So we were off on a short, four day holiday – to do a little of North Wales, Snowdon, then a couple of days in Liverpool.
Started earlyish on the Thurs, just after “rush hour”, and the going was painful. Travelling up through Abergavenny is never the easiest – but there were a lot of of slow movers, and we had forgotton the Royal Welsh was on in Builth, so that slowed us to. Our TomTom also seems to have gone mental, and she took us down some wild and wonderful roads, when staying on the main would have been better – but after many hours we made it to Portmierion.
This is a place, which was built some time back by a guy who wanted to see if he could build a nice village – with Mediterranean influences in North Wales – well, he succeeded.
It is now just holiday homes, and hotel rooms – but of course there are one or two tourists wandering around, its about a tenner a head, and there was free parking on site – we came and wandered. Although the day was not great, the sun was sort of out, and the wind was windy, we mooched around the coast line, then had a wee dram in the hotel. UP the hill to the “cafe” we had some reasonably decent grub at a reasonably decent price, and Kate had an ice cream which was again pretty reasonable. Its good to see places which dont charge too much. We went to catch the land train, but it was packed, so we spent the next half hour having a look at the square and buying some prints. Went back and missed the train again! It seems people were queuing for the next train, as the one was leaving – so we gave up and walked it instead – which was nice.
It wasn’t far to walk, and the run was good, we did the circuit and then had seen all there was to see – so we headed out. It is a shame that “villages” like this cannot be built normally – but I guess without the tourist dollar they would be too expensive to maintain – but on the face of it there doesn’t seem to be any reason why something like this couldn’t be a normal place..
Up the road to Caernarfon, and after some faffing with the car park, we checked in. Room was reasonable, but we unpacked and chilled for a short while, then off to see a little bit of the town. As time was getting on we walked thought and went to the Castell which was a very weird place, it has such a selection of punters, from young families to alcoholics – slightly scary in places, some dudes arrived and were drinking things like a WKD with a Carlsburg top – and seemingly quite abusive, but we found a decent table and had a couple.
Next stop was the Black Boy Inn, which seems to have the best reputation in town. They don’t take bookings after 6, so we get a buzzer thing, and go and have a drink in the bar, then when a table is free they buzz you and you go into the restaurant. This works well, and we manage to find a nice little table to wait. After about half hour we were shown through – great starters and main course – not perfect but very good all the same. After nosh it was time to head back and check the weather for he 50th time to see what would await us on Snowdon.