Thought it was time to bring back the map, it's helpful to see where we are and where we're heading on this 14 Tour of The UK.
Todays Itinerary reads as follows: travel through the Brecon Beacons National Park to Hay-on-Wye, a town famous for it's bookshops. Continue to Shrewsbury, a picturesque town near the English/Welsh border. Take a walking tour with the town crier to see black and white buildings that line the narrow streets. Travel through Cheshire to your hotel in Chester.
Just outside the carpark is this cute map showing this historic little village of Hay-on-Way. You can see how narrow the roads are in this little village, with shops lining the street. Lots of books shops, and charity shops. Unlike the US where you can donate to a charity, The UK has lots of second hand shops where the proceeds are directed to a specific charity. We noted the second hand clothes seemed more expensive than our resale shops back in the states. On a hill overlooking the village is Hay Castle At the base of the Castle is a monument with plaques honoring the towns dead in various wars. Notice the book store across the street. With the bright sunny day, it was hard to photograph the plaques to read the names of those being remembered. On the stone wall is a plaque with the history of the castle. You can see how old it is, how many times it's been destroyed and rebuilt. As you climb the hill to enter the grounds of the castle you pass through this impressive very large and very thick door. This 13th century gateway is the oldest working defensive door in situ in the UK. It was restored in 2019 using locally sourced oak to replace some missing wood. 150 new nails were forged re-using medieval wrought iron! Truly impressive. This very tall man, is Martin, our town crier in Shrewsbury. The woman to his right was taller than me. I'm 5'5, she was probably about 5'8'. Martin was well over 6 feet, closer to 7 ft. Notice the curved wood in areas? We were told you can tell if the building was built by a local carpenter by looking for curved vs straight boards. The curved wood indicates the building was built in forest after trees were felled then disassembled and brought to town and reconstructed by a local carpenter vs buildings with straight wood where logs were cut elsewhere and brought to town to build. Beautiful stained glass window. When we had our group dinners, we got a bit of selection like this while on the coach to select our meal for the evening. I'm the * and my friend has her choice underlined. One of the negatives of this tour company CIE was that all group dinners were in the hotel. I think most of us know hotels are generally known for having the best cuisine. In other tours I've taken, you generally leave the hotel and go to a nice restaurant, in order to see and experience a little more of the culture of the area. Between Jane and I, we've toured with 4 other companies. So this is one of the reasons I would not recommend this tour company and won't be using them again. Our dining area with a view of the pretty outside gardens. The Doubletree was a spa and convention area, so it was quite large. We didn't have any time to even see, let alone use any of the spa facilities. Our room for the next 2 nights. The last 3 photo's are from The Doubletree's website. There was a large outside area that was quite pretty; but we didn't get to take advantage of it, partially due to our schedule and when we arrived it was raining.
**I hope this picture heavy post works out ok, I decided not to separate the day into part I and part II.
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