Donaldson Crew Adventures

Between our house and Cardiff there is the Museum of Welsh history on the grounds of St Fagan's Castle - a 16th century manor house.  Its an open air museum that covers about 500 years of welsh history.  There are over 40 original structures transported and re-erected from different historic periods.  What great about this attraction is that its FREE via support from the Welsh government.  This weekend the weather was good on Saturday so we packed up a picnic and headed to St. Fagans for a few hours.

 

Here is a video of the boys riding a hand cranked amusment ride:

 

Here is another video of the smithy.  The boys were enamored with the blacksmith and I had to pry them out of there.  Hunter says he wants to be a blacksmith so he can make swords.  He's about 500 years too late.

 

Before we left, we wandered over to the Castle and Gardens.  A great spot for a picnic next time we visit!

 

Over the Jubilee holiday, there were lots of events going on at the local historic sites and one of them was a re-enactment of a castle siege at Caerphilly castle just north of Cardiff in the Village of Caerphilly.  Caerphilly is a massive castle (biggest in Wales and second biggest in Britian next to Windsor castle) complete with round towers and a moat! A great example of military architecture of the times. Also, unlike many of the other large castles in Wales this one was not built by the English to repress those pesky welsh from uprising.  It was built by a weathly Norman to defend his lands.

 

There was also some interesting demonstrations of the larger siege engines and some of the smaller weapons.  These demonstrations were on because of the holiday and not normally there.  The cross bow is the new favorite weapon for the boys.

 

They also learned how money was made back in the day - each coin hammered out by hand.

Today with rain and sun alternating at about once every 30 minutes we decided to go visit a 'living history' medievil village not farm from our house on the way to Cardiff called Cosmeston.  The village as you see it today is resurected on the remains of the original village that dates back to the 12 century. 

As the websites suggested, we were hoping to find people dressed in period costume giving tours and re-enacting parts of history, but once there we spoke with one of the guys keeping the grounds up and he said that due to budget cuts all work on the project has ceased except maintaining the grounds.  He said that he would normally be in costume  giving tours.  He gave us a 10 minute talk and explained some really interesting history about the area, how houses of the time were constructed and all sorts of interesting facts.  Its really too bad that its currently non operational, but we still had a good time exploring anyhow. 

Also the pics of the kids by the water - tadpoles have just hatched and they are trying to catch one.

Our kids love the movie Tangled so this past weekend I thought it might be fun to visit Castle Coch just north of Cardiff.  It is a 19th-century Gothic Revival castle built on the remains of a genuine 13th-century fortification.  It rests up on a hillside overlooking the surrounding small village of Tongwynlais.  It is a beautiful fairytale style castle that was restored and reconstructed in the late 1800's, and is now maintained by CADW which maintains many of these historic sites in Wales.

The kids enjoyed exploring the towers and the surrounding grounds.  It was also fun for us as well - It was Kelly and Sue's first castle!  There was actually a wedding being held in the castle the day we were there. The little cathedral inside the castle holds about 30 people.  A few more pictures below.  Of note - Abbies secret door thats just her size. Also on the exterior shots see if you can notice the kids at the base of the wall.

While Kelly and her mom were out running errands, I took the kids out to their first (of many) castle ruins today.  St. Quentin's Castle is very close to our house in the town of Cowbridge.  It is the remains of an early 14 century courtyard castle with a massive twin tower gate house that is still standing. Kids had a good time climbing around and exploring the ruins. 

Notice the white stains on the side?  Here's an interesting fact - While it may look like bird poop its actually not.  Its lime coming out of the walls.  In fact when we see castles in movies these days that look like standard stone walls - thats not how they would have looked - they actually would have been brilliantly white with their walls completely covered in their hey day due to the lime leaching out and down the walls.  Common houses would be stone, and because only the weathly could afford lime for the grout (holds together better), castles would have been white.