This was our 105th night in our caravan in just over 2 years. We stayed at a camping and caravan club rally on Angelsey near Moelfre. We met some fellow caravanners who came from Darwen and introduced me to the happy campers club which is a group of family orientated campers who organise their own rallies and we will probably end up joining this group for one of our holidays soon. They have a website at HCC - happy Campers Club
This is the way that I walked along the coastal path around Angelsey
The beach at LLigwy, large and sandy and a few jellyfish also
This looks like an ancient gigantic cliff with trees on it
Our vegetarian barbecue, we like bbq's too
On the table you can see my Bear Grylls fire starter which I used to start this barbecue, no matches at all just MAN power!
The Royal Charter memorial is on the coastal walk above the cliffs
The coastal walk above the cliffs around Angelsey near Moelfre
Leaving the camping and caravan club rally
Leaving the camping and caravan club rally on Angelsey
This is our last full day today and I will start by filling in the details of yesterday's days out in Beaumaris on Anglesey.
The weather for most of the day was cold and drizzly and we waited until 2.30 in the afternoon before venturing out.
We
had to put some petrol in the car and at £70 I stopped and the tank
still wasn't full, shocking how much it costs for fuel, it really stops
us getting out and about in Wales as much as I'd like to.
At
Beaumaris there is a lovely looking castle with a moat but as there was a
cost to get in, we didn't even give it a second glance. We headed
straight for the pier to start crab fishing. We had it on good authority
that the best crab fishing in Wales was off Beaumaris pier.
the sun came out and we had a silhouette of us all. Only 5 of us and a post.
Whilst crab fishing on the pier at Beaumaris we heard a high pitched siren sounding off and the RNLI lifeboat was being brought out but luckily there was no emergency but I was able to take two cracking photos of the tractor and boat. They looked very clean and new, either they were brand new or they have an excellent maintenance team.
After the chippy tea, my son showed some creativity with his chip tray, so I thought I would immortalise his first piece of major artwork for the world to see. His next exhibition could be a paying one so enjoy for free while you can.
This photo wouldn't rotate the correct way so please tilt your head to the right to view. :-)
We had bought a pack of bacon as bait (don't forget we are vegetarians) and after about 1 hour we had 7 crabs in our buckets and as I had been designated the one to handle the dead pig! I had greasy hands.
The family next to us seemed like seasoned professionals and had a crab net and were using squid as bait.
So a top tip for crab fishing is to use squid, because they had over 50 crabs in their large bucket.
We stopped at the chippy in Moelfre for our tea and were served the scrappiest smallest pieces of potato that can still be classed as chips. All five of us left a lot of chips and that's not normal for us.
Anyway here are our photos...
needs a diy touch and tlc
Our friends are on the look out for their first caravan and this looks like an ideal fixer-upper. A bit of tender loving care and this could be an ideal starter van.
A panoramic photo of North Wales taken from Beaumaris, click to see it clearly
day 5 details coming later after we actually do something.
We went to the beach and it was freezing even though the sun shone and I feel like I have a sunburn. We could see jellyfish in the sea, but I didn't have my camera, so a description will have to do. The jellyfish were aAbout 6" across with a pink circle outer ring and 4 pink circles in the middle of it, when I picked it up with the blue bodyboard, it was almost invisible and looked blue like the background it was on.
Our 4th day on Anglesey in North Wales at a caravan and camping club rally.
I recently joined twitter and would love to follow you or for you to follow me.
A quick video that I posted where you can actually see me and my Caravan Awning being put up in record time.youtu.be/xRe-bOGGqBk?ac
— Steven Walsh (@Caravantourer) May 28, 2013
For those of you who haven't seen my previous posts about this rally that I am currently on and blogging about please feel free to look at the other earlier posts to get a sense of my travels so far. There is a big list of my previous posts lower down the page and to the right of this text.
Anyway, today is my youngest daughter's birthday and my wife is baking a cake in the caravan for her.
Hopefully she will let me video the process, but maybe she won't.
I'm hoping that baking a cake in a caravan is unique enough to be able to put it on You Tube and generate some interest.
Anyway, today the weather is meant to have sunny periods but as I look out of the caravan window it looks cold and I can hear the wind flapping my awning around and I'm not too excited about going out yet.
Lets hope the sun puts in an appearance and I can work on my milk bottle white legs.
See the awning video above if you don't know what I mean.
Today it would be nice if we could go crab fishing in North Wales. We are in Anglesey and need to drive back to the mainland over the Britannia bridge. I just asked the birthday girl what she wants to do today and she says crab fishing and the beach. The beach is a long sandy beach and has a little cafe with chips and teas and coffee.
I'm hoping we can have a barbecue today because I want some more photos of a vegetarian bbq for this blog. Last time we had one, I only took 2 photos and they didn't convey what I had hoped to show. Vegetarians like barbecues too!
ok here are my 2 photos from last weekend.
We always use aluminium foil to wrap our onions and peppers and mushrooms. They cook really nice with a bit of vegetable oil and also don't fall down the gaps into the ashes. On the table you can see some prepared foils with tomato and feta cheese and chopped herbs.
On the above photo are meat free burgers, Quorn sausages and a vegetable grill (birds eye I think)
Comment please and click the like or +1 or retweet thanks
We managed to get to the sea today at lligwy beach (no idea how to pronounce this, so we call it ugly beach) and even though it was wooly hat and fleece weather, we still had a good time playing in the sand and at the water's edge. The beach is far from ugly and is an award winning beach.
The video below is a strange one, I won't spoil it for you but the poem/lyric is very quaint and the location kind of taints the sentiment. Have a look and decide for your self.
Not ugly, LLigwy beach
As the weather turned to the usual welsh rain, we retreated back to our caravan for tea. Whilst we were eating our caravan prepared food, the rain poured down and we could hear the pitter patter of rain drops on the caravan roof. I heard a strange warbling but familiar sound of the ice cream van. Surely not when it's raining, but it was true and a queue of parents and kids formed in the rain to to get their holiday treats. They are on holiday after all.
All that above was yesterday technically our day 2.
So onto day 3.
So today we went to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch I had to copy and paste that because it is a fairly complicated word to recall.
My only thought when looking at the name is, 'What were they thinking?'
Anyway, the kids need the laptop to watch harry potter so I will continue this update in the morning.
Kids have gone to bed so I can continue with the details of our day today.
After visiting the longest name in Britain railway station and adjoining shops we went on to the National Trust property at Plas Newydd which is a lovely big house and massive gardens. We didn't go into the house but just stayed outdoors and wandered through the gardens.
Today they had lots of stuff for the kids to do, such as juggling, frisbee-ing, diablos and a compass led map reading session.
We got the map, instructions and compass, but were too lazy to follow the compass and went straight to the end, which was a lovely tree house. Well, my wife was having trouble with her knee so we couldn't do too much walking!
There are some spectacularly massive trees here and the photos can't convey the absolute massiveness of these grand old trees.
In the courtyard at the entrance is a fabulous table for enjoying a cup of coffee on. Reminded me of a spider web.
At the end of a rather boring wooded walk there is a splendid garden consisting of mainly rhododendrons.
I will post more photos and more updates tomorrow. Byee for now.
Day 2 at our camping and caravan club rally. We are on a ths a temporary holiday site based next to Dafarn Rhos caravan site with strict instructions to stay off their site. I'm not sure what they are trying to keep us from, maybe they have a bowl with keys in and we haven't been pre-approved!
I awake at 7am and I can hear the birds tweeting in the hedgerow, very peaceful. I"m going to make a cup of coffee and then put the awning up. It was too rainy and windy yesterday so I didn't bother. All the awning bags that were in the caravan for traveling down here are now crammed in the car so really need to be out of the way and put up in place so that they are not getting in the way.
The sign at the entrance to our rally field.
Timelapse video showing my awning being put up in record time. Probably about 40 minutes but the video is under 2 minutes.
We managed to get out to the beach last night but it was quite chilly.
Beans and cheese on toast for our evening meal. Yummy.
Our 36th trip was to Anglesey and as I always remember Wales, it is raining as we arrive. We are at Dafarn Rhos a camping and caravan club rally near moefre. We are in an adjacent field to the actual campsite. We were warned online to not follow the sat nav and to use the directions in the old fashioned way. This worked perfectly ok and we arrived at the gate to the camp field without any incident.
We were greeted warmly by the stewards in the first caravan and they showed off their suntan/sunburn, this is while we were stood in their awning, almost a free stripshow. The wind and rain were buffeting their awning as we were being booked, I hope the weather improves We booked in and were given a choice of pitches with electric hookup. From the bottom field where we decided to pitch we can see the beach and sea.
All we need is for the rain to stop and we will explore the explore, if it doesn't stop we will wait until morning and go down to the beach anyway.
The sandy beach in Anglesey is just visible above the caravan in the middle of the photo. I took the photo from inside our caravan. The steward pointed to the water tap after helping us back our caravan into place and said it's down their at the bottom of the hill, so I went down and filled our aquaroll. I got so wet in the rain putting the caravan steadies down and filling the aquaroll that I had to do a full change of clothing to get dry.
I'm sat in the back if our caravan seating area and just noticed our neighbour have a water tap behind their caravan which is about 10 yards from us and I needn't have got soaked walking down the hill. Thanks.
Here is a video that I made this morning that shows the Sun rising through the trees. 26th May 2013
There is a lovely Bokeh effect about half way through when the sun is revealed from behind a tree and the lens flares.
Screenshot from the movie below
The whole video lasts 1 minute 43 seconds but took me 3 hours to film using 1 frame every 5 seconds on my iphone. I got up at 4.5am and set up my iphone to capture the video.
If you look in the middle you can actually see the sun moving up and to the right. It's not often that you are safely watch the sun, so this is very cool.
I would really appreciate it if you would reshare this video through all your facebooks and twitter feeds etc.
And please subscribe to me on my you tube page. Thanks
Near the end you can see a newpaper delivery man walking towards the camera and leave his newspaper trolley for a few frames before zooming off.
I would really appreciate it if you would reshare this video through all your facebooks and twitter feeds etc.
And please subscribe to me on my you tube page. Thanks
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Lyme Park is a National Trust property near Disley which is south of Manchester in England.
We visited on 18th May 2013 and it was forecast rain.
We set off at about 11.15am and the rain hadn't really started but we had prepared ourselves with waterproof coats and wellies and boots.
A packed lunch and flask of coffee were spread across our various rucksacks and we set off in the car.
I had a general idea which direction to go and decided not to look on a website for the directions, thinking that my sat nav would be able to find it as a point of interest. 3 miles into our journey I typed into the sat nav 'Lyme Park' as a point of interest and the search found nothing! Marvelous.
I then went online with my smartphone and found the directions for a car on their website, which were very unhelpful with the detailed instruction of
entrance on A6 only Parking: 200 yards from house Sat-Nav: stay on A6
I cut and pasted it, to show you.
That was it. Ok, but how do you get to the A6?
So I had to look it up again on my phone for a post code to be able to enter it in my sat nav.
The postcode was on the previous page showing visitor information, but it would have been useful to be written with the info that I cut and pasted above.
The detail I needed is here in case you need it and don't wish to go through what I had to go through.: Disley, Stockport, SK12 2NR
Anyway, we arrived, oh 1 more thing as we almost arrived, the sat nav was counting me down to the last 200 yards and I could see the entrance. My wife the passenger thought the entrance was the turning just before and assumed I wasn't slowing down enough for the turning and started freaking out that I was going to turn a sharp right at 30 miles an hour. Quite amusing afterwards, when she had calmed down.
The entrance to Lyme park starts off with a hut in the road and a NT volunteer asking for £5 for the car park but because we are members we don't have to pay. He handed us a leaflet and an audio cd which we put into the car cd player and we were given a nice introduction to Lyme Park as we drove down the driveway.
The long drive down to the house is through some really nice countryside and is about a mile long, but the mist was coming down and made it difficult to see very far. Considering this is the middle of May the weather was cold and damp and not very pleasant.
We arrived at the car park and the cd was timed to perfection and the voiceover said to continue playing it on our departure.
We were meeting our friends there, the same friends that we had gone to Brimham rocks with 2 weeks previously and if you have read that post you will have seen a photo of Ann's leg in plaster after snapping her achilles tendon. So now she is in a wheelchair with crutches draped alongside.
Gary and I took turns to push Ann up the big hill from the car park. We could have used the shuttle service but it looked more fun to push the chair, so we did that. We also discussed what the journey down was going to be like and how loud the screams would be as she hurtled down.
We got to the top of the hill and it was quite tiring for Gary and I.
We entered the front of the big house and had to get our tickets to be able to walk around the house and gardens. (We didn't do the gardens in the end, we ran out of time).
The entrance to the house is up a flight of steps and Ann in the wheelchair was faced with a dilemma. A NT volunteer said that there was an entrance through the gardens that she could go through but would have to be escorted by a member of staff. We, the able bodied were told to go out of the back entrance (the garden entrance) and to turn right and right again and we could join up with Ann in her wheelchair, so off we went into the mist and around the corner to be faced with a large wire fence and gate that was padlocked, we were told that someone would let us through. After 2 minutes waiting separated by the fence, I said that this was ridiculous and we walked back around the way we had come and met up with Ann again. The NT volunteer wanted to know why we weren't waiting near the locked gate and I was quite sharp with her sayng that there was no need to split us up and we should just go through the same entrance as Ann.
In the end Ann got fed up of waiting for her escort and grabbed her crutches and hopped up the steps.
In the house.
The house is a lovely stately home and was/is home to the Legh family.
It is the usual grand Edwardian style that is familiar to us, just like all the other stately homes we've visited.
The rooms are full of dark old paintings that look like they need restoring and lightening up a bit.
We had great fun in one of the rooms where you can dress up in period costumes, kids and adults alike and we spent at least an hour in that one room trying on all the costumes. We had a laugh.
The costumes in that room where there for use in that one long room and on a small stage that was there, but in the porters room, there were more costumes of better quality that you could dress up in with the help of a volunteer and these were proper clothes and not cheap imitations like in the stage room.
Our kids got dressed up in the costumes in the porters' lodge which they could wear to walk around the whole house and gardens if they wished. There were quite a few visitors (adults) who were wandering about dressed in edwardian clothes and looked the part.
The lady volunteer in the changing room said that she loved her job and liked to stay in that particular area because all the visitors always had a beaming smile on them when they were dressed up.
For our disabled visitor, Ann, the house was quite hard work. There are lots of staircases both up and down and the down steps where the trickiest ones because of her crutches, so she had to shuffle down on her bottom, which generated some looks from the other visitors, who wouldn't have realised at first what she was up to.
For our lunch which we had very late we located the indoor picnic area. The picnic area was down at the bottom of the car park and near the children's play area which looked fabulous and extensive.
The wheelchair journey down the hill was uneventful and didn't involve a screaming Ann hurtling out of control as we had envisaged.
The picnic area was undercover as the threatened rain had just started as a very fine drizzle and we were able to keep dry, whilst we ate jam and cream scones which Diane had made that morning. They were delicious.
At the end of the day we decided we had better get going and leave, because we had booked a horse riding hack nearby and need to be there for 5pm. The drive back along the drive was suddenly made very exciting by the hundreds and hundreds of deer which were grazing by the roadside. I have never seen so many deer and so close to the road as well.
The voiceover that you can hear on the video is the cd that we were given by Lyme Park and it's the quiz that is playing as we found the deer. Hundreds of deer by the roadside - Lyme Park
Later when we went to the farm for the hack, we came across another deer next to a gate and I was able to get right up to it and stroke it's ears and muzzle. In one day I had two different deer experiences, which is quite unusual.
Anyway that's all I'm writing now so please make a comment and share this blog on your social networks. Facebook or twitter or google plus.
Thanks.
Misty in May over the gardens of Lyme
same costume man and boy
same costume man and boy
looking in the mirror
the hat is a bit too small
Add caption
moody soldier
ecky thump
oh dear a tame dear
a massive rabbit
off on the hack
A bit like caravanning but wetter
The blurb from NT's website....
Glorious house, surrounded by gardens, moorland and deer park
Welcome to Lyme Park. Nestling on the edge of the Peak
District, Lyme Park was once home to the Legh family and, in its heyday a
great sporting estate.
Step back in time to the Edwardian era -
Lyme's 'Golden Era'. Enjoy lavish interiors, try out the piano, read a
book in the library, or take the children to dress up on the stage.
Delicate items restrict the opportunities for photography but the stage
in the Long Gallery can be used to take pictures of visitors of all ages
in fabulous fancy dress.
The 1,300 acre estate with its medieval herd of red and fallow deer offers fantastic walks and stunning views.
For
a more tranquil walk explore the Edwardian rose garden, ravine garden
or luxurious herbaceous borders next to the reflecting lake where a
certain Mr Darcy met Miss Bennett in the BBC production of 'Pride and
Prejudice'.
Children can let off steam in Crow Wood Playscape
with its giant slide, badger den and rope walks, whilst the nearby
Timber Yard Coffee Shop offers delicious hot and cold snacks, soups and
range of cakes.
