Wednesday September 13th Chepstow Wales
Cepstow Castle
Wednesday we had a full day in and around Chepstow. First thing in the morning we visited the castle-it was in great condition considering building began in the 1100's and finished in the 1200's. It was one of the first stone castles to be built apparently. Once again there was probably only a dozen people there when we were so it was very easy to spend a few hours there.
After that we drove to the Cisterean monks 12 century Tintern Abbey ruins. It's also very imposing with lots of buildings or footings of buildings left in tact. These monks had a pretty tough life-they maintained the abbey with proceeds from the farms they worked as they couldn't except donations or tythes from the local people. They woke at 2am to start their day of work and prayers (about 8 times a day) and survived without any heating in the abbey.
Tintern Abbey
There is a lot of restoration work been done on it (the Abbey) and I'm not sure how much should be done. I decided I'm more for conservation that restoration-it makes things 'new" again and I'm not sure that's how they are meant to be.
We luched in a pub across the road where I had a great lunch of beef in beer pie, peas, chips and gravy. Good English tucker!
After lunch we took a drive through and around the beautiful forest of Dean through tiny villages along tiny hedged roads. We lamost got cleaned up by a local cop travelling way too fast on one of those roads, but he stopped, backed up and let us pass and it was OK. Once again, we had one of our quick, light cheap dinners of cold meat and salad from TESCO>
Wednesday we had a full day in and around Chepstow. First thing in the morning we visited the castle-it was in great condition considering building began in the 1100's and finished in the 1200's. It was one of the first stone castles to be built apparently. Once again there was probably only a dozen people there when we were so it was very easy to spend a few hours there.
After that we drove to the Cisterean monks 12 century Tintern Abbey ruins. It's also very imposing with lots of buildings or footings of buildings left in tact. These monks had a pretty tough life-they maintained the abbey with proceeds from the farms they worked as they couldn't except donations or tythes from the local people. They woke at 2am to start their day of work and prayers (about 8 times a day) and survived without any heating in the abbey.
Tintern Abbey
There is a lot of restoration work been done on it (the Abbey) and I'm not sure how much should be done. I decided I'm more for conservation that restoration-it makes things 'new" again and I'm not sure that's how they are meant to be.
We luched in a pub across the road where I had a great lunch of beef in beer pie, peas, chips and gravy. Good English tucker!
After lunch we took a drive through and around the beautiful forest of Dean through tiny villages along tiny hedged roads. We lamost got cleaned up by a local cop travelling way too fast on one of those roads, but he stopped, backed up and let us pass and it was OK. Once again, we had one of our quick, light cheap dinners of cold meat and salad from TESCO>
posted by janandruss at
3:02 p.m.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home