A Tour of North Wales – Bodnant Gardens

We’ve done it again… Gone away on Thursday and Friday which means that when we return late on Friday evening with a weekend before us, it feels as though we’ve already had a weekend away. Whilst away we had a whistle-stop tour of North Wales. Geocaches around Dolgellau and Blaneau on the way up, a visit to the National Bee Centre, the Welsh Food Centre and Bodnant Gardens, a wander around Conwy, a quick visit to Llandudno, a night in Pentre Halykn, Surfing at Surf Snowdonia in Dolgarrog, lunch at Treetops Adventure near Betws y Coed, a drive across country through Llangollen, some time in Welshpool and a campfire caching event near Llanfair Caereinion. I wonder what we’ll do on Saturday and Sunday?

We’ll start All the best, the beginning in this blog post with our visit to Bodnant.

First stop on Thursday morning was to meet up with our friends from the Aberystwyth Beekeepers Association for a tour of the National bee Unit at the Welsh Food Centre. We stopped off en route to do a few geocaches all of which were just a short stroll from the car. We arrived with time for a quick coffee and cake before wandering off for what has to be said was a fairly boring tour of the bee unit and their apiary. We didn’t really learn anything about the bees or their husbandry, just the fact that they were building a new shed and had a bench for people to sit on to put their bee-suits on. Not to worry, we were really here to go to Bodnant Gardens, so after the tour and a little talk by one of the directors who just seemed to want to spend his time defending the existence of the National Bee Unit we had a quick look around the Farm Shop and then headed off to Bodnant Gardens.

It was a bit of a grey day, but at least it wasn’t raining – yet. In fact we were lucky considering the forecast and managed to avoid the rain all day so we had a pleasant walk around the gardens. The gardens themselves were nice, but I don’t think we were there at the right time of year because there was nothing that really wowed us – Maybe it was just us though as we were quite underwhelmed by the offerings available at the kiosk in The Dell there as well as they didn’t really have anything.

It was a pleasant afternoon wandering around the gardens though. The Beekeepers all split up and went their own ways so it was just the three of us, taking photos of the flowers, Morgan climbing trees and trying to photo bomb everything and even a family selfie or two. So, here are some photos.

We then headed off to Dolgarrog for a quick peak at Surf Snowdonia where we were going on Friday before driving into Conwy for dinner and an attempt on a geocache that we couldn’t find. Next was Llandudno for a quick look but by now we had had enough to go looking for caches so bought some pudding and breakfast in Tesco, filled up with petrol ready for the next day of adventures and headed off along the A55 to Pentre Halkyn where we were staying in a Travel Lodge for the night.

Tags: BeekeepingGarden