Whizzing around

We're fairly whizzing around the country at the moment. After a few days at home, we then went down to Brecon in Wales because one of the choirs I sing with was doing an exchange with a Brecon choir. They came up here in June to take part in two concerts with us, and this time we went down there. It was good fun. Mr L likes Wales because it has steam trains (very exciting) so he came along too. We had a Welsh choir lady to stay in June, but because Mr L came along, we didn't take hospitality in return but stayed in a little (and I mean extremely little - but fine) Airbnb cottage, from which the view was approximately as above.

Brecon is a very small town/village but they produce a pretty map featuring "our" cottage", as above. 

The church in which we sang our concerts, St Mary's, dates from the 13th century and had notices on the wall detailing people's charitable givings, starting, as above, in 1581. The names, not surprisingly, are very Welsh: Evans, Meredith, Jenkin, Williams, Thomas, Davies, Jones... .

Considering how small Brecon is, we had surprisingly good audiences. 

One day, Mr L and I went to Castell Coch (the Red Castle). This was built in the nineteenth century, round the remains of a thirteenth century castle, by the third Marquess of Bute, who at that time was said to be the richest man in the world. He owned lots of coal mining country. It's safe to say that he didn't spare any expense to make his fairytale-like castle very fancy indeed. We never had castles with pointed roofs in the British Isles, but he didn't let that bother him.

The architect, William Burges, and the Marquess both liked medieval art and architecture, so they based the design on an interpretation of this, with painted ceilings and lots of gold and twiddly bits. 

Burges died before the decoration was finished, and the artists who were brought in to finish it favoured the aesthetic movement, with paintings of nature.

The walls in one room are painted to illustrate Aesop's Fables.

I liked this frog which is clutching a cough bottle because he has a frog (ho ho) in his throat.

This was the Marquess's wife's bed. I like the crystal balls, but where's the bed-light and the table for your pile of books?

However, the castle was very impractical. You keep having to go up stone spiral staircases to get to the different rooms in various towers - the servants must have hated  it - and it was never much used by the family. It's now a tourist attraction, owned by Welsh Heritage.

And then we had a few days in Bath...