Christmas in Wales.

Hope you all had a good Christmas. We did here. No snow on the ground but if you looked close enough you could still see some on top of the hills. Morgan woke up at 4.30am and opened the presents in his stocking and then went back to sleep until about 8.30am.

After a quick breakfast and getting dressed, we started on the presents. Santa had been busy and there were loads of presents under the tree. Morgan was pretty excited about the Nintendo Wii that Santa had left for the whole family, but spent most of the day playing with either his pirates and their castle or his little pot of ‘fart putty’! Anna had lots of socks and quite a few nice kitchen gadgets and I had plenty of cycling, windsurfing and walking clothing. Santa didn’t forget about Pat either and she had plenty of presents to open as well.

The Wii which was the big present for the whole family went down well and we all had a go on the Wii Sports and Wii Sport Resort games. We haven’t had a ‘video game ‘ before and wanted something that would be fun for the whole family and more of a ‘social event’ when playing it. The games had to be suitable for Morgan as well. He is pretty good at the bowling! It is a bit tedious swapping controllers all the time so I’m off to eBay to buy a new controller, motion plus attachment and Nunchuck. We’ll also need some new games as well.

We are also quite impressed with the BBC iPlayer facility through the Wii. Connecting it to the Wifi network was easy and then it allows you to subscribe to various channels. BBC iPlayed is one of these channels, the interface is nice and works really well eveb with our relatively slow Broadband connection. Watching iPlayer on the TV screen is much beter than watching it on the computer. There is also an internet channel which seems to work OK as well, but web sites are better viewed on the computer!.

Xmas dinner was of course delicious. The four bird roast was nice and there was plenty left over for various other meals. Some of it went into the freezer for use in curries over the next couple of weeks as well.

The weather was really nice all morning, perfectly sunny and still so I thought we might go for a walk on the beach. But, by the time we had recovered from lunch it had clouded over and looked pretty threatening out there so we ended up not leaving the house.

All in all a nice day and good to have a few days off work too.

After riding in the Forest of Dean on Saturday, I had an easy ride around the Summit Trail at Nant yr Arian on Sunday morning and then met Anna, Morgan, Jo, Danny and Kai at the visitor centre to make some Christmas decorations aout of things found in the forest.

I obviously needed a shower after my wet, muddy ride, but the first shower didn’t work and the second one was cold as the eco-friendly wood-chip boiler was playing up. After a quick cold shower I was soon fit to make some decorations.

Thankfully we didn’t have to wander around the forest in the rain looking for suitable pine cones, moss, ivy etc as they had already sourced all of that for us so we soon sat down and made wreaths, Christmas cards and decorations. Morgan seemed to like it, and I think Anna was secretly quite proud of her ‘owl’!

We then had lunch in the visitor centre before heading home after another good day in the forests of West Wales.

Visiting Santa in Wales

It’ll soon be that time of year again when Morgan and all his friends from school will want to visit Santa and let him know what they want for Christmas. So, where can the big red bearded man be found?

Tal y Llyn Railway

He can be found on the Santa Specials at the Tal y Llyn Railway on December 19th, 20th and 24th. Adults £15.00 Children £10.00 (Children aged between 0 and 12 get a present from Santa). We did this last year and it was a lovely day out on the train.

Corris Railway

Santa will be at Corris Railway on 12th/13th December.

Nant yr Arian

I’m not sure of the exact dates yet but he usually turns up here one weekend

Coed y Brenin

As with Nant yr Arian I don’t know the dates yet, but I’m sure he’ll pay a visit to Coed y Brenin one weekend a well.

Lake Vyrnwy

He’ll be at the RSPB centre at Lake Vyrnwy on December 19th. Where you should also be able to make Christmas Tree decorations and cards. £3.50 Adults (£1.50 RSPB members), £1.50 Children (£1 Wildlife Explorers members)

Corris Craft Centre

December 12th & 13th and December 19th & 20th

Travel by boat into the vast caverns of Santa’s magical Underground Grotto (King Arthur’s Labyrinth the rest of the year!). Children receive a present from Santa whilst adults enjoy a warming glass of punch. Lots of other activities too, Adult: £4 Child: £6.50

Fantasy Farm Park

12th, 13th, 19th and 20th December.

He’s certainly a very busy man!!! I’m sure he’ll be turning up in quite a few other places as well, so if you know of anywhere that he’ll be let us know by posting a comment here. I’m not sure where we’ll see him yet, but the Corris Craft Centre sounds appealing to me this year.

Well, Santa arrived as expected and there were presents under the tree. Here are a few photos of Morgan on Xmas morning…

Long time readers of this blog will know that is know a family tradition to go Xmas tree-hunting in the run up to Christmas. Previous posts here will show that we usually meet up for our annual Xmas Tree Hunt at Brockley Combe Forest, cut down a tree, wander around aimlessly for a while and then drive all the way back home. All very nice, but now that none of us live anywhere near Brockley Combe it is quite a trek and there isn’t really much to do there other than cut down a tree. Yes, its a nice walk, but even that is over ground we have trod on every year, so we thought it would be good to do something else this year.

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time mountain biking in the forests around here and they are having a Christmas Market at Coed-y-Brenin this year so we thought that would be the perfect place to go. The market will provide a craft and food fair for the girlies, Santa’s going to be there for the children and there will be elves in the forest, there’s a cafe for lunch and plenty of walks to do on new trails with new views and of course a few of us will be able to go mountain-biking too. Hopefully it will be a good day out for everyone and it looks as though everyone will make the trip up from Bristol too.