llywela | the adventures of Jo, Nikki and Chris, day one: Gower

Last week I had two very lovely house guests come to stay.

galathea_snb had visited before, two years ago, and we enjoyed the few days that we spent together back then so much that we were all keen to reprise the experience, but have only now managed to get our acts together enough to actually do so. And once again, we had a fantabulous time together, sightseeing during the days and watching DVDs together in the evenings - the perfect holiday, in fact!

Poppy and Alfie, of course, reacted to last week's house guests in exactly the same way that they each react to every visitor we get, and those reactions may be summarised thus:
Alfie: "Go on, adore me. You know you want to."
Poppy: "Who the hell gave you permission to come into my house?"

So what did we watch all week? Well, there was rather a lot of Friends, a little bit of Leverage, a dash of Being Human and the entire first season of Game of Thrones, which I hadn't seen before but was very impressed by and would recommend to anyone who enjoys Lord of the Rings/pseudo-medieval, Arthurian-type fantasy etc and doesn't mind a healthy dose of HBO in their shows. Plus, you know - Sean Bean.

Anyway, on to the photos! We did rather a lot of sightseeing (and some inadvertent Doctor Who and Torchwood location spotting) during our week together, so I'm going to break this up into a couple of separate picspams.

Well, so Nikki and Chris arrived in Cardiff on the Sunday afternoon, so the Monday saw our first outing of the week. We decided to go for a drive along the coast to the Gower Peninsula, much of which is owned and protected by the National Trust. We headed for the southern-most point of the peninsula: Rhossili Bay and Worm's Head.

This was the view from the car park.

Perfect summer's day, right!

Practically the first thing we saw as we reached the coastal path was the National Trust's Old Rectory Cottage in its isolated spot overlooking the beach - this house was used as the location for Gwen and Rhys's secret hideaway in the first episode of the current season of Torchwood!

We headed first for the tidal island of Worm's Head at the southern tip of the bay, which is accessible via the Devil's Bridge at low tide only. Alas, the tide was in while we were there, so we were unable to make the crossing.

We may not have managed to cross to the island, but the view from down there at the tip of the coast was glorious - as was the weather!

Back up a fairly steep climb to the coastal path, heading now for the beach, known locally as Llangennith Sands

Yeah, it's a looooong way down that cliff to get to the beach. Totally worth it, though, even if the sun was starting to disappear behind some rather grey clouds by now. Rather a prominent landmark here are the remains of the Helvetia, which ran aground on the beach way back in 1887. At low tide, the remains of the ship are clearly visible, but with the tide so high we only caught a glimpse of the wreck, seen here with Worm's Head in the background.

We sat on the beach for quite some time watching pretty boys playing cricket nearby, while Nikki did a bit of sand-modelling!

Up on the hillside above the beach, we were rather thrilled to catch a glimpse of wild Welsh ponies (and in the second pic here you can also see the chimney of Gwen and Rhys's house, mentioned above - it really is well-hidden from view of the beach!)

This is the climb we faced to get back up from the beach

There is a path and there are steps, but man are they steep!

One last look down at the beach from very near the top of the cliff

After our visit to Rhossili (and as part of what turned out to be a lengthy quest to find tea rooms), we also briefly stopped off at Oxwich for a quick glance at the castle there, since we were passing

We also paid a brief visit to the Gower Heritage Centre at Penmaen, which is home to the smallest cinema in Wales

Then before heading home once more, we stopped for cake and a cuppa at the waterfront in Mumbles, having finally found those tea rooms we'd been looking for!