Bournemouth or Bust!

At least I think that is what they use to put on signs when hitch-hiking was a popular mode of transportation. Tomorrow (Saturday August 19th), we head to Bournemouth to visit my friend Heather who I met through Girl Guides. I have badges for her from Hong Kong, she has badges for me from England. I am looking forward to it. She is currently going to school to be an air traffic control person.

In the last couple of days we picked up the nasty liquids that we weren't allowed to bring on the planes and a couple of other things for the trip (a watch for George because he couldn't find his cheap one before we left and I was tired of him asking me what time it was). We also managed to see Hadrian's wall, Homestead that is a fort that was on the wall and Vindolanda which was a village near the wall. These are all Roman ruins. Hadrian's wall took 80 years to build and is 80 Roman miles long. It isn't as high as it once was, you will notice that cottages near by are made of the same rock, but it is still impressive.


Looking at a section of Hadrian's wall from Homestead.

The purple hills which are covered in Heather.

Looking at the cottage that Wendy and Dave (George's sister and brother-in-law) stay at. We will hopefully come back here and stay with them sometime. The cottage is in the middle of the picture. It is hard to see (or impossible??).

The Ugly House...because it is so cute

Here is the story about the Ugly House. I think it is cute enough and interesting enough to deserve its own post.

The "Ugly House" was built and inhabited in one day. It was a "Ty Un Nos" or "House of the Night". The "Ugly House" (Ty Hyll in Welsh) was built around 1475. At the time, a loophole in the law allowed a tenant to own the property if he could build a house complete with fireplace and chimney between sunrise and sunset and have smoke coming out of the chimney. Using undressed boulders, local brothers completed the task to take possession, not only of the stone building, but also of the land upon which it stood for as far as they could throw an axe from each side of the house.

For more on the history of the house, see this website: http://www.betws-y-coed.co.uk/attra/ugly/ugly.htm

Pictures!

Castle Conwy, a really defensive castle.


The smallest house in Great Britain. It has an upstairs and a downstairs.


Castle Caernarvon is where they have had the last two crownings of the Prince of Wales.


George taking a picture. (This won't be the last time you see a shot like this from me.)


The ugly house. Which has been horribly named! I think it is cute.

A Visit to Wales

This is a little late, but George and I have arrived safely to England. We didn't have any problems with security in Toronto. In fact, this was the fastest that George has been through customs. Our bags weren't searched and we kept our shoes on. Our flight left a half hour late, but was uneventful except for turbulence once. We flew through customs in Manchester. We got thanked for having all of the right documents to prove that we had enough money for the trip, had a set date for leaving and that we had jobs that we were returning to in January. Yay! We weren't a threat! I think we were well prepared after having to go through something similar when we went to Richmond, Virginia for two months.

Last night Dave printed us off some cheat sheets for our travels today. Documents on the castles that we were going to see. (I think my dad would like traveling with Dave) We were also taunted with the prospect of having a bonus cheat sheet on the trip if we were good.

This morning we left promptly at 11am, 1-2 hours after we planned on departing. George and I have a little bit of jet lag. We saw two castles, the smallest house and the bonus item...the ugly house. I found the ugly house to be very cute. I will post some pictures later as I cannot access them right now. Apparently I need to have administrative rights to install new software. Wasn't I trying to escape from computers this trip? Sigh I am still hooked in.