Team Blandix: Castles and Beaches

03 June 2008

Castles and Beaches

England is truly amazing - You can go to the beach and have a 13th century castle ruin in your field of view. Over the weekend, we got to make use of my newly acquired British driving licence and took the family to the Pembrokeshire Coast in South Wales. We were invited to a wedding there. The weather was fantastic as the rain was traveling east as we were traveling west. Saturday and Sunday were amazing weather-wise. We hired a car and left on Friday morning. According to Google maps, it should take a little over 4 hours to travel from London to Manorbier. Unfortunately, Google does not take into account the hour it takes just to get out of London, plus the amount of time it takes to travel on single lane roads that have two way traffic (and hedges that are taller than the car on both sides - whee!!). We left at 11am and arrived at 9:30pm. There were the extra stops required when traveling with two babies, but we also got to stop for a long lunch with C, B and T! It was fantastic to see them and for them to finally meet The Littles in person. We stopped in a village about halfway to our destination, called Marshfield. We had toyed with the idea of meeting up in a village called Pucklechurch, mostly because I liked the name.

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny and we took the opportunity to hit the beach. We had taken the babies to the sea when they were 6 weeks old, but they got nothing out of it then. As you can see from the pics below, Libby had a bit of fun in the sand. She even ate a huge handful which I failed to capture on film. Neither was overly impressed when we put their toes in the water, but they tolerated it. Will have to remember to bring the swim nappies next time. After a bit of a walk around and some lunch, we had a restful afternoon and then headed to the wedding in the castle ruin. The babies were fine, but Alex's cough started up, and because the wedding ceremony was held in a tiny chapel, we took them out to wander the grounds. They really enjoyed playing on the lawn. They slept through most of the reception in their car seats, although Alex did wake up for some dancing towards the end of the evening.

Sunday we got headed back to rainy London. Now we're getting set to go on another adventure to Italy at the end of this week. Good luck to us all!

Most of the pictures are from Wales, but the first two are to show how much they've grown. They don't just lie still in Daddy's arms anymore. And the movie is a riot.