Second day in a row without rain - another lovely day.
The Hydro hotel really wasn't all that good, and I was fairly pleased to be gone. This is a picture of it, and the inside pretty much matches the outside - old and tired and from another time:
Lots of driving today, and not a lot of photos. Our main stop was at Ludlow, where there are ruins of a castle that's supposed to be spectacular - unfortunately it was closed today which is pretty much unheard of. Just our luck :-)
The streets of Ludlow are astounding - the driver took the coach through some places where I'd swear there was only inches between the coach and the buildings on both sides. No photos unfortunately; I was too busy planning what we'd do when the coach knocked the buildings down, but it didn't of course. Here's a couple of shots in an around the town, including some of their beautiful parish church:
The only incongruous thing about Ludlow was the local public toilets. Unlike a lot of other places they aren't pay toilets (have already learned to always carry a 20p coin!) but they're beyond scary. You walk in and sit down and a disembodied voice comes over a loud-speaker, telling you that the toilets are security controlled and that you'll only be allowed a limited time. The dispensing of soap and water to wash your hands, and then the air-blower to dry them, also happen automatically. Scary.
Ludlow is a 'new' town - it came into being as a town around a Norman camp not long after the 1066 invasion. Apparently that makes it new :-) We saw a sign on a hotel in Ludlow that said that there had been a hotel at that location since at least the 1500's, and that it had been a staging post for carriages for some time. In the 1800's, it took 27 hours to get by carriage from Ludlow to London. Puts our 28 hours from Canberra to Manchester into perspective!
After lunch in Ludlow, we drove to Cardiff - we dozed for a lot of the way, along with quite a few others!
Once we got to Cardiff we booked into our hotel for the night - the Radisson Blu. You couldn't imagine a bigger contrast with last night's hotel. This one was clearly purpose built as a hotel and it has all sorts of interesting mod-con features. There are power and light switches in sensible places, a really useful ledge specifically designed for suitcases - two of them, not the one that most hotels cater for. It's just excellent in all respects so far. And the astounding thing is that according to their website, the room we're in, including breakfast, would cost £89, which is £1 less than the price of that very ordinary room at the Hydro.
Not much happening tonight - the tour has an optional excursion to see a show at Cardiff Castle but you don't get to actually see the castle, and we decided not to go. Instead we went across the road to a big shopping centre which had a choice of at least 10 different restaurants - we had the most delicious French food.
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