Wednesday 7 January 2009

Castell Coch

This is a through the car window picture of Castell Coch's fairytale turrets in the beautiful beech woodland .

Now a better close up of the castle.



My husband and I dropped our middle daughter off at her friend's near Newport for onward transportation back to Uni. We had "planned" to visit Castell Coch on the way home - somewhere we have been planning to visit all the 20 years we've been in Wales. Despite checking on the web site, to find out it WAS open right through winter, I obviously didn't read far enough down the page, as we arrived there to find it had shut for winter refurbishments the previous day and won't open again till mid-February. Ah well. We will have to go back in the spring.

Although it is on the site of a Medieval castle, this was another of Lord Bute's fantasy castles, designed by his faithful William Burges. I believe the Bute family never even bothered to stay in this one and indeed Cardiff castle was just one of their "holiday homes." This link
will take you on a 360 degree virtual tour of Castell Coch. This Wikipedia link tells you more about the history of it.






This is on my needles as the moment - several feet of very poorly-knitted double moss stitch scarf. For some reason I keep getting the pattern wrong and will find I have suddenly done three rows starting in plain instead of two plain and two pearl. Then I found I had 44 stitched instead of 42 - cotton wool head yesterday, when I was knitting like crazy on our car journey to Newport. Ah well, it will keep her warm when it's done and G said she didn't mind about the mistakes and the kingfisher blue is so pretty to knit with.

4 comments:

LBP said...

That really is a fairy tale castle! I want to live there!

I love the color of the scarf!

Blessings

Linda

nancy said...

Thanks for the wonderful pictures. What a beautiful castle that is. The stitch you are using is really nice. And I do love the color.
Nancy

Goosey said...

This is a view I know well, my husbands Aunty and Uncle lives in Rhiwbina just near here...in fact if we see castell Coch we've missed the turning!

Auntie sezzzzzz... said...

Oh my! Oh my! Oh my! Like a Faerie Tale. I do hope you go back, in the Springtime.

Aunt Amelia
"I wish the sky would rain down roses... They would fall as light as feathers, smelling sweet: and it would be like sleeping and yet waking all at once." ~~George Eliot