Wales Roadtrip

Fall in Wales

Our housemate Francois was so nice as to join us on one of our weekend adventures and to drive us too!

We started out early on a typically gray Saturday morning and left Oxford for Cardiff, the capitol and largest city of Wales. We had no real agenda for the weekend, other than a hotel in Swansea, so when we showed up in Cardiff it was up to us to figure out what to do. After parking at their new gigantic stadium we wandered our way over to the Cardiff Castle which is a huge complex with parts built from the Roman times all the way up to the 1800s.  A very neat stop and a must see if you drop by Cardiff. Afterward we ate lunch at a lovely cheese shop and stopped by a Halloween shop.

For the afternoon we went down to the coastal area of Cardiff, which we had seen on television many times before courtesy of Doctor Who and Torchwood. There we caught an air show and car show (thanks to Francois for this video). With an added scent of burnt rubber we stopped in to a pub and met up with Ancilla and Erica, the Canadians we met in Bournemouth and joined us for windsurfing and Stonehenge. We traded travel stories over a pint of Brains (a Welsh beer).

Once done socializing we made our way to Swansea, the second largest city in Wales.  We found our hotel (amidst many adventures), and went into town to find some dinner. Although we were not overly impressed by Swansea, the next morning we went to a nearby coastal village The Mumbles and saw some beautiful coastline.

That afternoon we adventured our way to the Welsh national show caves and dinosaur park. We hung out with the giant replica dinosaurs and had us some fun underground with a bit of easy-going spelunking. Finally after that we made our way back to England with some stops for photography in the beautiful sheep filled countryside.