Tales of the unexpected with The Boy, my pride and joy.
Family time over Christmas is so important, and with time being such a precious commodity in modern life it can be hard to fit in the special events and occasions which make memories.
We were recently invited to spend a weekend at Bluestone National Park Resort in west Wales in order to enjoy their Christmas extravaganza of the Kingdom of the Elves, and it was without a doubt the perfect thing to start off our celebrations over the festive season.
At around lunchtime this Saturday, the sun started to break through the clouds and the temperature rose to a balmy 5°C. This could only mean one thing: pack a picnic and time to turn into explorers!
Wales is famed for its castles and we're very lucky that we've got a good selection near us. We've taken The Boy to Castell Coch (where we got married) and to Cardiff Castle, both of which he loved. However, neither are ruined enough to really go clambering on. As a result we headed over to Caerphilly Castle, which is somewhere that I only went to a few times as a child.
Built in the 13th Century by Gilbert de Clare (Lord of Glamorgan), Caerphilly Castle is the second largest castle in Britain after Windsor Castle. History websites inform me that it is 'a double-skinned fortress surrounded by large-scale water defenses', i.e. it's got an inner and an outer moat, with lakes on two sides as well. It's also the first castle in Britain to have been built with the concentric ring system, changing the basic template of future castles.
However, the most intriguing bit about Caerphilly Castle is the leaning tower.
The south-east tower is astounding. Every child in south Wales will have a photograph of them trying to push the tower back up to vertical. It was during the Civil War that the damage to the tower happened, which means that it leans at 10° (greater than the Leaning Tower of Pisa) with the most gigantic crack, wide enough for The Boy to stand in!
The greatness of Caerphilly Castle is marred by the fact that it was never able to fulfill it's destiny as a large castle or fortress. The threat of invasion (which had seen its building) passed quickly, and it had one last fleeting chance at being an active castle in the 14th Century. Then it fell to ruin until the Bute family acquired it in 1776, the third and fourth Marquesses cleared and restored it in the 19th century and the lakes were flooded by the state in the 1950s.
What it's meant is that there are a plethora of ruined walls, towers and spiral staircases to explore. And even better is that CADW (the organisation in charge of maintaining it) hasn't roped every section off, allowing for little children to practise their knightly deeds and to defend the honour of south Wales!
The castle is full of passages in the thick walls, spiral staircases, great halls and doorways to scamper through, as well as the most phenomenal view over the town and beyond into the Rhymney Valley. It's a definite site for visitors to the area, and I think this was the first of many explorations!
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55. 'Hello! Anyone there?' (We went exploring in the woods and had a great time squelching through the mud and finding our echo.)
56. 'Spiderman' (This cargo net is always the first thing he heads for in a local park, it's a bit of an ongoing challenge for him as it is designed for infants and juniors, having different size nets as well as different sized ladders. He likes to measure his progress by how easily he can get over the bigger gaps, but has yet to attempt climbing up the sail of the 'boat'.)
57. 'Can' (He's been using a Reading Eggs app called 'Tap The Cat' to practise his reading, spelling and writing, and under my site's host's recommendation I bought this pen for him to use with the iPad. He's finding it so much easier to overwrite and it's better than finger tracing for the development of his writing skills.)
58. 'New teeth' (He finally got stuck into the chocolate Gruffalo we bought him for Christmas and relished eating various parts of him to make him less scary!)
59. 'Underwater lights' (Kara from Innocent Charmer recently recommended this underwater bath light to me, which arrived this week, and has brought a whole new level of fun to bathtime!)
60. 'National Pride' (St. David's Day!)
61. 'Lean' (We've been exploring Caerphilly Castle today in the most gorgeous Spring sunshine, and in one half of this photograph you can see the leaning south east tower of the castle. More on that in this weekend's Country Kids post.)
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It's been a few weeks since I've entered Tara's Gallery, unintentional but life has a habit of passing you by sometimes, to use the wise words of Mr. Bueller. However, when I saw that this week's theme was Easter, I couldn't very well ignore it much longer.
We went away for the weekend and so I needed to make sure that we had everything ready so that the Easter Bunny could find us and leave the necessary confectionary for The Boy. After a fraught Friday morning packing up various bits and pieces, we popped down to our local country park for my toddler group's Easter Egg hunt. The weather was perfect for wandering through the woodlands, finding shiny red eggs and avoiding bunny poop, and it refreshed us wonderfully for the drive down to west Wales.
The weekend saw us searching for numbers, as well as Easter chicks on a treasure hunt through the woodland. We went swimming in one of the best waterparks I've seen in a while, even if The Boy was 10cm too short for the waterslides. The Easter Bunny managed to find us, and then have a cuddle with Oliver Monkey in The Boy's bed. We discovered that The Boy had a penchant for vintage motorcars, saw pigs and newborn lambs, dug for buried treasure and ate more chocolate. And then we thanked the Lord for Charley Bear and Jaffa cakes when we got stuck in traffic in the pouring rain on the M4.
[slickr-flickr tag='Easter2012']
All in all, a fairly decent Easter weekend.
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For more Easter weekends, click on the widgets below:
Continuing my theme of flying the Welsh flag (Manic Street Preachers a few weeks ago, it'll be Catatonia, Duffy and Martin Joseph next!) I am choosing one of my favourite 'Cool Cymru' bands to listen to. They are especially good on a sunny Spring or Summer day, with the windows down and when everything is right with the world!
The Stereophonics really remind me of being in university and discovering my identity as a young adult. I did my teaching degree in Newport and there were quite a few people either from Cwmamon (the 'Phonics home-town) or a nearby village. There was a real sense of local pride in the local boys that were 'doing good'.
The music that they released in their first few albums is my preference, although I'm partial to any of it; I adore Kelly Jones' husky and soulful voice. What was surprising about their debut album, Word Gets Around, was that although it instantly charted at number six, the three main songs from it that are now probably some of their most famous failed to reach the top twenty in the charts: Local Boy in the Photograph, More Life in a Tramps Vest and A Thousand Trees. The 'Phonics became more popular and successful in the charts with the release of Performance and Cocktails, and its raucous The Bartender and the Thief. As far as I am aware, their only number one has been 2005's Dakota.
I've seen them in a number of venues, the last time was in Cardiff, and I'll confess to thinking that Kelly Jones looked like he'd sold out. We didn't stay for the encore, both feeling a little disappointed. I've wiped it from my mind really, preferring to remember them in their prime of the early 2000s.
On that note, I shall leave you with my personal favourite:
