November 15th...England, Wales and a Castle

Left Amesbury today and drove to Wales. We took a lot of back roads and saw some really cute villages. Didn't really do much sightseeing until we got to a town called Ross On Wye, can you guess why the kids wanted to stop there ?. I love the names of the towns over here. Ross On Wye because its situated beside the Wye river. So Katherine would be Katherine On The Water...like Bourton On The Water ? Mataranka On Roper ? Anyway Ross on Wye is experiencing a bit of flooding at the moment, its a lovely little place. The road we took to get there crossed over mountains that had me squirming because the road hugged the cliff edge and the roads over here are very narrow, more often than not you have to pull over to let bigger cars pass. The views were stunning, everything is so green and the fields are always dotted with sheep with black faces ! Mia loves them. We saw our first, what we think was a Raccoon...do they have Raccoons here ? It was dead on the road but much discussion took place after as to whether it was a Raccoon or Skunk. Any one know ? Saw lots of Squirrels and lots of signs telling us to watch out for Deer but we haven't seen any yet.We entered Wales via Monmouth and accidentally ended up on the big motorway..the M5 ? M3 ? I was not happy. You cant turn around or stop so we had to drive along waiting for an exit which didn't appear until we were not far from Cardiff. I chucked a u turn and immediately spotted a castle on our left. We spent the next hour walking around the ruins of Raglan Castle in Wales, beautiful. Took far too many pictures but I couldn't help it. We left when it started to rain, it poured so we drove towards Shrewesbury to look for accommodation. Nothing there so we drove on to Telford arriving here at 5pm. We are in another Holiday Inn only $100 a night, YHA is $90 a night and the one here didn't look real good. Must find a laundromat soon, Mia washes her stuff every night in the shower and then drapes it all over the radiator in our room..Riley and I wait till we've run out of clothes then start looking for a laundry. Tomorrow we are driving to Llangollen in Wales and then over to the Welsh coast in the north where there is, what looks to be a lovely YHA. Riley has been watching the rugby union, Australia v England...Australia won ! Time for a cuppa and bed. Love reading the comments, thanks Suzanne, Helen and Judy, the most recent ones. To the person who keeps telling us to stop having fun and update the blog....you know who you are !!! ....i update when I have the Internet connection so stop nagging !!! and look after my dog. He likes his chicken pieces cut into small bits, same with the steak. Diesel here is 1 pound 6, about $2 a litre.