Saturday September 7

We left Llandudno this morning to take in the castle at Comwy, just a few miles away, and it was not a disappointment. Comwy is a medieval town entirely within the crumbling walls of the castle, and it was simple to understand the hard life of a soldier many hundreds of years ago. This castle was built between 1283 and 1287.

The sea from the castle wall

The day was dreary and chilly, so it was also easy to envision living then, never being dry or warm or safe. Looking out over a rampart, we could imagine an armada approaching the land below. Hard to decide whether it would be better to be killed by a cannon shot from the castle or in hand-to-hand combat on the slippery stones of the castle walls. No great choice.

View out a "murder hole"

Steve mentioned the speed at which the tide was going out, so I took a shot of a boat at anchor with a distinctive wave of an ebbing tide at its bow.

Receding Tide

When we left Comwy, we were off to Stratford-upon-Avon for a night before driving into London on Sunday. The drive was long but not bad, but we arrived at our very nice destination to find that booking.com had done us wrong. Ettington Chase had been booked for weeks, and there was no room in the inn. (We tried not to get into camera range for a wedding party just arriving for their reception. Not sure we were successful.) After a bit of his fault/her fault back and forth, we were sent off to a Holiday Inn Express not too far away, in Warwick, where we stayed in a new hotel with zero charm.

But we ate at a place across the parking lot (The Porridge Pot) where the potato soup was wonderful and the Eton Mess was majestically decadent. And so to bed.

Tomorrow...London.

Walked 8863 steps today, 4.5 miles.