With the sun shining and not much traffic on the road the journey was very pleasant, though I did notice that the further into Wales I got the higher the snow drifts were at the roadside. The road itself was perfectly clear though and I arrived in Abergele a bit earlier than anticipated, so rather than go straight to the site I headed down to the promenade and went in the Beach Cafe for coffee and a bacon and egg barm, then took the dogs for a walk along the beach. It was still only 10am when I got to Manorafon and after booking in and being shown to my pitch I set about putting up my new tent; it was a fairly straightforward operation and with not as many pegging points as my smaller tent it didn't take too long to do. With my bed made up and everything else in place I surveyed my new home - there was far more space than in my smaller tent and plenty of room to stand up properly and walk around, and with my blue bedding and blue accessories it looked good - I was going to like this new tent!
With everything sorted out it was time for a quick brew followed by a dog walk up to the castle; while setting up the tent I'd noticed that the castle was in full sunlight and as I hadn't managed to get any really good photos of it last year the opportunity now was too good to miss. I wasn't content just to photograph the front of it though so a bit of exploration was needed; just off the main path through the woods I found a smaller path which eventually took me above and round the back of the castle and though I couldn't get into the main body of the place, with a bit of scrambling up and down overgrown steps and through various bushes I was able to access a few of the outer parts of it, which gave me several good photos which I was really pleased with.
When I had got as many photos as I could I made my way back to the main path and returned to the tent, then with Sophie and Sugar in the back of the van I took a short ride to Tesco for some provisions. With my shopping stowed away out of the reach of little noses I went for a quick look round the town, which wouldn't take long, and that's when I had a stroke of luck. I needed a large blue storage box for my camping bits and pieces and in an animal charity shop I came across the ideal one in a corner, though it looked like it was used by the shop rather than being for sale. However, if you don't ask you don't get, so I asked, and although the box actually was for shop use the very nice lady sold it to me for just a quid - and it was new too, so I walked out of the shop a very happy bunny.
The rest of the day and evening were spent just chilling out in the tent and organising my things into my new blue box, then when my eyes decided they didn't want to stay awake for much longer I took the dogs for their final walk of the day. I hadn't made any plans for the following day but if the weather was as good as it had been then I was looking forward to getting more photos wherever I ended up going.
