Holidays 16.8 - Sweeping Up And Ending

The Queen gets longer at Balmoral but hey ho OG and Groupie must leave the country estate today and revert to the sunny North of Birmingham - Groupie to hard labour and OG to try to make some discernible progress on his doctoral thesis. It has been a great break and we seem to have dodged the terrible weather that has affected the Midlands. Pleasingly it is raining on the island as we pack up - always nicer to drive away from inclement weather.

Whistler included himself in the mural

We did make it back to Plas Newydd for a mooch around that most habitable of country piles. As ever I loved the Whistler mural. It graces the dining room so that lucky guests were either facing the beautiful Menai Straits or the imagined glories of the mural. I bet food tasted good either way. It may not be highest art but, if pressed, it would win my vote as my favourite painting. It does however depend for its effect on being seen in situ.

Monster portions

It has been sitting rather prosaically on our route along the A5025 for the near two decades that we have been coming here but it took us until this Friday to try out the Panton Arms at Pentraeth. We had missed a trick. Really rather good - I enjoyed a couple of pints of Flintshire Bitter and the food was beyond passable: Groupie raved about the haddock and chorizo risotto and my burger with added pulled pork was generous and tasty. One to visit again.

The island is beautiful but it can be too tempting to keep visiting the same few places. Yesterday we broke new ground and were the better for it. Penmon Point itself was not new (although it had been several years since we were last there) but we headed westward on the coastal path and found some glorious new views. Fortified by that healthy staple, ready salted crisps, we later walked from bridge to bridge at Menai Bridge, commencing at the Telford suspension bridge and getting all the way (there is now a goodish new tranche of the coastal path that hugs the Straits) to its younger, vaster cousin, Stephenson's Brittania Bridge, before returning along the road. Very satisfying and it left us with a good appetite for our final dinner of beans on toast swilled down with champagne.

We walked from here ...

... to here

What you need at the end of a good day is a film that makes you smile. Despite its manifest absurdities, Independence Day did its job. Definitely not a great film but one that fulfils its limited purpose. And Will Smith is most certainly one of those actors who fills the screen. 5.5/10.