Sands End

Hello from London.
We’ve had an interesting week. Last Thursday we drove in tandem from the Northern parts of Wales down
to Pembrokeshire on the west coast of Wales. For 3 days we rented a holiday cottage near the town of Cardigan, (as in the sweater. ). The cottage had a personal hot tub which we all enjoyed and there was a pool for the kids. Our first day in the area we hiked part of the Pembrokeshire coastal path. ( thanks Cathy and Doug for the very useful guide) It was very muddy and slippery in parts from, evidently, record rainfall this month. The hiking was scenic and a bit more challenging than the gang was expecting. We were rewarded for our efforts with a pub lunch in the very picturesque sea side town, Tenby.
We spent our second day exploring the locale near our cottage including visiting a working flour mill that is still using a water wheel powered by the local river. Kaleb loves to bake and he really enjoyed seeing the workings of the mill with the very old grinding stones. We also visited a prehistoric burial site with the same rocks as in stonehenge. Unfortunately , the weather in Wales continued cool and damp but we managed to enjoy ourselves between showers. Mike and Tara ventured to the southern town of St,David’s for a day trip.
On Sunday we dropped off the rental cars- much to our drivers’ (Mike and Ryan) relief- enough narrow roads and left-hand driving. We took a bus into London. It was more excitement than we wanted as our bus broke down on the M4 and the traffic was horrendous. But we finally crawled into London and Helen welcomed us aboard her lovely home.
We’ve spent the past three days seeing different parts of London. Since the boys were first-timers, they did the hop on hop off bus for a day seeing the usual palaces, churches but mostly lots of London traffic. Mike, Tara and I wandered through Chelsea and NottingHill. It was very rainy yesterday so our choices were a bit limited. The London jail museum was a hit with lots of torture devices to play with! We’ve had the full London experience with lots of bus rides, packed tube stations and boat rides along the Thames. The family is spread between a 2 bedroom Air b and b and bunking in with Helen. Last night we headed to the Soho district to take in a musical theatre production, Matilda. We all thoroughly enjoyed the evening. A great show and always a memorable experience to see live theatre especially a good musical. A first for the kids but hopefully not their last.
Today we all hit the British Museum to check out things like the rosetta stone and the Elgin marbles, the Egyptian exhibit and even a head from Easter Island. Mike and I split off to the Portrait Gallery while the rest of the Parrys did the Harry Potter tour. Tonight the adults are out for dinner and the kids will stay in with a movie.
Tomorrow we head to Stanstead to fly to France for the next week of our trip.

Mason says the best part of the trip so far has been the big castle and the Musical; Kaleb says climbing Snowdon and Matilda and the flour mill; Rogan says Snowdon, Matilda , the coast trail and all pubs ( 1 through 20)

That’s it for now. More from France
Tata for now.
Heather xxRead more