We officially had our first rainy day today in the UK — hard to believe we are on Day 12 of our trip and haven’t had rain. We were beginning to think that the entire UK lies about how much “rain” they get. For goodness sake, we were sunburned just days ago! Anyways, we came fully prepared for rain since we were vacationing in Wales and went about our day as planned…. with more Castles!
Of course, we started with breakfast at our new BnB — she had quite the menu options and we had a nice chat with the other couple staying here. This is only a two bedroom BnB which is quite nice actually (I’m sitting in our own dining room as I type). The second couple are from Southern England and are here the same amount of days as we are, so we will get to know them quite well. Tonight they are actually headed to Cardiff for the Coldplay concert (I honestly didn’t know they were still touring… all of their music sounds like the same song to me… sorry Leah).
Ragland Castle was the first stop. Very different than any of the other castles we’ve seen in all the countries we’ve explored. The turrets weren’t round but instead were hexagon shaped. Very unique. And there was an actual moat with water in it still. We’ve not seen this before as most of the moats had either dried up or been drained. Ragland also had many fashionable features, because the owners were a “keeping up with the Joneses” type. Every time a new fad came out, they knocked down a wall and built a window if that’s what the neighbor castle was doing. It made for a very interesting looking castle, for sure.
Tintern Abbey was my favorite abbey we’ve seen this trip. I’m always so taken by the abbeys — they are so grand and to imagine what they looked like in their prime. The archways themselves were enough to knock you back a little.
Caerphilly Castle is the second largest castle in Britain, and surprisingly it also had a real moat. Two moats in one day! This one was not as impressive as Ragland but as I mentioned the family that owned Ragland constantly changed the castle, so it was so unique. Although at Caerphilly we did meet a dragon…
We didn’t make it to the last castle we planned today since it closed earlier than expected, so we headed to dinner and back to the BnB to rest up for the day tomorrow. We haven’t really had a rest day, so it has been nice to kick back a little and relax. We are coming into the home stretch now.
