Aberystwyth mon amour

While in Wales we spent a day cruising the lovely sites of the coastal town of Aberystwyth. This basically consisted of wandering through the ruins of Aberystwyth castle and looking for sweet fridge magnets. The weather, despite being kind of windy, was spectacular and hopefully you can get a general sense of this from Mike’s hack-job photography. The stones sticking out of the ground in the header image are similar to those found at Stonehenge and Avesbury. Everyone should have large stones randomly sticking out of the ground. For the kids, of course.

Bore da Cymru!

We left Shrewsbury and travelled to Aberystwyth by train and then on to Lampeter by bus. Tiff’s friends at the University reception desk had us each hooked up in our own little en suites on campus. Lampeter is a lovely little town about an hour away from Aberystwyth and the coast (unless you take the scenic 585 service which pretty much travels the Lampeter/Aber route via Inverness and Moscow). For the next few days we pretty much just took it easy – not that it was really an option in the little village – hiking around the hills, strolling through the sprawling city landscape, etc. It was nice to relax a bit after spending so much time worrying about catching the next train or bus to wherever.

One of the highlights was watching mom while we were riding the bus through the country. In (many) places the road narrows down to nothing more than the exact width of a vehicle, with large hedgerows and trees scraping the sides of the bus. One would wonder (not for the first time) what might happen if we are blazing along at the standard UK bus speed of 88.8 mph and meet an oncoming vehicle (most likely a tractor pulling a large trailer of sheep… there’s a pun in there somewhere). Well, we can tell you that this situation would then provoke a polite little standoff, where the driver of each vehicle is positive that the other is nearer the last turnout. The most exciting bit is when the road widens just enough (six and a half feet rather than the standard six) that both the driver of the bus and the driver of the oncoming 2005 Audi S8 think that there is room for both of them to pass side by side. This is the part when it’s best to see what kind of face mom is making (probably the same expression that people were giving the CADMAN). It gets really disconcerting when you see the bus driver shake his head and actually check his wing mirror to see if the Audi made it. Let the good times roll!
Wales was beautiful. The word is: Green.

Shrewsbury for a day, a night, and a day

From Edinburgh we stopped over in Shrewsbury for a night. If you make it to Shrewsbury, I recommend the Shalimar for a wonderful Indian meal; the food is excellent, the staff is wonderful and, if you get there early, you can sit next to the window with a pretty sweet view of the Abbey just across the street. We also wandered through a church that had the monument for the soldiers of the 85th King’s Light Infantry who died in Afghanistan between 1879-80. This is somewhat interesting because it was the 85th infantry from Shrewsbury that burned the White House down during the War of 1812. On the outside of the church was also a little monument to the CADMAN. I’m not sure which stream he’s ‘flying’ to or what kind of shape he was in, but either way, no one on this planet was going to make that jump.

Chocolate

We interrupt the regularly scheduled travel log for a brief but self-indulging advert about the virtues of chocolate. Feel free to stand up and stretch your legs, go to the loo, fetch a snack, etc.

-m

Our hasty conquering of Edinburgh

The short time we spent in Scotland (Edinburgh, two nights) was just enough to confirm all of the heinous weather reports we hear (minus the ‘blizzard-like conditions’) on the radio and, at the same time, give us an excuse to do a more thorough tour later. Upon the reference of the lively Scottish fella in the castle queue, this later tour will most definitely include a visit to Sterling.
The wind was blowing like mad pretty much the whole time, which made for some really interesting pictures, and drove us from the castle after only a couple of hours. It made me wonder (not for the first time) why anyone would want to sack that place (not just the first time) if the weather is always so rubbish. But, then I would turn around and look out over the city and think, ‘That. Is. Beautiful.’ Then, with all political/historical contexts and reasons aside, I would wish to sack the place myself.
Wonderful place. Thumbs up.

Edinburgh

We made it to Edinburgh without too much hassle (only one train cancelled on us). We toured the Castle and walked the Royal Mile, diligently buying fudge and fridge magnets along the way. What to say about the castle? 'It's big', 'It's on a cliff'. Really, it was extremely cool. We'll post some pictures when we get back to Norwich. In the process we toured through St. Giles Cathedral, which unfortunately was all decked out with scaffolding as they refurbish the front of the building and part of the nave. It was still sweet.

** Obligatory BBC-esque Weather Report**
When we got here the weather was not so Scottish (it was sunny and quite warm with little wind). The next day, it was blowy, cloudy and damp, with a bit of sun to freak us out (now there's the Scottish weather that I always here about on Radio 2!). Basically, the weather up here is like English weather on crack.
Bye.

...To be brief...

Since the arrival of the Smith Clan on the 1st, we have been pretty busy.  We managed to see a few National Trust/English Heritage sites, as well as stroll through the cool stuff here in Norwich (Castle, Cathedral, 15th century churches, etc.).  On Friday, we went to London to see Jen off and the rest of us made the condensed, Reader’s Digest day tour to see the art galleries, Houses of Parliament/Big Ben, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, etc.  We will post pictures of this when we get a chance.  
This coming Monday, we are off to Edinburgh for a few days, then to Shrewsbury and Wales.  On the way back, we hope to make a stop off in Ely and check out the cathedral there too.  We will post if we get a chance along the way.

Another Scan

Heidi had another scan today and everything seems to be going along fine. This marks her 20^th week which also means that there are certain bits to be seen… and seen they were (this is the part that means they are boys). Needless to say, they weren’t very shy during the scan – punching and jabbing each other, little bits swinging and swaying in the ebbs and flows of fluid… this is getting weird.

More later.

Sadly, just a technical notice about comments

Our eyes roll at the thought of boring technical posts, but as we have been perusing various blogs around, we noticed that there are a number of comments posted by random ghost people.  They often take the form of a friendly web-surfer and look something like this:

ActionDavid says:
Great blog!  I was just nowhere in your neighborhood and thought I’d drop by.  If you have time, check out my blog, skivingspammybloggers.bloghostwhatever.com.  

These are just automated adverts that set out to frustrate and make afraid.  Fortunately, the M&H blog hasn’t been hit yet (mainly, I think, because I’m not advertising it).  Unfortunately, as we don’t want it to get hit with loads of rubbishy comments, we are enabling a setting that will prevent this from happening.  From now on, when you post a comment, there will be a little verification step that you will have to make before your comment is completed and posted.  It will have some squiggly looking words and will ask you to type what you see in a little box.  

We apologise for this, but not for the mingin’ sacks who violate blogs with automated comment posts.  They should be thrust into a deep pit of teenaged boys’ post summer camp underpants and mocked heavily.

Keep posting comments!
Also, if you have any questions about all of this, feel free to post ‘em or email us.