Trip to Caerphilly Castle

Once we'd recovered from our journey to Wales and gotten our second Christmas out of the way, we decided that it was time to go exploring. My one request for the week had been to visit St. Fagans, everything else I left up to my Mum and her husband to select. They often go out to visit castles and gardens so they know all the good places to go.

And so on the Wednesday we took a trip to Caerphilly Castle. Our trip coincided perfectly with a school party that was also making its way around the ruins, and provided us with a little entertainment as we watching and listened to them,

Caerphilly Castle has a link to the Isle of Bute where we live as the 4th Marquis of Bute was responsible for a lot of the reconstruction work on the place. On one of the interactive displays there was a picture of the big stately home that is basically in my front garden. I may have squeed a little bit at that.

That picture up there on the left is the entrance to the Castle, which was a little bit slippy with slush from the smattering of snow we'd had in the night. It was pretty much dry all day, though very chilly. I'm used to Rothesay Castle which is teeny tiny by comparison. Caerphilly is surrounded by concentric moats and has several towers which you can climb up to check out for invading armies (or look at the nice snowy views).

There was a lot of Up at Caerphilly Castle. Up is not something I'm always good at, especially when it involves winding castle staircases. We did pretty well going up on the first one, but going down became kind of difficult, especially as my bag kept catching on the railings so I'd take a step and then find I couldn't go any further.

When we came to going up the four flights of stairs to the very top of the castle I suggested that Mr Click might like to hang around down at the bottom. I knew that it was way too much Up for him. It was nearly too much for me. But I did it, even if I couldn't bring myself to go too close to the edge of the top.

I also treated myself to one of the only souvenirs I bought on the trip. After solemnly telling myself that I wasn't going to come home with lots of cuddly toys, I bought myself a cute little red dragon from the gift shop (an absolute bargain since my Mum used her discount card for me). Technically he's a Beanie Baby called Legend, but he's been renamed Ffili, as in Caerffili Castle.

We'd packed a picnic lunch to take with us but as it was a bit chilly at Caerphilly we ended up taking our picnic lunch to my Nanny's house. I did come away from there with another souvenir of my trip away; a massive bag of books which I'm yet to get organised on my bookcase.

And then it was off to the cinema. Just another busy day in Wales!