Newport Pembrokeshire, Coetan Arthur, Nevern Castle, Welsh Game Fair with Mud,

The Famer & I have given ourselves two days off, as it is raining (!) and spent the first day pottering around Newport (Pembs). It is a tiny place but with a wealth of excellent galleries (http://www.newportcollective.co.uk/, a lovely jumbled junk/antique/curio/book shop where we picked up some wonderful history & travel books from the early part of the 20th century (they don't write books like that any more!) and several good coffee shops. A perfect  place for pottering in the rain.
Just on the ouskirts of Newport there is Coetan Arthur, a impressive cromlech which is approached rather bizarrely by a footpath through a small cul-de-sac of smart modern bungalows with neatly manicured lawns & perjink (a good descriptive Scottish word) gardens. Indeed, the last bungalow has the chamber just yards away from its kitchen window. Although the stones themselves are impressive, the cap stone balanced on only two points, it does lack the atmosphere of Pentre-Ifan because of its close proximity to 21st century suburbia.
After calling on some friends not seen for long time to admire their very beautiful newly renovated house, we then went to Nevern castle which has had some recent archaeological digs.done. It was always a lovely place, just a large mound in a wood with magnificent beech trees, but no real castle remains visible. Now, after careful tree-felling and excavation of stone work and some clearing of the moat it is still a wonderful place but more clearly the remains of a castle, though the remains are not extensive. It has fascinating history the details of which can be found at http://www.neverncastle.co.uk/.

Yesterday we went to the Welsh Game Fair held near Llandeilo, in the rain and the mud was incroyable!! Nonetheless we had a very enjoyable time though progress around the showground was very slippery and our boots were rapidly caked in thick sticky mud, yuch! which made walking around quite difficult. I think the people with push-chairs & very small children probably suffered the most.
We were very entertained to see on our arrival at the Countryside Alliance stand that a photograph of the Farmer has been used on one of their large display boards. It is superb picture of him introducing a group of school children to our dairy cows. The picture was one of many taken by Charles Sainsbury-Plaice during a visit to Penyrallt by a school from a Carmarthen that was arranged by the Countryside Alliance Foundation,
http://www.countryside-alliance-foundation.org.uk/.