Welcome to our little home on the net. We are Steve & Rosemary and live in Buckinghamshire, UK. This is a blog of our life, sometimes interesting, but mainly boring. It is very picture orientated as Steve loves to take pictures, especially of wildlife. Sometimes he has his arm twisted by Rosemary and takes the odd snap of a weed.
Portmeirion Number 5
18th November 2022
Our final breakfast at 9.00, and then packed up and the porter ordered, to take our bags back to the car. We had timed this to the T. The weather is now typical wet Welsh weather, pouring with rain. It rained until we were out of Wales. We had planned to stop on the route but decided not to. The inclement weather making it unattractive. The car behaved, and we made it home with plenty of electrons in the battery. A lovely break.
Tomorrow we are off to Cambridge for a Gonville and Caius Feast.
Portmeirion Number 4
17th November 2022
Our final day here in the village. A walk around the village and up to Castell Deudraeth and back. Visited areas of the village we had not looked at this week. Today we saw a couple of humans swimming in front of the hotel against the incoming tide. A bit chilly I would speculate, rather them than me. Tonight, I put the car on charge around teatime and watched some more episodes from The Prisoner over our G&Ts. 7pm soon came around so we decamped to the hotel, but this time for the tasting menu. Very good meal. It had two options, meat, and vegetarian. In the main, most of the courses were the same, except when there was meat for which a veggie alternative was served. I had meat, and Rosemary had the vegetarian, which included fish courses. We also added an excellent cheese course to the meal.
After dinner, the car was Fully Charged, so it was unplugged ready for the morning. We were stuffed.
Portmeirion Number 3
16th November 2022
Another wonderful day, how wrong were the weather forecasts from a week ago. I rushed out before breakfast to take a few pictures during the golden hour. Back in plenty of time for our breakfast at nine. The breakfasts are excellent, a good Welsh/English breakfast, plenty of cereals. juices, pastries, and cooked fish delicacies. R made a mistake (for me) asking for Gluten Free toast for us both. So, my Welsh breakfast arrived without the fried bread, toast, sausage, and black pudding. A bit disappointing. This mistake was not repeated by R.
After breakfast we had our Wednesday Zoom call with the SadGits. We sat outside the hotel in the bright blue sky chatting to our friends across the world. I think we set a trend, when we left there were many others ordering cakes and coffee (not that I was allowed any cake).
Today we walked around the Chinese Lake, admiring the trees and reflections. We also visited the new motor-home camping spot which Portmeirion has built. It was very nice. All pitches have hedges delineating them. All pitches have power. There is even a charger for those coming in an electric camper. It is the price which would put us off. The price does include entry to the village, so maybe they are expecting people to stay only a couple of nights.
Again, we had some G&Ts back in our suite, while watching yet another episode of The Prisoner. At 7 we headed over for our supper.
Portmeirion Number 2
15th November 2022
Today was predicted to be a lovely day, so we decided to walk to the furthest point of the woods. We often walk to a bench here and feed a Robin which appears to accompany us through the whole walk. Actually, it is highly likely to be several different Robins who follow for short distances. Due to a miscommunication with R, we headed along the coast path which goes through the Ghost Wood, and then up some steep paths. The path was also very overgrown and not clear. The guidebook we had showed the path but had some lines through the path. Examination indicated the path was closed. We made the bench, going beyond it to where R had not ventured for a long time. No Robin, so no one to share lunch with. There were Oyster Catchers feeding on the sand banks where the tide was coming in. They are very noisy.
The walk back was simpler, taking the route R had wanted, along the stone wall. We were soon back to civilisation.
Back at base for G&Ts, then supper at 7.00, this time a different menu.
Portmeirion Number 1
14th November 2022
We were whisked to Portmeirion, the filming location for the TV series The Prisoner, by our stealthy electric car. We had a loo break at a service station on the M54, lovely industrial heritage steam hammer on display in the carpark, next to the Tesla charging station. We continued, stopping again at Oswestry to charge. Not strictly required, because the car was easily capable of getting to Portmeirion. I was unsure of the charging arrangements at our destination, we had not spotted them on a previous visit last year. At Owestry, R visited a charity shop, while I had a coffee at Costa. Back to the car and we set off for the rest of the journey. Not impressed by the charging speed of the InstaVolt in the carpark. It had been slow.
We arrived and checked in at Castell Deudraeth. The check-in was different to the previous years. Portmeirion had decided to try and make the village car free, asking us to check-in outside the village, then park in the residents’ car park, and have us and our luggage transferred by electric vehicle to our village room. This all went swimmingly well, and we were soon in our room. We stayed four nights in the Anchor 2 Suite.
I need not have worried about car charging. The residents’ car park had more than 8 chargers available. They were all 7KWHr chargers, the slow chargers were not an issue because we would only take 7 hours to charge, and we were here for 4 days.
The weather forecast for Portmeirion was dire, but other than a shower (see the rainbow pictures), there was clear sky for the four days.
Our suite was a couple of rooms, nice and warm. We brought some tonics and gin and had a pre-prandial drink before dinner at 7.00pm. One issue with the suite was the squeaky floorboards, our floorboards were not an issue to us, but must have been to the resident below. We were constantly reminded there was someone else above us, their floorboards were constantly squeaking.
We had an excellent meal in the hotel. There appear to be two evening menus. They switch the menu each night. Nice conversations with the two couples on either side of us.
After supper I took the opportunity to do some night-time photography of the village.
