We found a wonderful cottage, through Airbnb again, located near the village of Guilsfield, which is very close to Welshpool, the town where I was born.
However, before we got to that cottage, we made a two night stop in a property belonging to the National Trust, an organization founded with the aim to save and protect historic houses, gardens, mills, castles, coastlines and many other sites of historic importance in Britain.
The house we stayed in was part of the Attingham Estate, which has a magnificent house set in a 4,000 acre estate.
This is the National Trust B&B where we stayed, it is also the location of a cooking school.
This is Attingham Park, a country house and estate. The house was built in 1785 to include about 4,000 acres, comprising several farms and other houses. ( David W, I took out the blue just for you).
There were several rooms in the house that contained some of the original furniture and paintings etc. However, not much of the original contents remain. We were told that most of the house contents had been auctioned off to pay the creditors in the early 1800's. This auction was needed as a result of one of the Earl's excessive spending during his European tour at that time!
The National Trust is doing a very good job of restoring much of the house to it's early layout and furnishing, and one of the results is a return to the kitchen where some demonstration cooking takes place.
Although these pheasants were fake, it brought back memories of my youth when pheasants were an occasional treat.
There are also large walled gardens which are being restored to way they would have been in the 1800's.
The old gardeners really paid attention to caring for the welfare of the plants, no cold water shock here.
Now we are in the cottage in Guilsfield where we spent a week. It is part of an 80 acre farm where show-jumping and dressage horses are raised, as well as sheep.
The view from our front door, which we thought was pretty nice!
The welcoming committee.
Welshpool, where I was born, is another market town. It now claims to have the largest sheep market in Europe. When I was growing up, the market day was Monday, (still is) and the actual market was close to the edge of town, and in those days it was all mixed livestock. I do not know how long the Monday market has been running, but my mother would relate how my great grandfather would attend in a pony and cart, get drunk, and then let the pony find it's way home, (some 10 miles), with him asleep in the cart. This would have been sometime in the late 1800's or early 1900's.
Today it is the tractor instead of the cart, but I am not sure if it can find it's way home just yet.
We paid a brief visit to Powys Castle, which is just outside the town, and we chose to walk there through the deer park.
It was a nice walk with the deer heard occasionally visible. Unfortunately, the day turned wet, so it was a long walk back to the car, parked in Welshpool.
Diane said, at least the flip flops were waterproof!
We spent a day visiting two mountain lakes, Lake Bala and Lake Vyrnwy, which entailed driving over the Berwyn Mountains, full of sheep and wide rolling vistas devoid of trees.
There is a town of Bala, which we found very pleasant, having a sunny day also helps, It would certainly be a town to revisit.
A picnic on the lake shore.
A small restaurant whose name is also a famous Welsh song, which some readers may remember.
There is a narrow gauge railway along Lake Bala using steam engines, all managed and run by volunteers as a tourist attraction.
Len got to play signal operator in the old signal box, which is still used when they run the trains.
On our return over the mountain, this is what we faced, road maintenance crews patching the road. They were soon out of the way and it was a beautiful drive, even though mostly on single lane roads.
Many times, this was the view from the passenger seat!
The dam at Lake Vyrnwy, shown here was built in the 1880's, it is stone built and was the first of it's kind in Britain, and maybe, the world. The valley and the village that it contained, was submerged to make the lake that then provided fresh water to Liverpool, in England. Quite a feat in it's day, but many in Wales were not happy about flooding peoples homes to provide water for the English.
This splendid structure, a little way up the lake from the dam, is the "straining tower" where the water is filtered before it enters the aqueduct and makes it's way to Liverpool.
Welshpool also has a narrow gauge railway with a steam locomotive, now also operated as a tourist attraction by volunteers. The line is just under 10 miles long, and runs between Welshpool and Llanfair Caereinion, the town where I attended grammar school.
It was a lovely ride through farming countryside and, at times close to the River Banwy. Lots of memories........
A wing of the grammar school where I was fortunate to attend when it was newly built in 1954, amazing to think that was 60 years ago. Class size was small, no more than 20 per class and the total school population was only about 300 pupils. Times have changed as we heard that the school might be in danger of closing as part of a school consolidation plan.
We had an hour to wait until the train began it's return journey, so we walked into town and found that a classic car rally was just passing through. We later discovered this is called the "1,000 Mile Trial" and is run with all pre-1940 era cars. The rally is based on the original 1,000 mile trial run in 1900. At that time, most people in Britain had never seen a car and were skeptical that it was going to replace the horse. So the idea was formed to take the cars of that time on a 1,000 mile tour of major cities in the UK to demonstrate the feasibility and reliability of the car.
This rally idea was re-instituted in 2014, and we were just fortunate to see a few cars in this pretty remote part of Wales taking part in the 2015 run.!
Quite a few cars stopped to pick up petrol, and as a result, we were able to get a good look at several of them. Here is the brochure of the event if anyone is interested.
http://www.heroevents.eu/files/attachments/1000MT_2015Flyer02lo.pdf
One of the key reasons for returning to my place of birth was to visit the grave of Mum and Dad. This is the church and graveyard where the grass is left to grow throughout the season as a nature conservation program, a really good idea.
It felt good to pay a visit.
We drove close to the house where I spent my teenage years and Diane managed to get a photo of this very old oak in which I used to hang out. It was great to see that it is still faring well, and I hope will continue to do so for years to come.
Another reason to return to Welshpool was to visit Diane Ashman, who we met many years ago and with whom we established an instant rapport. This Diane has a store of vintage clothes and jewelry so you will not be surprised that our Diane was wishing she had brought an extra suitcase!
We attended a Welsh festival in San Jose in 2001 and met an artist named Kathy Gittins (we bought one of her prints), who happened to live near where I went to school. She now has a number of clothing stores in Wales and this one in Welshpool, which we just happened into. Quite a coincidence.
Unfortunately, Kathy was not in the store, but we did get to meet and bond with Nicky.
A last look at Welshpool High Street on a bright sunny day.
And goodbye to the beautiful horses.
The farm.
And, no it was not sunny all of the time.
Next step, the south cost of England, as we wind down our stay in Britain.
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