Wales, Castles and Fireside Fun

We've had some adventures the last few days.

Obviously, I am not sharing every single picture with you because that would just take too much time right now with my tiny little HP Notebook. We'll see what we can upload when we get home :)

So, here's some tidbits.

We stopped in a sweet town called Hereferd (hair-a-ferd) and I happened on my favorite store. They have one here too...


It's TK instead of TJ here, but it's still wonderful.

Then off to Wales. We visited a town called Hay On Wye (Hay on Why). It's half in England and half in Wales. The man who established the town emancipated himself from both countries and became his own kingdom for a time. This town is the largest used book location in the world, most all of the 40 stores are full of used/antique books including a cinema that has at least 100,000 books.

Here's some fun signs we found on our walk around town...





(doesn't she look pitiful..at any time)

Today we went to Ludlow to visit Ludlow Castle and the surrounding area. This was the view on the way in



Entrance into Ludlow Castle... It's the 50th anniversary of their Shakespeare Festival. It's staged outside within the castle walls.



It's a medieval castle, so no windows just stone structure...



On our way back to the manor, we ran into some car trouble. While we were riding along a buzzer started to sound on Nigel's (our driver's) dashboard. We smelled something like burning tires, we turned around in our seats to see a big cloud of smoke coming in the cab of the bus.

Nigel got us to the side of the road and we calmly got out of the coach (bus)...



And then we heard popping of tires and windows breaking and flames coming out like crazy.

Some how our coach was on fire.

All of us got out just fine, but not all our belongings. The most important things like our passports, money and cameras made it just fine.

A few members had teddy bears etc on and they didn't make it :(





The police and fire were quick and helpful. We felt really sorry for the fire crew as they do not have as many fire hydrants as we do, so they kept having to drive a distance and load up on water and then drive back. I'd hate to have a house on fire over here.

The coach (bus) system over here is extremely efficient and as soon as our friend Nigel came off the bus he made a call and we had another bus within the hour.

That's pretty great :)

All in all it's just fine, everyone is safe and healthy and everyone is in good spirits.