Lodge Life ... August 2022

Hi there everyone 😀

Today I've got a bit of an update for you on what we got up to at The Lodge back in August. It was a really busy month for us, spending the first week with the rest of the family in Bude in Cornwall.

We'd only been at home for a week before we headed over to North Wales for a week, hoping for some of the hot weather and sunshine we'd had whilst in Bude and back at home. I was desperate to get to have a dip in the pool.

It was a lovely drive over through the mountains, no traffic, and the heather was in full bloom ...

It was so lovely to be back and to find that the pond that the gardeners had been building over the summer was now fully complete. We had a bit of a shock once the sun went down, and the lights came on though, as some of the lamps were shining straight through our patio doors and were pretty bright.

I had to have a wander down to do a bit of rearranging under the cover of darkness ...

We didn't do an awful lot on our first day but we did have a ride to the Fron Goch Garden Centre, near Caernarvon, which was a real treat and had a fabulous café, where we stopped for lunch. We did ponder over buying a new table and chairs for the decking but decided we ought to measure our space first ...  as it happens it's a good job we did, as it wouldn't have fit.

We did stop on the way back to take a few photos of the mountains as it was the first time we'd seen them with the clouds so low ...

During our stay in August we managed to find a few more new places to visit ... starting with the beach at Towyn, which is well hidden from the beaten track, with parking available on a farm. We only had a quick look as it was a bit bleak on the day we visited, but it certainly looked a nice spot ...

The weather did pick up a bit later in the week and we had a lovely day out exploring Plas Cadnant, another 'new to us' garden over on Anglesey, and part of the Gardners' World 2 for 1 scheme. It was a real treat and also had another very nice café ...

It was a bit up and down in places so we were glad there were plenty of well placed benches to avail ourselves of ...

It's definitely somewhere we would visit again. We couldn't resist stopping to capture a view of the Menai Straight and the bridge on the way back ...

The last new place that we got to explore during our August visit was Porthmadog. We'd only really driven straight through before and were pleasantly surprised to find there was more to see than expected. We parked up by the harbour, which we hadn't really even realised was there before ...

It's only a short walk from the harbour to the station, where we had lunch, and managed to get lucky to see a steam train coming into the station ...

Whilst we'd been there before we had another nice day mooching around Caernarvon. We parked up by the harbour and got to see another steam train in at the station ...

... before having a wander around the harbour and the castle walls ...

On the way back we decided we would try and see if we could find our way along the coast on the opposite side of the castle and this was a lovely drive ... with some fabulous views of the castle across the water ...

We had a really relaxing week and we managed to fit in a short wander around the 'coloured houses' side of the castle in Criccieth, which is actually a lovely spot ...

We also finally managed to use the pool ... lots of times. It was so relaxing. It was always quiet, the water was warm and it was just so nice being able to just wander back to the lodge wrapped up in our towels ...

On our way home I was really hoping to be able to take more photos of the heather but luck was not on our side ...

It will definitely be on the calendar for next year 💜💜💜

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