Goodbye Little Beast

This week I went to Wales on a work trip, leaving Bradley to fend for himself and live off cheesy savouries.

Wednesday night was spent in the lap of luxury at a posh B&B. It was pretty disappointing when we had to leave and do work in the morning.

A lovely view from my B&B room window. Luckily no floods here.

This is the National Botanic Garden of Wales, which was very nice.  The big glass spaceship thing you can see is their greenhouse, which houses a Mediterranean collection (not as nice as the Med Biome at Eden of course!).

On Wednesday I realised my precious car was on its last legs.  The "little beast" as it has been affectionately known has finally ground to a halt so off we went after lots of researching to Hewaswater Garage to have a look at getting a replacement.  We are very sad to say goodbye to our old friend, so I gave the little beast a loveheart tattoo so it knows we still love it.

The new car changes gear without the need to force it with two hands, doesn't need to be topped up with three litres of brake fluid a week, and is also a Ka that looks pretty much the same as the "little beast" so will hopefully come to be loved just as much in time.  

New car, old car, spot the difference

We celebrated with a pasty, and...

... I dropped mine down my coat, which I had very recently washed to remove previous pasty stains. Never mind.

 In the afternoon we went to Pinetum Park in St Austell, just round the corner from us.

 This is the Japanese Garden...

A bell over a well?  I didn't see the point of this.

 and the lake where some black swans are supposed to live.  Though we didn't spot them today...

we did see a stag in the Winter Garden!

And they grow yoghurt-coated berries here too - fascinating!

oh I see, the stag is a statue - fooled you!  I'd be questioning the validity of that yoghurt-coated berries claim too now.

This is the pinetum part of Pinetum Park.  It includes 80 different conifers in case you were wondering.  Our favourite is the orange one, though that's not its latin name.  You can come to the park yourself to find that out.

Here I am enjoying a giant hot chocolate in the tea room.  Bradley stuck to boring tea but I am very happy with my choice of beverage - no I didn't spill this down my coat too!

And then in the evening we took a stroll down to the King of Prussia for a drink.  We hadn't been there before which is a shame as you get some lovely views of the town quay and river.

Then we continued to Readymoney hoping to gather some more stones for my collection but the tide was very high and besides, we had to get back in time for Doctor Who.