Ludlow castle

Ludlow castle was nearly on our route so we decided to have short stop. In the beginning the weather seemed fine, but shortly before we got there it got cloudy and the Sun peeked only a few times. But that is fair weather for the end of October if you ask me.

Yes, a small bit of castle is missing on the right, but there were trees I could not avoid without risking falling down to blackberries. I've tried on several places and this provided the best view.

View from the tower. There are advantages of autumn trips.

Pistyll Rhaeadr

Due to its location and surrounding hills we arrived when Sun was already set behind hills. It was still light enough, but photos were not popping any more. We decided we will return back tomorrow morning if Sun shines, just to get another perspective.

Some sources state this is the tallest waterfalls in Wales, but it is not true. According to this page it is the 9th. But it looks much nicer than many taller ones.

When we planned the trip I have checked on Google's Street View how the roads around look like. They seemed quite narrow, fortunately they weren't in reality. Just last 4km were narrow like only Wales can offer ;-)

Wonderfully looking country side not far from Pistyll Rhaedr.

Left photo shows top part of waterfalls when viewed from distance (free car park). Photo on the right side shows complete waterfalls, but it does not look so massive on the picture.
    

A lot of water was falling down creating clouds of mist. It would be less impressive if we came during "dry season". On the other hand we did not climbed to the top due to lot of slippery mud.

I have tried also several HDR photos and HDR panoramas, but all panoramas looked weird and HDR effect did not helped a lot. I would say DXO made good results directly, no need to show HDR shots.

Following photos are my favourite, showing details of rock bridge and also waterfalls effect is nicer.

Chirk castle

We spent night in Oswestry - surprisingly quiet town after getting dark. Only busy place was pub downstairs. Fortunately we did not hear it on the 3rd floor.

Next morning, we realized not only it is not sunny, but it is quite foggy. No reason to go back to waterfalls. Let's continue according the original plan to Chirk castle.

The first stop was to collect geocache with promising name Castle View. Well, there was no castle to see anywhere. Maybe that fog caused it...

The fog lost its battle when we came close to castle. Though the castle was not very impressive. Apart from bad weather, as we learned later, it was caused mostly by collapsing of one end with main gate thanks to wet slope it was built on many many years ago.

Still it was charming, I especially liked foliage around the windows as you can see on the following photos.

It has pretty nice garden, we spent there some time, but most photos are not very impressive, just dark.

Finally before we left we had really short stop at nearby Aquaduct. We did not know about it until we seen it while passing by. Rather nice surprise. It is pity we did not find good spot in distance with overall view where we could stop.

From other side. Notice the 420m long tunnel in distance.

Conclusion

So this is it. I started this blog as a way to send home photos from UK 34 months ago. Well, it seems I showed more photos of other places than UK.

And shamefully I have shown just one with glimpses of Slovakia - from our wedding day. That should change now. For some time I might publish my older photos and we will see what will happen in the future.