of a catchy name on short notice so we were just the Team USA/MMN/LMC (United States of America/Mennonite Mission Network/London Mennonite Centre.)
Here is one of the three table games that was going on. I was in the library playing scrabble in which I came in 2nd out of four! Ed was up in our flat taking a nap.

More doors of London

In my previous entry I said that I didn't have any pictures to post as we haven't taken any pictures lately. Then I remembered that I haven't shown all the doors of London pictures I have. So here are five more.

August slow down

June and July have been really busy for us with activity at the Centre as well as family visitors and doing some traveling. So I had plenty of pictures and stories to blog about. Now the month of August the Centre is closed to meetings, seminars, etc. So it has slowed down some. I have kept the guest rooms open and they are full this whole month. It keeps me busy doing the laundry, cleaning rooms, keeping breakfast items on hand plus answering the phone and the other office work there is to do. So August at the Centre isn't much of a slow down for me. We don't even go into Central London as August is peak time for tourists. We have a son of one of Ed's cousins here doing some work and visiting London and he said it's really difficult to see things at the museums as it is so crowded.

The one very good thing is that we rarely get even close to 80 degrees. Usually it's around 70 to 76. Actually that's good as it is humid here and when it gets past 75 and the sun comes out, it gets really sticky. I suppose that's why we like the Colorado Rockies so much where the air is cool and dry.

Ed hasn't been wielding his camera lately so new pictures will have to wait until we go on a long weekend to Wales the end of August.

Air Race on the Thames

I can't believe I actually got to see this. I had seen the ads for it and knew tickets were 35 pounds! Phyllis, Felix, and I visited the Docklands Museum in the same area and heard the planes roaring, the sound rattling between the buildings. Felix and I decided to try to get a glimpse of the action. Phyllis decided to go home.

We headed toward where the sound was coming from over bridges and under train tracks, skirting canals and harbors until we got to the edge of the Thames. There we found a jetty that took us out to the river. Since the gate was open and a few other people were there, we joined the party. There were about 10 planes that took turns running a slalom course of large blow-up cones in the river. The planes are small but very fast. 155 pics later, here are two favorites