Different Castle, same Beach -11th Aug ‘23

Blimin windy all day but no rain! The wind kept it fairly cool though but no complaints!

The normal holiday pattern is prevailing. Everyday we’re away we get 30 mins later leaving the campsite. Today it was gone midday before we said farewell to Brunnehilda. The main reason for this late start was Harry (and me!) sleeping in until 10.30!

We journeyed north today - about 30 miles upto Caenarfon. It was a fairly uneventful journey. I have taught Harry how to work out “how many minutes before we get there?”. He just doubles the number of miles to go shown on the trip. This way he doesn’t keep asking me every 2 minutes how long before we get there and he has a fairly accurate ETA in minutes which he proudly confirms every couple of minutes!

We parked up easily just outside the castle. Noticed today that there were a lot of European plated cars - F,D,B,NL,I&A. Glad to see it. Covid and Brexit had put people off for a couple of years but looks like they are coming back - well to Wales anyway!!

North Waleians can be quite a grumpy lot and the woman who took our money at the castle was clearly slightly miffed about something or somebody. 

Although it’s much bigger, the boys didn’t enjoy it as much as Harlech. Loads and loads of stairs and battlements but no living accommodation just defensive towers etc. it didn’t grab the boys interest as much and Harry soon got fed up with all the steep stairs! We stayed on the ground floor while Finners and Charlie explored without us. I was very aware that their Grandma would not have approved of this scenario but I tried to ignore her voice in my ear and justified the decision based on Charlie’s age and maturity. No one fell off any battlements so …

After the castle we hit the town. The boys have some holiday money to spend and we were getting hungry. As desperate as Harry was to spend his dosh, there was really nothing there. And, as usual, the twins couldn’t agree on food. There was a rather splendid deli and coffee shop that caught my eye but the others weren’t moved. Finners had set his heart on a MacDonakds - he was convinced that a Welsh MacDonalds would be considerably different to an English one! Eventually, after much searching and no consensus agreed, the other 2 came round to a MacDonalds too. I can confirm they are just the same -and the milkshake machine was broken!

Wandering around town my thoughts turned again to Kimbo. We would have had a ball poking in a lot of the wee shops and definitely would have spent a fortune and stayed a while in the deli! She would have also dealt with the boys food and money spending so much better than I did. We left Caernarfon empty handed and the taste of a very average MacDonalds in our mouths.

The Twinnies wanted to get to our beach again so straight home to Brunnehilda and back out to the sea - Charlie stayed in the van this time.

It was extremely windy and quite chilly by now but it didn’t stop us sand castle building and paddling. I was relatively pleased with my castle building efforts but the Twinnies were particular apathetic to my efforts!

We fancied a pizza for dinner but sadly I must report takeaway pizza hasn’t arrived in this part of Wales yet. We ended up back at the chippy we went to on the first night. Although Harry wanted sweet and sour chicken from the Chinese next door. We ate it overlooking the castle - although by now it was pretty cold up there!

I’m definitely on a diet when I get back home!

Tonight I was back to thrashing the kids at cards and flick football. They took it all surprisingly well - must be all those life lessons they are picking up!? Although Charlie didn’t react too well to losing to his little brother!

His 

The wind is even stronger tonight and we are expecting a day of rain tomorrow- a decision on when to go home will be made tomorrow morning!