Completing the Circle

Sorry for the delay in updating news of our arrival in UK but we made it on schedule on Thursday. The transfer on to the Heathrow to Manchester flight was an interesting challenge as a human error somewhere in the system resulted in us having to buy two new tickets to Manchester - but luckily that had two left and we got to Manchester on time to be welcomed by a couple of familiar faces (cousin Lynda and her husband Andy). We managed to keep our eyes open until about 9.30pm that night then crashed until around 4am next morning. We have now pretty much caught up with our "retarded clocks" and spent a day exploring Manchester on Friday and had an excursion to North Wales yesterday (Saturday).

Friday we visited the house I spent my first 6+ years in and spoke with the current resident (who was surprised and interested but not overly welcoming, so my tentative thoughts about taking a quick peek inside were not to be). I walked in the park I remembered as a kid and had a nosey around the outside of the 300 year old church we used to go to - it still looks like a church but is now supported accommodation for people with various disabilities.

We also explored Lyme Park (a 1400 acre estate where they filmed Pride and Prejudice - Pemberley??) and that was quite impressive.

We then visited the village of Mellor (my name was everywhere) and went up to have a look at Mellor church.

Llandudno was our destination on Saturday where some of our family holidays used to be. We did a walk around the Great Orme (Y Gogarth) which took a couple of hours, had a short while on the pier (much the same as 50 years ago), watched the pony rides on the beach and briefly watched a Punch and Judy show on the promenade. The quaint buildings remain with only a few modernisations visible.

We then drove over to Conwy. There were lots of people there as it turned out to be the first day of the Conwy River Festival. We looked inside the "one-up-one-down" Smallest House in Great Britain tucked into the town's wall. It cost a pound to look around and took about 30 seconds but hey, where else can you see 16th Century architecture in close association with 12 Century architecture introduced by a woman in traditional Welsh Dress who could have been 18th Century herself. The Welsh language is very interesting and luckily for us the signs were in both English and Welsh or I am not sure that we would have been able to translate anything!

David and Glenda