the best pubs, restaurants, hotels and places to visit
Unfortunately the Blue Anchor Inn in East Aberthaw has caught fire again last weekend.
This is a great local pub with a huge amount of character. The building dates from 1380. It has caught fire a number of times in its history – a thatched roof and log fires don’t mix very well 🙂
You can read the BBC News story here – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/7985050.stm
The daffodil is the national flower of Wales. This is a great shot of one in our garden with the sunlight streaming through it.
The roadside verges, gardens and parks throughout Wales are full of daffodils at this time of year. A great Welsh sight!
So some strange goings on in Cardiff Bay as revealed by Google Street View. Street View has provoked some controversy and some interesting comments over privacy issues but at the end of the day it doesn’t actually show anything that isn’t publicly available to someone walking down the street on the day that the photos were taken.
However, it has shown up some really bizarre things going on in the streets, even in our own Cardiff Bay. The Street View snapshot above shows what appears to be a ghost in Cardiff Bay!!
Some people seem to think that it’s related to the wormhole situated in Cardiff Bay shown in Torchwood. I think it’s more likely somebody advertising the forthcoming Mary Poppins show in the Cardiff Bay Millennium Centre 🙂
Click on the photo for a bigger version or click here for a better view.
A few months back we had a romantic weekend away at the excellent New House Country Hotel just north of Cardiff.
We fancied somewhere special and New House certainly lived up to that!
The hotel is situated on the hills just north of the city. It has spectacular views down over Cardiff and the Bristol Channel.
The hotel is very luxurious and feels just like my idea of a country manor hotel. Even the gravel drive sounded right as we arrived!
With all this bad weather we’re having at the moment I’ve found that the UK Met. Office’s rain radar service has been invaluable to see where the really heavy rain and snow is.
It updates every 30 minutes and even has an animated sequence of images over the past 6 hours or so so you can see the direction that the rain clouds are moving.
It’s really cool and can be found here – http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/radar/index.html
It covers the UK, Ireland, North France and North Belgium.
Update: Thursday 16th December 2010 – you may find this new page useful – http://www.south-wales.org/2010/useful-information-for-south-wales-snow/
I guess that with all this snow predicted over the next few days then the M4 traffic cam network will be working overtime.
If you want to have a quick look at traffic and snow conditions on the M4 motorway over the next few days then there is a good summary page for South East Wales with links to individual M4 webcams to be found on the BBC here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/travelnews/southeastwales/trafficcameras
A similar traffic cam page for South West Wales can be found here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/travelnews/southwestwales/trafficcameras
The BBC also has a good summary page on the current situation on the national motorway network here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/travelnews/local/motorways.shtml.
There is also a local page listing all road closures and holdups in South East Wales here – http://www.bbc.co.uk/travelnews/southeastwales
Update: Thursday 16th December 2010 – you may find this new page useful – http://www.south-wales.org/2010/useful-information-for-south-wales-snow/
M25 photo above Copyright: Andrew Dixon, http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrew74/ with thanks.