This is what we do when we go to Wales

Nine years ago our summer holiday was a week in South Wales. We rented a cottage in Kidwelly and over the next seven days we averaged a castle a day. We like castles. Although by the end of the week my leg muscles were arguing the matter. It is no easy thing to climb tower stairs -

They are steep, slippery when wet, and because of the triangular shape, hard to get one's whole foot onto.

This year we only did four castles in a week, and one of them was so ruined there were no stairs left. Oddly enough, through no plan of our own, we visited them in reverse order of ruinousness. (Is that a word? It should be.)

The first, and most ruinous was Denbigh, about three miles from the converted granary we stayed in for the week (sorry, somehow I never got pictures of it!). The land and original fortress were granted by Edward I (after his sweep into Wales to crush the "unruly Welsh" in 1282) to Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, who began work on the medieval fortification.

Denbigh Castle, Wales

The next castle (my favourite) and much less ruinous was Conwy Castle, built by Edward I overlooking the Conwy River estuary. Unusually, most of the original medieval town wall remains intact in Conwy, allowing a clearer picture of what it would have looked like in the Middle Ages.

Conwy Castle/the view of the estuary

The third was Caernarfon, the bully boy of King Edward's castles and was the most intact yet, boasting two gate houses and nine octagonal towers (with mini-turrets on top of those). Construction began on Caernarfon in 1283, after Edward defeated Llywelyn the Last (isn't that a great name to be known by?)

Caernarfon Castle/Menai Strait

My favourite story about Caernarfon involved the canny Edward promising the Welsh that the country would be administered by a Welsh prince - and then ensuring that his son, Edward II, was born at Caernarfon, thus creating the first Prince of Wales.

The town was charming, and we had lunch outside a cafe on one of the side streets.

The view from the castle

David spent his time at the castles reading the guidebooks and looking at the fortifications (well, he is the professional historian in the family). I seem to have spent all my time photographing fireplaces.

There's just something so poignant about these traces of domesticity, hovering far overhead, hinting at the everyday life of the people who once called these places home. In the larger picture above you can see the holes for the long-ago rotted-away floor joists just under the fireplace.

I also find arches, corbels with faces on them, windows with remnants of their stone tracery, and stairs that seem to climb from nowhere to nowhere completely irresistable.

Since the last castle we visited has been continuously lived in for 800 years and is now more a stately home than a fortification, I'll post the pictures of it with the ones from Plas Mawr, the gorgeous Elizabethan town house in Conwy.

And because I promised you a big, pink tent.

Unmissable, instantly recognizable - they were setting up for the Eisteddfod a couple of miles from where we were staying. If we'd been one week later we could have gone.




Wendy

A Tiny Village, Parental Pride, and Hoarders Gone Large

Now that I've got my computer issues sorted (fingers crossed) I was able to sort through our holiday pics. We spent the first week of our holiday in Swanage again and since I wrote about that last year at Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside and The Beach, the Train and the Castle and not much about Swanage has changed I'll just show you a few pictures of our holiday cottage this year.

 This was the view of the back of the house from the garden. The house itself was adequate, nothing flashy and very limited internet access, but what we were paying for was the view.

The cliff down to the beach fell off about five feet further on from the back gate.

 We were a bit further along the bay than last year and just a few doors along was a path that led down the cliff to the beach, which is much less populated this end.

 We had our usual trip by steam train to Corfe Castle, although we didn't actually go into the castle this year. We had tea when we got there and pottered around the shops. There's a really good National Trust shop and a tiny little hole-in-the-wall shop that sells a lot of reproduction vintage stuff, including a metal "Victory Garden" poster I couldn't pass up. I'll show a picture of it in another post. I also got a couple of vintage postcards I'll put in frames and two reproduction World War II pamphlets on Mending and Making Do, and how to cook with rationed food. They were a fascinating read. I wanted to get a picture inside the shop but it was packed out with the three of us and three other customers. Like I said, tiny.

 We also visited the Corfe Castle Model Village, which we hadn't done in a while. It's set up in the back garden of one of the buildings a few doors down from the village square and it's very life-like. I included some flowers in the shot for scale - otherwise it would be easy to mistake this for a photo of the actual village and castle. One of the things that really tickles us about the model village is that it includes a model of itself (you can just see a corner of it behind the small bush in the middle.

And, even better, the model village in the model village includes a model village - see the arrow above. It's all very post-modern somehow.

I particularly liked the little mill, with a real stream flowing by (you can see the coins people have thrown in to make a wish) and the tiny ducks and geese.

On the Thursday of that week (July 4th) we drove back up to Reading for Evie's university graduation. She finished with an Upper Second, Bachelor of Arts, in Film and Theatre from Reading University.

 We are so very proud of her.

On the weekend we left Swanage for a week in North Wales. On the way we stopped at Tyntesfield, a National Trust site near Bristol.

It's a Victorian neo-gothic extravaganza created in the 1840s by the wealthiest commoner in Britain (his fortune made by importing guano for fertilizer) and was owned by the same family until it was sold to the National Trust in 2001, and they seem to have never thrown anything away. In the end the last member of the family to own it lived in just a few rooms of the house as he was quite elderly and frail. When the NT bought it there was room after room full of furniture jumbled into heaps and a great deal of damage from a leaky roof. Although they have restored most of the house over the years they have left a few rooms showing the damage

Invalid Carriage & Pram

A room full of chamber pots and crockery

Another room piled high with furniture

You can see the water damage to the wall in the above photo.

In all these places the things that intrigue me the most are the small details of everyday life.

The bell system

Embossed leather shelf edging to help prevent dust collecting on the tops of the books.

Unfortunately the kitchen (my favourite part of stately homes) was closed this year, but we did get to see the butler's pantry.

And of course there were the gardens. The house had extensive grounds, beautifully landscaped, but the thing I wanted to see the most was the walled kitchen garden.

I loved the oversized cold frame against the wall in the upper left corner. It had louvered glass so air could flow through on hot days (as it was when we were there). They were actually growing figs in it! In England!

All the walls of the garden were covered in these little hooks so wire could be strung along and fruit trees could be espaliered against the wall. Very clever, but think of the work it must have been. They are sunk into the mortar so presumably someone went along behind the bricklayer pushing each hook into the mortar before it set. Ah for the Victorian days when labour was cheap.

Next up - North Wales, many castles...and a big pink tent.




Wendy

The Guest Room -After(ish) Pictures

So, you can read about the saga of trying to pick a paint colour for, and the actual painting of, the guest room last summer here.  It went from this

to this

and then I left you hanging.

Bearing in mind there is still some work to be done, here are a few pictures of a useable guest room. (And yes, I'm still very chuffed to even HAVE a guest room, after 20 years of guests, including my parents, having to sleep on a blow-up mattress on the living room floor).

 
The bed is our old frame from England, the bedside table is an old wood folding table covered with a scarf I found at the thrift store (like the little bird cage). The quilt is one my grandmother made, which Mom gave me when I told her I was doing a black & white room. The matelasse quilt was a birthday gift (thanks Mom). I'm lovin' on matelasse at the moment and I'm considering getting one in cream for our room.

The shams actually go with the bed set in the master bedroom but look better in here. The bolster pillow is a thrift store find, wrapped in black thrift store scarf and tied with some white ribbon I found in my stash.

Almost everything in this room I either owned before, was a gift, or was a thrift store deal. The chest of drawers and tri-fold mirror are actually Evie's and were given to her by David's mum when she moved back to Australia. It's an antique so I won't be repainting it. The arched mirror hung in our room in England and I'm trying to decide if I want it in this room and whether to repaint it a brighter white or black. Most of the accessories were bought at the thrift store, as was the lamp - although that was originally powder blue and I spray painted it black. The chair has been with us for about as long as we've been married and I don't even remember where we got it. It desperately needs an overhaul. I'm thinking of painting it watermelon for a little jolt of colour in the room.

My favourite things in the room are the ink sketches.

My parents bought these in London in 1973 on our way back from Nigeria and all through my childhood they hung in the main bathroom of our house. Mom had them packed away, but gave them to me when she gave me the quilt, to put up in this room. (Thanks again Mom)

Photo bombing from Bartholomew and Finian. Actually, they are very colour-coordinated for this room!

I really need to get some new knobs for the bottom drawers there. I also need to get some proper curtains up. The lace gives some privacy but this window faces east so there's nothing to block the light in the morning.

What I'm trying to decide now is what to do with the space above the bed. Whether to move the drawings over and hang them in a two over two formation (similar to the collage I've done above), or to put up the decal I bought at Michaels.

I'm kind of in love with chandelier silhouettes at the moment.

Wendy

Linked up with Common Ground, My Repurposed Life, Jennifer Rizzo, DIY Showoff

I {Heart} Beige

Yep. Call it what you want - vanilla, boring beige, "playing it safe", (in Britain it's the Magnolia Compromise)- it's a lovely, warm, neutral room colour that can be dressed up or down with other colours or some texture.

(digsdigs)

 (digsdigs)

 (digsdigs)

 Grey or greige may be "the thing" in home decorating at the moment, but I find grey rather cold, and greige is just "not one thing or the other". Don't get me wrong, I think grey can look lovely - I love the look of my guest room (which I still have to post pictures of). But I'm drawn again and again to cream, beige, fawn and soft browns. When we moved into our house most of it was painted the standard builder's pale beige and I'm perfectly happy with it. But it is getting a little banged up so I need to find something to replace it, and to cover the pale yellow the previous owners saw fit to paint the front entry hall, kitchen and one reception. I do not {heart} yellow.

I am paint chip challenged. I love them. I collect them. I sometimes carry them around in my bag. What I have a really hard time doing is choosing between them. It doesn't help that there are so many paint companies, and each company has so many versions of every colour. Who'd have thought there were a thousand shades of white?

 (materials world)

Also, I love the names they give the colours. I'm torn between Divine Pleasure, Pot of Cream and Cotton Fluff.

Behr

Clair de Lune? Lime Light? Gobi Tan? Awesome!

(Chip It)

And who can resist "Lime Rickey" and "Charisma" pink?

I recently won a $50 gift voucher giveaway for True Value Hardware from Alicia at Thrifty and Chic and when it arrives I will be adding True Value paint chips to my Home Depot and Lowes collections.

Then I'll have to decide whether to use the money for boring wall paint or...The Purple Door?

Wendy