I figure a new country warrants a new post. So this one picks up on the overland adventure of Grant and Matt as we cross the border into Wales.

I have some Welsh ancestry, as may be obvious from my excellent dragon impersonation (or imdragonation i suppose), so this was partly an exploration of my roots.

The tagline from Twin Town attempts to sum it up:

Rugby. Tom Jones. Male Voice Choirs. Shirley Bassey. Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantisiliogogogch. Snowdonia. Prince of Wales. Anthony Hopkins. Daffodils. Sheep. Sheep Lovers. Coal. Slate Quarries. The Blaenau Ffestiniog Dinkey-Doo Miniature Railway.

Now If That's Your Idea Of Thousands Of Years Of Welsh Culture, You Can't Blame Us For Trying To Liven The Place Up A Little Can You?

To that list, add: Leeks, Bryn Terfel, Charlotte Church, Gwyneth Paltrow, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Human Traffic and Daffyd, the only gay in the village of Llanddewi Brefi.

And i suppose if you want to be really 'clever', the movie Twin Town.

The countryside is very picturesque, which vindicated my decision to incorrectly navigate us off the main road and onto a series of winding lanes,

which somewhat delayed our arrival in Cardiff. Nonetheless we managed to get out on the town and have a kebab, in accordance with Grant's noble ambition to try at least one kebab in every country visited.

The following day, after an early start to move the car from the loading zone we'd left it in the previous night before an irate , we had a proper mosey about Cardiff (Caerdydd), checking out the town hall and gardens,

the museum,

Cardiff Castle,

Bute Park, which features a mini-Stonehenge,

the River Taff,

and the Millenium Stadium.

Having 'done' Cardiff, we hit the road, back to England over the Severn,

and on to Bath. Like Stratford and Cambridge, Bath was very poorly thought out when the roads were laid out in the middle ages. No consideration appears to have been given whatsoever to future tourists in hire-cars. It only took us two and a half hours to find a parking spot which left at least 25 minutes to look around the town. We managed to have a lookee at the baths, although, as with all things related to hygiene and cleanliness, my interest in these was pretty limited,

and checked out the cathedral,

the park,

and the Avon (yet again...), which seems to wend its way past almost every major tourist attraction in Great Britain before it meets the sea in Bristol.

Next stop, Stonehenge,

where we continued the cheapskate approach, managing to avoid payment of both the entrance and parking fees (by looking through the fence and (accidentally) parking illegally...)

This shot looks toward an area called The Cursus, which is a 3km-long earthwork, parallel to a tangent to the Stonehenge circle. The sheep is a special Neolithic breed, of the type that grazed the Salisbury plain at the time that Stonehenge was built and which are believed to have been regarded as holy by the druids. This animal is part of a flock which was bred via genetic engineering, by splicing Neolithic sheep DNA, obtained from lamb bones found in ceremonial druidic barbeques, into the genome of extant Wiltshire sheep breeds.

Next shot shows a genuine 21c AD clown with some genuine 10c BC rocks.

And another one of da 'henge, looking particularly dramatic.

It makes one wonder how many summer solstice celebrations had to be cancelled due to heavy rain in the past 3000 years.

After all that megalithic excitement, we pressed on back towards London. I dropped off Grant near Heathrow and, just like that, the adventure was over.