Ross-on-Wye 15/7/13 to 16/7/13

We left Cardiff and drove to Ross-on -Wye. We are now back in England. Ross-on-Wye is a town on the river Wye. We are staying in the Royal Hotel where Andi and I stayed in 2009. It is a very nice hotel with a lovely bar and terrace area overlooking the river.

Yesterday we drove to Hereford to the cathedral to see the Mappa Mundi, the medieval map of the world. It is in a special newly built part of the cathedral. This area also houses some of the oldest illuminated books, a copy of the Magna Carta and a medieval chained library. This whole area is climate controlled and strictly maintained. No photos, of course, so I took some photos of photos so I could put them on the blog.

Sorry about the photos of the books, library, Mappa and Magna Carta are all sideways. I couldn't rotate them. After we left the cathedral we drove to the town of Hay-on-Wye, which is the Welsh book town. It has 40 book shops! It is a lovely little village, but many of the shops were closed because it was a Monday. They are obviously much busier on the weekend. They even have a gold letter box which shows they have an Olympic gold medal winner from their town. We even found a Mr Magee in a book shop!

We went back to the hotel for the evening. Had a lovely dinner, a seaside platter to share, just yummy!

It's very hot in England at the moment. A heat wave with temperatures in the high 20's and up to 30. It's been incredible! Sleeping is not easy as there is very little air conditioning in most English hotels.
Today we fed the ducks at breakfast and then drove to Slimbridge to the Wetland Centre. There are heaps of amazing water birds there, including hundreds of flamingoes of different types. We had a lovely time there. I went there in 2000 with Jen and it was just as good today.

Tomorrow we leave Ross-on-Wye and go to Cheltenham.

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