Lovely Llandudno and Beautiful Bodnant

No makes to share this week, I've been trying to get the sleeves of my jumper done and also the last in the trio of socks cast on in June, both seem slow going at the moment but, the end is in sight.  

Heritage Hall, (I'm sorry I don't know your name), commented on my last post and asked about the pattern for the corner to corner baby blanket, It's a free pattern by Lion Brand and can be found Here, I have always been asked about where to find the pattern and should have mentioned it last week. 

So, this weeks happenings.  We went on a little weekend break, from Friday to Sunday this weekend to one of my favourite places, Llandudno, in North Wales.  Bodnant Gardens has been on my list of places to visit for a while and as it's only about 6 miles from Llandudno we thought we would combine the two visits.

After all the fine hot weather of last week the forecast wasn't that good for the weekend but we were lucky, at least until we were going home on Sunday.  

We didn't arrive until around 3pm on Friday so just had a mooch around the town and later a walk along both beaches, Llandudno has two beaches, North shore is where you will find the pier and all those lovely Victorian buildings, the West shore is much quieter.  We walked down towards the West shore as the sun was going down and were treated to a wonderful sunset.

The weather was a bit unsettled on Saturday morning but the forecast said it was going to be better in the afternoon, so we explored the town some more before taking the tram up the Great Orme in the afternoon.  

We decided we would walk back down and stop to visit the mines, which are at the half way point.  These Bronze Age mines were discovered in 1987 after work was started following planning permission to build a car park.  There are around 4 miles of tunnels under this area, a small section is open to the public and the work is still on-going to discover more about the area.  It was an interesting place to visit, although Mark's not keen on confined spaces and was glad to see daylight at the end of the tunnel!

We carried on walking down, back towards Llandudno, which wasn't as bad as I thought It would be, although we did take one of the easier routes, but I can now claim to have walked the Orme :-) 

The weather was beautiful when we got up on Sunday morning, really warm and sunny and I was pleased we had decided to wait until today for our visit to Bodnant Gardens.   After breakfast we packed our bag and set straight off.  Bodnant is around 6 miles from Llandudno but we did take the scenic route along Marine Drive, around The Great Orme, so it was more miles but well worth it for the views .  I've shared photos of this route before, Here , we didn't stop to take any on Sunday.  We did stop at the church of ST Tudno to enjoy the view for a while though.

There is a beautiful Manor House in Bodnant Gardens, unfortunately it isn't open to the public, the grounds are stunning though with different walks and gardens to explore, I loved looking at all the different plants and shrubs and in the garden centre on the way out I did buy a couple of plants for our garden.

Unfortunately the good weather didn't last long enough for us to enjoy all that was on offer, the rain started and at first it looked as though it might blow over but then it quickly got heavier and we had to head into the coffee shop.  Such a shame because there were another two walks we could have done if it had stayed nice.  We will definitely be back in the area again though and will plan a future visit.

Have a good week all

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