The Breakfast at Thornbury Castle was sublime.  We both had the scramble eggs wrapped in smoked salmon, which lived up to the fantastic standards of everything else in the castle.  We then packed up and set off for Raglan Castle.  This is such a brilliant castle, unfortunately mostly destroyed by Cromwell, but still retains loads of charm.  It was built quite late, one of the last in England built prior to the advent of cannon, which put an end to battlement-style fortifications.  We loved it.  It has a fantastic tower that rises out of its own separate moat, and is connected to the rest of the castle by a drawbridge.  This would be the last line of defence.  The gates to the castle proper had three portcullises and the whole thing was a very lavish design.  We spent quite a bit of time looking around.  On the way out we bought a tapestry cushion cover, of a detail from the famous ‘Mon Seul Desir’, from the castle shop.  

Then we made off for Caldicot Castle, once owned by Thomas of Woodstock, the thirteenth and youngest child of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault.  He didn’t live there but that’s its only claim to fame.  It’s a nice little castle, with a few attractive towers and a big gatehouse, though not a patch on Raglan, even though it is virtually intact.  There were a lot of school kids there when we arrived, some getting a lesson from a medieval weapons expert, which was pretty damn good.  I would have liked to have had that lesson as a kid!  He had the outfits, the weapons, and he was demonstrating them. We looked around the place, and had a walk all around the outside as well, before hopping back in the vehicle and setting the satnav for Cardiff.  

We had a bit of fun getting to our hotel, at one point I got on the wrong side of the road, but we made it and got up to our room earlyish in the afternoon.  After freshening up we headed out to explore, looking perhaps to hop on a hop-on-hop-off.  We went to where we thought the stop was, but got the map wrong and couldn’t find it.  Eventually we found a stop, outside the castle, which we decided to visit the next morning.  We then thought to kill an hour at a cafe in the open street mall, until the hop-on thing was next due, and while there we couldn’t help noticing how many tarted up girls and women were walking in one direction.  It was like there was a floozy convention, muffin-top city.  More and more chicks, all painted up and dressed for clubbing, were going past. We couldn’t figure it out, because it was 3.30pm on a Monday. Eventually we found out Rhianna was in town, so every with-it female in Wales was converging on the capital. We had figured out it was a concert, but we didn’t find out who it was until later, and Jen guessed correctly.  

The hop-on thing was good, giving us a very good overview of the place.  We had a big walk around on the way back to the hotel, dodging hordes of these ladies.  We kept an eye out for a good restaurant, but some were closed and most were filled with the women of Wales, so we had a quiet dinner in the hotel restaurant, which was very good.  It had a nice looking fire on, which I would have sworn blue was real.  It was amazing how real it looked!  You had to get right up close to see it was electric. We both had a very nice hamburger and chips, before turning in after a big day!

Raglan Castle Wiki    Caldicot Castle Wiki   Cardiff Wiki