Transit time from Australia to Bristol via Dubai and Heathrow, courtesy of Metrotrains, Skybus, Qantas and National Express was around 32 hours including all transfers. While Danielle had been around here for a week visiting Ben, I spent only spent two nights in Clifton. Nearby attractions include Cabot Tower, SS Great Britain, and the Brunel Suspension Bridge.

houses in Clifton, Bristol

Bristol panorama from Cabot Tower.

Ducks, in the water labyrinth beneath Cabot Tower

Strawberry clover, beneath Cabot Tower

Meadow inspection, beneath Cabot Tower

Brunel Suspension Bridge.

Bristol Railway Station Art Installation – Aluminium on Brick

Bristol Railway Station – Art Installation. We are becoming digitised?

Today brought us through wonderful Welsh countryside to Llangollen. The river Dee rushes past the old corn mill, now a pub, and steam trains run on the other side of the river.

The pub celebrates the history of trap shooting.

Today we’ve arrived in Chirk. Transferring train at Newport was like arriving in a foreign european country – not the mother country like Bristol. All the station signs were bilingual. The train through the Welsh country side was lovely. On arrival at Chirk, we walked across to the hotel, puzzling about the sweet smell in the air. Turns out that a chocolate factory opened here around 1967, as we found later from a local.

The Hand Hotel, Chirk (pictured), four centuries old, was owned by the local Myddleton family until 1911. The Myddleton’s had also owned the local castle (constructed in Norman times) since the 1600s.

After eating lunch at The Hand and then checking in, we checked out where to buy provisions in the morning (including the butcher’s 6 varieties of bacon), and then started a walk up the hill to the castle. The walk through meadows and farm land was lovely.

The castle is now owned or long term leased by the National Trust, but one wing is still inhabited by the Myddleton family. The surrounding farming operation seemed to have been outsourced / agisted over the past century. The bus driver for the national trust shuttle to the car park kindly gave us a lift home at the end of the day. He told us how his grandparents and father had worked on the estate most of the 1900s.

Strangely, given I work close to where this was taken, I haven’t stopped to take notice of this side of Docklands before at dusk.

I’m excited to be finished work and to be going to join Danielle today. Not quite Brighton in the UK yet. Soon though. Well at least somewhere in the general vicinity.

Brighton Beach stop on the Sandringham line.

We will be posting to our travel blog once again, at least I will be; Danielle has not contributed much in the past week. She has been seeing her brother in Bristol, this past week, ahead of me.