Day 7 - Llangollen (Wales) and Chester (England)

Ok, before I forget, here's Ps Dave and his daughter, Jade (all of 18 and making plans to get married!)


By morning, things had changed for the travellers. We had agreed on an early start for us - 9am. We'd left the warm sun behind and it was now raining. Also my sore throat from the previous day had developed into a head cold. Yuk.

Anyhoo, we left with Ps Dave and a church buddy of his, Brian, to go into Chester, which is just inside the border of England. We were treated to a tour of the cathedral there - but Marcia was kinda bored so forbade me from publishing all the pix of the arched ceilings and decorated columns. Still, the outside is not bad:


Then we walked through the streets of Chester, looking for signs of the old Roman city. It's full of cute streets like this:
You can see all the Tudor style buildings on the main street (note how each storey up leans out further):
The place was actually packed so I'm not sure why they weren't working! We also saw several people dressed to the nines. Turns out a day at the races had just ended and they had come into town. So the 5-star hotel wasn't exactly enthusiastic about hosting us for 'morning' coffee, as it's called, but Ps Dave has never suffered from shyness so we pushed our way in:
Our Chester visit ended with a walk down to the river, where you can always count on prettiness:
(The bridge is not too bad, either, what say you?)


From there we drove into the Northern Welsh countryside to see Llangollen (a gutteral sound that just has to be heard!)

But first we made a quick stop to see Ps Denise as she zipped in from one job to another.


We drove up into the mountains up to Horseshoe Pass, where we stopped at a restaurant-pub for some lunch (time for me to get some long-overdue fish 'n' chips!)

Sheep are everywhere - these playing around nearby. Mother let me get this close before she got her lamb out of there.

Check it out, here's some Welsh for you:We drove past the village of Llangollen, which is so cute:

I mean, how cute can you get:

Then we went over to the aquaduct, where they hire out barges large enough for family holidays. Here's what I assumed to be a typical Welsh villager (but for all I know, he could be some German tourist waiting for his barge to be repaired):

Each barge has several rooms, including separate kitchens:

Apparently you can travel all over Wales and England by barge along a network of canals. Here's what the barges look like:

Now the barges can go across the narrow aquaduct - and there's even a walkway:

We went halfway along the aquaduct's walkway to see the views. To the right:

And to the left:

Here's what the aquaduct looks like from the side. You can see a barge crossing and some people walking:

We certainly packed in the sights today! After a cuppa tea at 4pm, we had to pack up and head out.

From there it was only a 45-minute journey north to Birkenhead, just south of Liverpool, where we were to stay with Shereen and Stephen Arbon (friends from S.A.) We filled up on a traditional roast buffet at the Queen Hotel, on the seafront overlooking the River Mersey. And chatted. And laughed. And chatted...

But lurking in the background, a malignant force was digging its dirty claws into our wonderful time, ready to pounce and spread its contagion...