Today we had arranged to meet some friends who we had met on
our holiday in China, in St.Davids. We
had arranged to meet at 12:00 noon, so we went there in the morning and visited
the Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace.
St. David’s Cathedral – I think – is the nicest Cathedral I
have ever been to! It’s small and
compact, but inside it looks much more spacious than it does on the
outside. No, it wasn’t a Tardis but it
was really nice inside, with an amazing painted wooden roof, and many
Romanesque arches inside which – Mathew told me – in most other Cathedrals
around the country would have been rebuilt into a Gothic style. What I particularly loved about this
Cathedral was the floor – in some places the original tiles were still in
place, obviously we couldn’t walk on those.
But pretty much everywhere else, they had done the floor up with replica
tiles and it looked amazing – I loved it, and the colours were so bright and
cheery! Sometimes you just don’t realise
how colourful places like this would have been because of the faded colours, or
even lack of colour in some places. I
was so impressed with this Cathedral I actually bought the guide book – and I
don’t usually do that with Cathedrals!
But there are quite a few nice pictures in it which swayed it for me!
Right next door was the Bishops Palace which was pretty
similar to Lamphey Bishop’s Palace yesterday – in fact, it was built by the
same person. This one was slightly more
ornate, or at least some of the more ornate parts had survived much better here
than at Lamphey. It was bigger but
basically the same kind of thing. And it
was there that I saw some bats!! I don’t
know what species they were, but they were just hanging out in the undercroft
in an alcove behind one of the exhibitions which I almost missed. I went in there for a nosey and there they
were, just hanging on the ceiling! Some
of them flew off but I managed to get a quite good photo of the ones which
stayed there long enough! They were so
small and cute!! I have only even seen
flutterings of bats at night, but I actually properly saw these ones, still AND
in flight!
It was time to meet up with Elizabeth and Austin at the
Information Centre at midday. On our way
to the car we bumped into them, so we decided to have lunch at the café before
our walk. We all had leek & potato
soup which came with bread and a chunk of cheese (!) so we all tucked in and
caught up with each other as we hadn’t spoken or been in much contact since the
end of April this year. Elizabeth told
us that her sister – Margaret – wasn’t with them today because she was busy
packing for her holiday to South Africa tomorrow. Apparently she gets everything packed at the
last minute after having spent most of her time laying everything out which
she’s going to take with her haha!!
Austin kept saying the soup was much better than “sticky rice” which was
what we had a little too much of in China…I’m pretty sure I heard him saying
that he wasn’t bothered if he never had Chinese food again! I think that holiday may have scarred him for
life haha!! They then told us of their
plans to go to Malta next week as its their 50th Wedding Anniversary
on October 14th, and they also plan to go to New Zealand next year,
which sounds pretty exciting!
After lunch, we got into our cars and headed off to Caerfai
to start our walk along the coast. The
walk was a little up and down, but it was just my kind of walk really, it
wasn’t too bad. Austin zoomed off ahead
of us all haha! We went to St. Non’s
Chapel which wasn’t exactly what I expected – I was thinking it was going to be
similar to St.Govan’s Chapel, but it wasn’t in the cliff at all. It was a nice quiet little chapel which was
open for people to light candles and write prayers down for their loved ones.
We continued on to Porth Cais where we stopped for a short
while before heading back fro where we came.
It was a good walk with some nice cliff side scenery but we didn’t see
any seals – I think the time for seeing seals on the coast was over at the
beginning of October! We sat down for a
moment before getting into our cars again and we followed them to their home
which was in Camrose. It turns out they
have a Guesthouse – which explains why they offered to put us up for a night –
which must have had around 6 bedrooms I think.
It was a very nice house, and also they took us around a building site
where they are building some new houses.
I thought they were retired, but I think it looks like Austin still
dabbles in the building trade- obviously – and I am not sure whether or not the
Guesthouse is still working or not. I
heard Elizabeth say “Now I don’t have guests anymore” so I think maybe they are
done for the season or done altogether.
It must be handy at Christmas though, they can have their entire family
around!!
We stayed at “Austalise” for a little while and had a cup of
tea before heading out to the restaurant which they had booked a table
for. It was called “The Jolly
Sailor”. Everyone had starters but me as
I had my eye on dessert. Mathew and
Elizabeth shared some chicken liver pate and Austin had some leek and potato
soup – again! Then for mains, I had a
small Welsh rump steak with salad while Austin had the large one with LOTS of
chips! Mathew had the fish pie with just
as many chips as Austin had, and Elizabeth had the duck. For dessert I had a cheesecake, while Austin
and Elizabeth had ice-cream. Mathew
didn’t have any dessert as he was stuffed.
I think Austin maybe shouldn’t have gone for all three courses as I
think he was more stuffed than Mathew by the end of it – he only just managed
to finish his ice cream haha!!
We went back to “Austalise” and bade farewell to them as we
headed back to our cottage. It was a
good day today!
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