Holiday, holiday, holiday

08:00

We were very blessed to be able to spend last week on holiday with Dus' sister and her family. Dus' aunt and uncle have not long ago bought a house in North Wales and very generously allowed us to stay there for the week. (It was half term holiday here in the UK, plus the Monday was a bank holiday so it would have been impossible for us to find somewhere for all of us to stay for a reasonable price).

North Wales is very important to Dus' family despite being English. Yes Wendy, I said we're ENGLISH (that means we don't have a Welsh accent no matter what you wish to believe).

Dus and his family holidayed there lots and when Dus' mum, Jane passed away on New Year's day 2000, they chose the North Wales coast to place a bench in remembrance.  It's a beautiful spot and sees a lot of visiting walkers who enjoy a nice rest at that bench. We almost had to queue to go sit on it. Anyway, I took some holiday snaps for you to see.

I didn't bother taking any pics the two rainy days, better for us all to believe that Wales is hot and sunny, right?

Dus and I arrived on the Friday evening to glorious sunshine and a sea view from the front of the house, and over the garden.

The house was accessed by a track.
On the Wednesday morning around 4.15am, we were woken up by a 'vigorous shaking' (that was one of the "I felt it" reports and made me laugh). I checked out the window to see if it was a lorry going past. I looked and then rememebered the house was at the end of a track. Oops!

Turned out it was a 3.8 earthquake. You might think 3.8 is a sissy earthquake, but we don't get earthquakes here in the UK much so to us it was all excitement and fear! (Excitement for Dus and I, fear for Dus' sister thinking the kids might be buried under a landslide!)
Apparently the Lleyn peninsular is something of a regular earthquake spot. If you can call one every 30 years regular.

It made me laugh to think of my conversation with Judy about how I don't need stored food/water/torches etc because we never have any sort of natural disasters in the UK.

The view from Jane's bench.

Dus and I on Jane's bench. This is where we got engaged almost 4 years ago. 

Me and my sister in law. Usually I just call her my sister. She's so cool...look how cool she is! 

In my family we like to stand in fireplaces for photos. The 2 year old joined me but I cropped him out.

The medieval house we went to visit. I went to climb down the ladder from this platform and had a mild freakout. We all laughed about how silly I'd been, just had a moment. :)

The medieval house from the outside. 

Halfway up the mountain behind the house (house to the left of photo out of sight)
 We climbed the mountain behind the house on the Wednesday and while we were climbing, some fighter jets from the nearby Angelsey air base flew over, fairly low. Some of us were very startled as there had been the shock of the earthquake the night before!
(Some of us whooped when we saw them....ok, that might have been me!)

Under 18's heart'd out as I don't have permission to flaunt their pictures everywhere. 
At the top of the mountain was this sort of hill fort out of stones. In the background you can see the coves of Nefyn and to the left is Morfa Nefyn where Jane's bench is situated.

It was really incredibly windy at the top, I held onto my specs so that they didn't fly away! Inside the little stone area was nice and sheltered and we enjoyed a nice snack before pootling off down again. (I say pootling, but I was very tired at the end of it!)


In the field next to the house were some horses and one day they came right up to the windows of the conservatory for us to all have a good nosey at them.


I'm sure I'll get some grief here from my South Wales friends but...North Wales is definitely more Welsh than South Wales. Welsh is the primary language spoken in North Wales and all of the road signs are in Welsh first, English second. People speak Welsh first to you then when you speak swap over to English. Here in South Wales, people speak English as the majority and road signs are English first, then Welsh. Dus knew when we were nearly home, south of Builth Wells the signs swapped to English first.

If Geraint had his way, all road signs would be Welsh first, English second and we'd all have to learn to speak Welsh!

So that's our week with the in-laws. It was lovely to see them, we get on really well with Dus' sister and her husband and we love spending time with them. If only they didn't live 6 hours from us. We live in the west and they live as far in the east as can be.

The youngest is 2 and can't say Samantha so he calls me Mantila. I imagine Mantila to be a sort of hulk-esque type creature and delight in being Mantila when they're around.

We've still got another 7 (ish) weeks til our schools break up but the weather has turned a corner now and it's definitely spring. This might be the best it gets so we're making the most of it. Are your schools broken up yet?

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5 comments

  1. Wonderful photos! Love the one of you and Dus! And about the 'disaster,' don't say I didn't warn you. LOL

    Love the stone cottage and track photo. SIGH.

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  2. Beautiful views!!!!!!!!!!! I spent my honeymoon in Wales and it's an amazing place.

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  3. I can't believe the fireplace is large enough for any adult to stand in.... unless you are just a miniature person and haven't mentioned that to us, yet.

    My school is out now, as of last Friday. So, I've been spending my time trying to get a bit organized and also to purge a few things, too.

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  4. I love how you cropped the 2 year old out! I understand why you did it, but it makes for a funny sentence, like he wasn't good enough to be in the photo with YOU. and yes you do speak with a welsh accent. Maybe you switch back to english when you cross the border, but I know you speak like tom Jones at home

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  5. Wow! What a beautiful holiday! Even though I can't get over you guys' "arctic" temperatures, It looks like you all had a wonderful time! I especially love the part about the earthquake. I was the exact same way when we had one here in DC. Ant called to make sure we were ok, and I was all "Earthquake? What are you talking about? I thought the people upstairs just got a treadmill." ;D

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