Wales for the day

For a complete change of pace we have hired a car and are whizzing around the south-west of England using Bristol as a base. So for a day trip we went off to Wales. This was mostly to visit the second hand book shop town of Hay-on-Wye but managed some other interesting stop-overs (the joys of having your own car)
First stop Chepstow Castle - always good to take young lads to an old castle to give them an idea of scale and allow Ciaran to imagine exactly how and where he would drop boiling oil on the enemy.
Then the lovely ruined site of Tintern Abbey - a place for whimsical musings and swanning around in the manner of a romantic poet (it looked pretty good even to those of us without a poetic bone in our bodies).
And after visitng the book town we went to the south coast of Wales to visit Mhairi's cousin (Mhairi in hat, cousin Helen at left) to go to what apparently passes for a swimming beach in this part of the world. The cold breeze rolling off the Bristol channel while dipping your toes into icy water almost made us feel homesick for Otago beaches (but it's only like that in mid-winter back home of course)