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Our Wales holiday

We're just back from a week in a caravan in Wales. Early May seemed like a fairly safe bet in terms of weather ... but the British weather is not to be trusted!

Fred made himself comfortable straight away... we didn't realise at first quite how cold it would get! From the second night onwards, we dragged all the mattresses into the lounge and huddled together there.

Off to our first adventure!

A day out: Pembrey Country Park

Ants!

Fred loving his place in the sun

Found some sort of bug on the ground...

Big hedgehog

Back at the caravan site - ball game fun to finish the day

Castle Laugharne visit

An extremely changeable day - we had periods of gorgeous sunshine, then sudden cold and pouring rain... this is the castle where Dylan Thomas, the poet, did a lot of his writing and we enjoyed walking around the castle ruins. Afterwards, time for ice cream (in the car, too cold to be outside!)






What a view!

Treasure hunt - we ended up not finding two of the clues, which bothered D(4) all day!

What a gnarly tree!

Just outside the castle - a bit of sunshine in between the rains.




Cold dog had enough of being out in the rain

A Sunday afternoon outing


Didn't take many pictures, but D(4) loved this real tractor to sit on!

Bank Holiday

I guess if you count on anything with the British weather, it's that on a bank holiday it'll be atrocious. This one certainly delivered. The entire day it was raining like buckets, together with torrential winds: we could feel the caravan's walls shaking! So we dreamed of sunny days and painted what we'd like to see.


Picture by N(6): Left - our caravan; middle - a ferry boat

Picture by D(4) - a sunny meadow with lots of balls to play with

Dreaming of being able to go outside...

As Fred still had to do his business, they did have to go out for that - getting dressed took about 10 minutes, actually being outside: under 1 minute!

Beach Day! Saundersfoot

Ever since Christmas, the kids have been dreaming of going bodyboarding. We've been buying several used wetsuits in a quest to find one for each child that fits.... got there in the end, and this was the big day. The bodyboards got their virgin outings! Unfortunately, because it was so cold, it took the kids about five minutes to decide they wanted to try this later in the summer. So we just spent time checking out the rockpools, jellyfish, and whatever interesting pieces the sand offered. A lovely day in the end, despite the occasional downpour and low temperature.

The surfers going out



Jellyfish! (Dead) - notice how D(4) sensibly kept his distance whereas N(6) had a good look close up

Creating rock formations

And of course, at the end of all the adventures, there had to be ice cream. Bliss!

Kidwelly Castle

This was our "local" castle at this stay, our caravan park was less than 10 minutes away from this. Much more intact than Laugharne, and as it was mid-week we had the entire place to ourselves! We took our time looking around, although N(6) was really dubious about entering any dark spaces, and was quite keen to get out again. Possibly partly due to being cold again, as well.





Walking high up




Saying Goodbye

The evening before departure, we visited our caravan park's own beach for the first time. It was bracing, cold and windy, but the kids had a bit of fun for a while making seashells float (to America!)




The recurring theme of the cold will probably be our overriding memory of this holiday - along with the Caravan itself, where we ended up having to pay lots of unexpected extra money for various reasons. If we do this kind of holiday again (and that's an IF!) then we'll book through a major company like Haven, rather than renting through AirBnB from someone who happens to own a caravan in a caravan park. Things learned.

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