Wales Holiday – The Final Chapter
After my trip to Dolwyddelan Castle and Bodnant Garden, I decided to try some walking. I’m quite keen on forests and whatnot so I headed off to Coed y Brenin, a forest park owned by the Welsh division of the Forestry Commission.
It wasn’t far, though it took a while by the time I’d made my way through the roadworks. At breakfast (bacon and tomato omelette) I’d joked with the waiter that I’d brought three coats with me just in case, but I hadn’t needed my wet weather one. Obviously that put the jinx on the weather and down came the rain. Fortunately, it settled down to a light drizzle as the day progressed.
Anyway, on with the pictures!
I noticed as I walked round that the landscape is very similar to parts of the Highlands in Scotland, even down to the thistle!
My Wales Holiday Part 2 – Bodnant Garden
Welcome back to my little Wales mini-break! In the first part I visited Dolwyddelan Castle. That was actually an unscheduled stop – I saw a sign marked “Castle”, hit the brakes and swung into the car park (rather too fast considering the cattle grid just inside the entrance).
I then continued northwards to my planned destination – a National Trust property called Bodnant Garden. A bit pricey, but since I’m a National Trust member, I got in for free!
It was a lovely day and the place was packed – I was in the overflow overflow car park I think.
I had trouble picking just a few pictures, so there are quite a few here!
Two Days in Wales
I don’t usually prattle on about my largely uninteresting life, but since I just had a holiday (my first in five years!) in Wales I thought I’d share some pictures.
Well, I say a holiday. Two full days is more of a mini-break, I guess, but I lost two days on the road (it’s a six and a half hour drive).
Here’s where I went:
Map courtesy of Google Maps
The area to the north of the arrow is Snowdonia – mountains, forests and whatnot.
The trip up was fine apart from some panic around Birmingham. So many motorways branching off. Why is it that when you’re desperately looking for a turn off, all the road signs are obscured by lorries? Still, I didn’t get lost even once, and when you’re on your own with no navigator, and especially if you’re me, that’s quite a feat!
After arriving in a lovely little Bar/Grill/Restaurant/Hotel (six rooms!) I booked a table for dinner. Quality food! Grilled brie in breadcrumbs for starter followed by a massive home-made burger with onion rings, a mushroom so big it should have had some sort of faerie creature sitting on it and home-made chips (with the skins on!). For my US friends, that’s chips as in “French fries”, or is it “Freedom fries”? In the UK, the term “French fries” is reserved for those rubbish chips you get in fast-food places like MacDonald’s.
So, enough rambling, on with the pictures! I don’t want this post to get too long, so today I’ll show you some pictures I took at Dolwyddelan Castle.
Set on a hilltop (as many good/effective castles are!) it commands a dominant position over the surrounding countryside.
It was manned by Welsh soldiers – at that time Wales consisted of several kingdoms and there was also the threat of Norman/Anglo-Saxon invasion from England.
After visiting the castle, I continued to Bodnant Gardens, a National Trust property to the north. I’ll post some of those pictures later!
Fool on a Bike
Daily Prompt: Trains, Planes, and Automobiles – You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, or car? (Or something else entirely — bike? Hot air balloon?)
Chad was a dreamer. A dreamer and a fool. Everyone knew it. Chad knew everyone knew it. And he didn’t care.
He’d had ideas for this, ideas for that. He thought they’d make him famous. Some great invention, or a feat of daring. Nothing ever came of any of them. In fact, his biggest claim to fame was that he failed at absolutely everything. People often wondered how that could be – out of all of his thousands of hair-brained schemes, surely he would have accidentally succeeded at least once? Read more…
I’ll Have Them Both, Thanks!
A few days ago Khana over at Khana’s web nominated me to receive the WordPress Family award. Then a couple of days later Nanuschka nominated me for both the WordPress Family award and the Sunshine Award!
I’m touched – I feel as if my WordPress buddies are part of my extended family and I’ve wanted this award for ages! I love reading about the experiences and views of people from far-flung places like the USA, South Africa and so on as well as posts from closer to home. I feel like I almost know some of you people.
The Sunshine Award – now, I’m not really a “Sunshine” kind of guy. Maybe my overwhelming pessimism doesn’t come out in my posts? But I’ll accept this one as well – maybe it will inspire me to positivity!
Here come the logos!
Here are the rules for the WordPress Family award:
1. Display the award logo on your blog. See above
2. Link back to the person who nominated you. Check and check
3. Nominate 10 others you see as having an impact on your WordPress experience and family. That’s 10 combined for both awards, right?
4. Let your 10 Family members know you have awarded them. Fine, I shall do this but it seems like a lot of hard work.
5. That is it. Just please pick 10 people who have taken you as a friend, and spread the love. Yay love!
The rules for the Sunshine Award are similar, but there are also some questions, which I shall attempt to answer below. I hope no-one minds, but I’ve added multiple instances of the letter “u” to the questions below because I’m a Brit.
- Favourite colour – blue, and most shades thereof, moving into purple (but not pink). Sorry, just one colour you say? Okay, blue.
- Favourite animal – cat, because they’re cute and fluffy and above all, independent. They’ll be there for you – on their terms.
- Favourite number – why would I have a favourite number? I hate numbers. They get all mixed around in my head. You need an answer? Okay, I’ll take a leaf out of “Bill and Ted‘s” book then – “Sixty-nine, dude!”
- Favourite non-alcoholic drink – “Tesco no added sugar cloudy lemonade.” I jut checked round the corner and I currently have 14 litres in the house, sitting next to my stockpile of Diet Coke cans (currently numbering 38).
Mmmm. Nearly no calories of tasty refreshment.
- Prefer FaceBook or Twitter – I really only use them to publicise my blog, though I read what my friends are up to via Facebook every few days, so Facebook I guess.
- My passion/s – I don’t really have any. I’d love to have some. Reading maybe.
- Prefer getting or giving presents – Giving.
- Favourite pattern – what does this mean, favourite pattern? Like, plaid or something? I’m not keen on patterns as such. I don’t like anything which regularly repeats itself.
- Favourite days of the week – Saturday. Yay for Saturday!
- Favourite flower – What? What? I can identify roses, daisies and dandelions. My favourite is none of them. See below for what my favourite flower might be.
Some of these might be my favourite flowers (taken at Bodnant Gardens, North Wales)
These flowers are shades of blue and purple, so that fits with “favourite colour”.
And so to the moment you’ve all been waiting for (or dreading) – the nominations! I know that some of these people either don’t really do awards or already have these awards. That’s cool. Feel free to take one or both of these awards if you like, but this list is really just to thank you for being a part of my little WordPress family and bringing a little sunshine into my life. I love to read what you’ve written, comment on your posts and read your replies.
So this is a list of just a few members of my treasured WordPress family (in no particular order), and I hope you’ll check out their blogs if you haven’t already!
Kate Stull
Knocked Over By A Feather
Morrighan’s Muse
The Rambling Diaries
Serendipity
Hope* The Happy Hugger
Rarasaur
Purnimodo
Fish of Gold
Gilraensblog
And finally, last time I showed you a view from inside the awards ceremony, so here’s me arriving for this ceremony, complete with imaginary girlfriend! Do you like my tux? Pretty sweet, huh? And the limo – fully stocked with Tesco No Added Sugar Cloudy Lemonade and cans of Diet Coke. Please be aware that this picture contains some flash photography.
“Red Carpet” by DraliDoodles (TM)
Weekly Photo Challenge – The World Through Your Eyes
Here is my first ever try at the weekly photo challenge!
Photo taken through an arrow slit at Dolwyddelan Castle, North Wales.
Imagine an archer, arrow nocked in his bow, peering out over the Welsh countryside searching for any sign of the Norman invaders…
I Think Not
Daily Prompt: No, Thank You – If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?
Photographers, artists, poets: show us NO.
I’m going to do a picture for this prompt for a change! Here it is – it doesn’t exactly say “NO” but it looks like it would be a good idea not to proceed past this point.
Go no further!
Weirdly, this was on a way-marker post I saw during a forest walk in Coed y Brenin forest park during my recent holiday in Wales. It looked like just another trail and was marked as part of a mountain bike route.
Fortunately, the trail I was following went the other way, so I didn’t have to find out what this rather ominous sign referred to :-).
For the record, I wouldn’t ban any words from general usage. Words are just a way to express thoughts and ideas. Banning the word doesn’t ban the idea – a new word would quickly be invented to express it.
Back on the Grid
I’m back everyone! What’s that you say? You didn’t notice I was gone?
Hmmph.
I was only away for a few days to be fair, and since I only post a couple of times a week there’s been very little difference post-wise from the draliman stables.
I do want to apologise to the people I follow. My philosophy is “If you post it, I shall read” but I only had my phone with me and I didn’t really keep up with reading all your lovely blogs – the screen is a little small :-(.
I’ve been on a little holiday in North Wales, near a town called Dolgellau. I’ll pop some photos into a couple of posts in the coming days – here’s one I took during a forest walk at Coed y Brenin.
A waterfall in Coed y Brenin forest park, Wales
For those of you who know me a little bit, you’ll appreciate that this was quite a big step for me. I haven’t been on a holiday for five years, and I’m so driven by routine it’s sometimes difficult to leave the flat, let alone drive all the way to Wales on my own (350 miles). I’m always convinced that if I do something out of my ordinary routine something bad will happen. There’s probably some psychological condition for that – “mild routine-itis” I expect it is.
Anyway I had a lovely time :-). Nothing terrible happened (except to my bank balance and waist line). Maybe next year I’ll have another holiday, who knows?
An Ever-Changing Blog
At the beginning of the week the lovely Khana over at Khana’s Web nominated me for the Versatile Blogger’s award!
First of all, I’d like to apologise to her for taking so long to write this post. In my defence, after sitting at a computer at work for 10 hours a day I find it quite hard to fire up the old laptop when I get home.
This particular award comes at quite an apt time, actually. I was already planning to write about how my blog has changed in nature from my original idea. But first…
Versatility is my middle name (not really)
When I first started this blog, it was going to be posts about things that happened in my life that made me think about things. Unfortunately, not a lot of things happen in my life and therefore I was running seriously short of things to write about.
So I added some poetry. Well, I say poetry. Most of it’s quite naive – I still haven’t quite gotten out of the schoolchild “it’s all got to rhyme” mentality. I’m not sure why I’m writing it at all – I hated poetry at school. Keats can take his “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” and stick it where the sun don’t shine. It’s a perfectly good poem, but I have an aversion to anything I was forced to read and endlessly analyse at school. I enjoy a lot of the poetry I find on various blogs, but I choose to read that.
I actually hate nearly everything they forced me to read at school, the only exceptions being two of the books for my German literature exam – Die Physiker (Dürrenmatt) and Biedermann und die Brandstifter (Frisch). These are plays and therefore almost all dialogue. The third book was all flowery prose. I don’t want to read 300 pages of flowery prose in English. Why would I want to read it in German?
But I digress.
I began responding to some of the Daily Prompts – a great way to pick up ideas and see what other people make of them. I expanded my repertoire to fiction (I’d forgotten after all these years how much fun it is) and I’ve even added original “artwork” in the form of DraliDoodlesTM :-).
So I guess I have become”versatile”, and am happy to accept the award! Here are the rules:
- Post the above logo [done that]
- Accept the nomination and link back to the blog that nominated you [done that as well]
- Share seven things about yourself [coming up]
- Nominate blogs and inform them of the nomination [hmm]
So seven things all about me. This is, presumably, seven more things that I didn’t mention in my last award acceptance. That last award post pretty much used up everything interesting about me.
But wait – it doesn’t say seven interesting things, does it?
- I’m in my early forties (yoinks!)
- I’ve been at the same job for nearly 10 years – my longest-lasting job ever!
- I get up really early and go to bed quite early too
- In two days I’m embarking on my first holiday in five years. I’m going to Wales for three days. I’m anticipating high winds and heavy rain.
- I’m pessimistic by nature
- I enjoy books about sci-fi and vampires and magic and stuff
- I think it’s a really interesting fact about me that I can’t dredge up even seven interesting facts about me
I’m going to have to break with tradition here. I’m really no good at nominating people, so I’m going to follow the cop out various others have taken, and just say that if you feel your blog is sufficiently versatile, grab the award and follow the rules! Like I didn’t.
Here’s a picture of me receiving my award. Warning – this picture contains flash photography!
“I Accept” by DraliDoodles (TM)
Minty Merriwether – Book Imp!
Weekly Writing Challenge: Clicking Through the Pages – break up longer posts by adding pagination to them – be sure to click on the page numbers at the bottom to read the whole story – there are 3 pages!
“Katherine Mary Williams!”
Katie’s Mum’s voice drifted up the stairs. She didn’t sound happy.
Uh oh, thought Katie. Whenever Mum used her full name, she was in trouble.
“You’ve been at the cheese again! You’ll have nightmares! Go to bed, we’ll talk in the morning.”
“OK, Mum, sorry Mum!” Katie called back, and closed her bedroom door. She loved her cheese. A little telling off tomorrow would be worth it. She climbed into her Hello Kitty pyjamas, tucked herself into bed and fell asleep.
It was the small hours of the morning when there was a popping sound, a cloud of smoke and a flash of light. Standing on the end of the bed was a small creature. He looked around and opened his mouth, as if he were about to speak.
Katie slept on, oblivious.
The little creature looked at her, a perplexed look on his face as her snores filled the room. With a “harrumph” he abruptly disappeared, quite suddenly and without any of the ceremony which had heralded his arrival.
Seconds later there was another, much louder popping sound, even more smoke and a significantly brighter flash of light and the creature returned. Katie shot bolt upright in bed, eyes wide.
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