London to Bratislava (September 8, 2025)


Our guest house in Porthmadog. It was a quaint old building.
It rained all night but we woke up to a beautiful sunny day.
(Just a side note here that I forgot to put in the previous blog. The ships returning from delivering slate around the world came back with holds full of ballast. They had to dump it somewhere close to the harbour and a new section of land was formed by all that ballast.)
On the train looking across the water to Portmeirion.
Portmeirion.
 Harlech Castle again on the way back.
More fences and sheep.
Farm country.
I love the big trees in the field.
Shrewsbury Cathedral. Home of the Brother Cadfael  murder mystery series and a place of very narrow streets and Tudor style buildings. We rode through Shrewsbury in 2008 and there were no sidewalks, just the road and doors.  If someone had opened a door they would have knocked us off our bikes right into the cars beside us. A bit harrowing to say the least but we loved Shrewsbury.
Ozzy the ox at Birmingham Train Station. There was a rail strike and Roz in her magic had found some direct train tickets to Stansted Airport but we had to decide to give up our other tickets, a bus ride, and another train which was our original plan. It would be a longer train ride but would be direct. We voted for this so Roz headed off to the ticket booth with us in tow only to find herself alone at the booth while we were back taking pictures of Ozzy.
But Roz, Ozzy is super cool and huge.
After a night spent in hotel in Stansted we flew out with Ryan Air to Bratislava 
It is nice and warm.
Train ride to our hotel/apartment.
You can still see the Soviet influence.


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