Tredegar House and the Big Pit

As you can tell, we certainly love the old houses and the National Trust ones are always so interesting. It is wonderful to read about the families who lived in them and their history. Penny, Bruce and I ventured out here on Wednesday. 

 Yesterday, Bruce and I headed into Wales to the Big Pit National Coal Museum at Blaenafon. We went down 90m into the Big Pit. It was quite an experience! It was a tough life for miners and their families in the olden times of mining.

There were so many stories of the miners and their families in the Museum. It was a very moving exhibition.

Montacute House and Lyte Carey Manor

We are now staying at Penny and John's home in Hay-on-Wye. It is lovely to be here once again and great to catch up with dear friends. On Tuesday on the way to Hay we visited another 2 lovely National Trust properties. The first was Montacute House which is an amazing house which is basically the same as it was 400 years ago. It was used extensively in the filming of the series, Wolf Hall.

There was some lovely embroidery in the house.

 They even had a display of horse riding, as in the Tudor times, on the green.

We weren't far from Lytes Carey Manor so popped in there for a visit. This is a lovely medieval house.

 This stump work was amazing. It was all stitched around a mirror. It was a fairly modern piece which was done in the medieval style.

 This hexagon quilt was on one of the beds.

Stourhead House and Wells Cathedral

On Sunday we visited another National Trust property called Stourhead House. This is another wonderful house to visit and the story of the last family to live here was very moving. Their only son died in WWI and this house is really a memorial to their son Harry. Of course many others had lived there earlier on.

 We also wandered around the lake with our umbrellas and raincoats on. The benefit to the rain was that we did almost have the gardens to ourselves.

 On Monday, 27 July, we went into Wells to visit the amazing cathedral. It was started in the 12th century and we learnt so much about it from the free tour.

 Once again, I was very impressed with the gorgeous tapestries.

 These houses are the oldest, continuously inhabited houses in Europe.

 Loved the swans and the cygnets near the bishop's palace.

 We then drove through the Cheddar Gorge and then visited Axbridge which has the 500 year old King John's Hunting lodge. It is now a museum and was very interesting and so old!