It's a Sad Day When You See Only One Castle

After the hike of the day before we didn't really want to walk as much and decided to take a much needed day off. That meant more walking, just with less purpose! We boarded the train again and rode off to Abergavenny. Abergavenny Castle was about a ten minute walk from the station, but we accidentally took a very lovely detour through the Castle Meadows. The Meadows were lovely! There was green grass, flowers, benches, people walking their dogs and cow manure. The cows were off in the distance, but we could tell they had been there recently. The Castle was easy to find once we were in the Meadows. Of course it was on top of a hill because that is a strategic point, but it wasn't a very hard hill to climb, or maybe I'm just getting more fit! That would be nice!

This castle is also mostly Norman ruins except the keep on top of the motte was built in 1818 as a hunting lodge.  This site had a different fell from the others we had gone to. It is emphasized as a museum that is surrounded by a castle and not the other way around. That is just fine since I love both museums and castles. However, in this case I personally found that the museum took away from the castle and lessened my experience. I would have liked to have had more information about the castle, but I did appreciate what the museum was doing which was promoting local history and art. One thing I liked about the museum is that is talked about why the Castle was saved and how this group was/is trying to promote Welsh in the area. Local history can be very interesting! There was information about the Castle posted around outside on boards and I bought a pamphlet about the Castle, so that satisfied me in the end. There was a massacre that happened at Abergavenny Castle at Christmas, 1175.

Some links for you if you want: http://www.abergavennymuseum.co.uk, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abergavenny_Castle

Sorry, I don't have a picture of the keep because it was surrounded by scaffolding for repairs. It looked like a mini castle to me!

We then headed back to the train station.  By the time we got there is was lunch time. There was a little cafe in the station called The Whistle Stop. I think he was the owner of the shop, but there was a very nice man there who when he brought us our sandwiches asked us where we were from and what we had seen so far in Wales. When he learned we hadn't yet gone to St. Fagans National History Museum or the National Roman Legion Museum he said we should have come to see him sooner and he went and got us pamphlets for a bunch of places. We only had one more day left, so we didn't get the chance to go to any of them, but thank you mister for being so nice and making so many suggestions. If we had time I would have loved to go to the National Roman Legion Museum!

Once we arrived back in Cardiff we headed back down to Cardiff Bay again and decided to walk around it. We saw the Cardiff Bay Wetlands Reserve which was pretty inspiring. I learned that in Cardiff they have birds that migrate in during the summer and the winter! Winter birds! Who knew those existed! We then had supper at the bay again and headed back to the hotel.