Good Friday,
A leisurely morning & breakfast then a trip to Bala to look at the lake and the railway.

En route we nipped into Tesco for the now obligatory stop to collect a few bits that we realised that we have forgotten or thought that we had left in the van for next time only to find the cupboard was bare…. ie no olive oil. Anyway we picked up a Tesco Olive Bread which is one of our favourite treats at any time.

Onward to Bala, nice little town by the famous lake. We pulled into a car park only to discover that neither of us had any cash for the meter and this being rural wales 😉 no card payment options or pay by phone which was everywhere in Cornwall’s car parks in October. Anyway we call at the conveniences and drove onto the Lake and stopped at a little free parking area and had a short walk along the shore. I took the “Big Camera” and tripod withe me to get some better quality images which I’ll add to this post later once the editing process has been completed.

While taking pictures of the Lake we saw the steam and heard the whistle of the little train on the far side of the lake. We just had to go have a closer look. Who doesn’t love a little steam train especially when you were born & bred in one of the worlds most famous steam train producing towns. Gorton the home of Bayer Peacocks Locomotive works. In fact I work on what was the site of the old works. Halys’ dad used to be a boiler maker at the works in his youth.

So off we went south down the west side of the lake and circled around to the other side where we found LLANUWCHLLYN station (No I can’t say it!) This is the southerly terminus of the line and the home of the engine shed and workshop.

We parked up and jumped out to take some pictures of three locomotives that were sat right in front of us and a sneaky peek into the workshop where Halys found a Loco called “George B” which made her very excited to find a loco named after her dad George Bostock which was currently being restored. The fitter working on George told Halys he was nearly ready and if she brought her dad back when he was running he’d make sure he got a good close up look at his name sake.

Once again more pictures and a chance to go inside the signal box for a close up look at all the levers bells and signals.

Time to head back to site. This time we drive up the East side of the lake up a much narrower road and right alongside the railway line for the entire route. Maybe we should have had a ride on the train which at £11 return is not a bad deal but we didn’t.

On the way back we called into the Rhug Estate Farm Shop where we found some interesting pork pies, cheese and scotch eggs. A Huntsman pork pie and a Ploughman’s scotch egg came home with us as well as a jar of Chutney and a lemon cake. That’s a late lunch sorted then. Very nice it was too.

We both had our first shower in the caravan shower. It was much better than we had anticipated as there is quite limited space and of course there is a limited water supply. Well we both managed a shower which was nice and hot and I didn’t need to refill the water in between showers. It just shows how much water you can save when you’re thinking about it. I could imagine nothing worse than being fully soaped up and having to walk down the site to refill the Aquaroll! I’ll just leave than image there for you  😉

Home made Hunters Chicken for dinner made with my own recipe BBQ sauce which this time was a Spicy version and a few drinks. Being off grid (no electricity supply) we dared to put the TV on tonight. We have a 240V or 12V TV/ DVD combi so we decided that we would see how much power it actually used. Not much thankfully so a couple of episodes of Big bang and Jason Statham in Transporter 2 and we were ready for bed and to look forward to another day of this adventure.