Steam Dreams and Atomic Scenes

Hi there everyone 😀

We are very close now to the end of a two week break at our lodge in North Wales, which seems to have fallen in between two bouts of glorious weather … both before we came and now due for the next week … after we’ve gone home. 

Saying that … we have managed to get out and about in between the showers and explore a few new places that we’d been wanting to visit now for a while. 

It seemed very apt that we managed to fit in a hunt for the old beam engine at Dorothea Quarry within a day or so of travelling much further forward in time to go and have a look at the nuclear power station at Trawsfynydd … though I didn’t have this in my mind when choosing either visits. 

Steam Dreams …

We’ve been to Dorothea Quarry once before and had a walk part way round the main pit, where we explored the ruins of Talysarn Hall. Since then we’ve wanted to go back and try walking round in the opposite direction, with a view to finding the old beam engine. 

It actually ended up being a lovely short walk starting off from where we parked on the roadside just before the track leading to the quarry …

In no time at all we’d reached the main quarry pit …

… where we took in the view before heading down a short, but quite steep, path towards some signs of crumbling industrial activity …

At the bottom of the path we found what we’d come for and we certainly weren’t disappointed …

It was a glorious day and a lovely quiet spot …

We spent a good while just generally mooching around and getting up close and personal with the old engine house …

… before having a look round the back where we found the enormous old boilers …

It was a very thought provoking spot … just imagining what things would have been like when the quarry was in full swing … long before nature had started to reclaim that which is no longer in use … 

Having found what we came for it was time to retrace our steps back up the hill … where we stopped to take in the view before making our way back to the car …

Atomic Scenes …

Whilst we’ve been meaning to explore the nuclear power station site at Trawsfynydd for a while now we were spurred on after watching an episode of ‘Our Welsh Chapel Dream’ … so we were following Keith and Marge’s footsteps with this walk. 

We parked up in the visitors’ car park and headed across to the lake …

We followed the path alongside the lake to a bit of an information point …

… before heading for the twin reactors …

Considering where we were, apart from a constant humming in the air, it really is a beautiful and tranquil spot …

The footpath takes you right alongside the lake …

… and you can really get up close and personal to the reactors …

The footpath then skirts a woodland, avoiding a restricted area, before coming back to the lake and continuing round. We decided to retrace our steps and passed close by the distribution grid …

We made our way back to the car and headed into Trawsfynydd village, where we parked up for another wander …

This time we were heading for the opposite end of the lake and the old wooden footbridge … 

It was a lovely walk across the fields … with plenty of inquisitive eyes upon us along the way …

Whilst the footbridge is closed, with no real idea of if and when it will ever open again, we were really glad we’d found it … though it may have involved less effort looking at it from the other side …

It was time to head back and it was a bit of a slog back up the hill …

… but after a bit of a rest stop on the bench in the children’s play area we were soon back at the car. 

There was then a quick call in at The Cowshed for pasties on our way back. 

Two places that we’ve had on the list to visit for a while and both very worth the effort 😀

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A Week of Sunshine ☀️

Hi there everyone 😀

We are still in our stretch of being at home … on new grass sitting duty … and whilst we’ve not really been anywhere or done anything exciting over the last week, we do seem to have been really busy. 

We have been blessed with good weather and lots of sunshine and we have tried to make the most of it while we can …

☀️ Saturday … there was sunshine, plenty of gardening and the repotting of an agapanthus …

☀️ Sunday … more sunshine, more gardening and the grass is starting to come on well …

☀️ Monday … supermarket shopping, batch cooking and just loving the new filing system …

☀️ Tuesday … more sunshine, more gardening and a half price Easter leg of lamb in the slow cooker …

☀️ Wednesday … a busy foodbank shift and these bringing a smile to welcome me home …

☀️ Thursday … yet even more sunshine, but a break from gardening, and chance to just sit outside and chill out, looking at what we’ve planted, messing with Chat GPT, replacing the workings in the solar lights and Easter fudge …

☀️ Friday … should be a housework day but making the most of the sunshine with a bit more gardening and giving the grass its first cut since seeding …

So although we would say we’ve not done much we have actually been pretty productive. We are now on countdown to our next trip over to North Wales. We just can’t wait, though I think we will have missed the best of the weather. 

Fingers crossed the lawn doesn’t miss being pampered too much and manages to keep living its best life whilst we are away 🤞🤞🤞

☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️

Lodge Life :: March 2025

Hi there everyone 😀

It was so good to get back over to our lodge in North Wales. It had actually only been about six weeks since we were there in January … but it had been a long, wet and cold six weeks.

Our arrival for our first visit of the season is always with a bit of trepidation. So far we have had no real problems but this last year there have been some pretty extreme storms and we never really know quite what to expect.

We had a good journey over and all seemed well. We got unpacked, had a nice easy batch cooked tea and settled down for a Sunday night in front of the TV … only to find … no TV signal 🙈

This has never happened before and no amount of unplugging and replugging or resetting of the dish helped. It seemed no one else had any problems … just us. Eventually we gave it up as a bad job and opted for reading for Martin and Dancing on Ice on the phone for me.

Monday morning and we enlisted help and, after lots more plugging and unplugging and one of the site staff crawling under the lodge to see if there was any problems with cabling, we got it sorted. To this day we don’t know what the problem was … probably just us not knowing what we were doing 🙈

So … TV sorted and it was time to head off to the new local Aldi for a bit of a shop to keep us fed. Other than that we didn’t do much else on Monday.

Tuesday ended up being a bit of a write off too as Martin had been up most of the night with some kind of nasty bug so we had a very quiet day. I spent most of it preparing to be interviewed in my capacity as a school governor by Ofsted the following morning

Wednesday and the sun was shining and Martin was feeling nearly human again so, after the Ofsted interview, which actually wasn’t too bad, we decided to try and have a bit of a short walk. We headed just up the coast to Trefor, one of our favourite spots for a little bit of a wander … 

From there we headed to Nant Gwrtheyrn for a cuppa and another short wander … before calling it a day …

Thursday was another lovely day and we had an afternoon tea booked at Caffi Largo in Pwllheli … but first we headed into Criccieth to see all the usual sights …

On the way from Criccieth to Pwllheli we made an impromptu stop at Abererch Sands. It’s somewhere I went on a family camping holiday when I was younger and have never been back since.

I could remember the camping field and the tiny railway station …

We didn’t stop long … just had a look at the beach, which was lovely. Definitely somewhere we will come back to …

Finally it was time for our afternoon tea and to say it was epic would be an understatement. There was loads of food and it was all very tasty …

The top layer was just a bit too much for our tummies …

… but we didn’t let it go to waste …

Friday was not quite so bright but we fancied another little walk. This time we parked part way along the beach front at Dinas Dinlle and had a breezy walk …

We were heading for the airport cafe and we were chuffed to bits to finally get to see a bit of airport activity …

Saturday was our last full day and it was another bright sunshiny day. We decided to head for Aber Falls, with the view of just really sussing out the parking arrangements in readiness for a future visit.

In the end it took a while to get to the car park, which is down a single track road, and after lots of reversing, and there being just one available space, we decided to park up and have a bit of a walk.

It was a bit further than we would normally walk and we weren’t sure we would make it to the waterfall but with plenty of pitstops along the way we were really pleased to make it all the way … and it was very much worth it …

On Sunday we were heading for home and we decided to stop off in Llangollen on the way. I really wanted to have a wander by the river and it was such a lovely day it seemed like the ideal opportunity  

It was pretty busy but we managed to park up ok and got to have our wander, which was lovely …

This time we also managed to have a closer look at the steam railway station on the other side of the river …

There was just one more thing I wanted to see in Llangollen before continuing with our journey home … the crocuses at Plas Newydd … so we had a very quick stop off there too …

It is a lovely spot. We were just sorry that we were a week too early in the season for the cafe to be open as we’d both been looking forward to an ice cream 🙈

It was finally time to make our way home … where a good stretch of gardening was on the cards 😀

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