This is Chirk Castle, which is near Chirk, Wales. Note the flock of black sheep. These are the result of breeding together the occasional black sheep that happen to occur (the opposite of an albino I suppose), and is one of only about 80 such flocks (including two in North America).

The castle was built about 900 years ago, and about 600 years ago it was bought by the Middleton family. Guy Middleton is now about 40 years old and owned it until a few years ago, when he sold it (along with 480 of the surrounding 50,000 acres the family owns) to the National Trust (which owns most of the castles in Wales), who then put £6 million into repairing it. Guy spends most of his time riding horses and hunting pheasants. Most of the castle is now a tourist attraction, but about 14 rooms are kept private (for the next 70 years), and Guy and his wife Emma (and their 4- and 6-year-old sons) live there sometimes.

Here is a 180° panorama from the Castle. This doesn't show the lovely little town of Chirk in the distance nearly as nicely as I remember it.

Here's a close-up of the middle of that panorama boosting the colour too much to highlight the town (and the rain that had just passed through – though it looked more real when we were there) – this photography stuff is definately more than just pushing a button, I bet some people could make a hobby or career of this!

It is a full-time job trimming the hedges (even more, I don't think they had hydraulic cherry-pickers in ye olden tymes).

About 100 metres from the castle, past a gate ...

... is a building that originally housed the electricity generators for the castle, but has since been turned into a summer cottage, originally for the castle's owners (who now live elsewhere). This is where we stayed for the next week.

The property has a good fence (below this picture) around it to try to keep the rabbits out.

The cottage is on a huge valley. The River Ceiriog at the bottom is the border between England and Wales, the castle was built to defend this border.

And is surrounded by sheep farms, with sheep as far as the eye can see.

Some sheep are fluffy with white faces.

Some have black faces.

They eat grass from sunrise to sunset, through rain and shine, they even sleep in the fields. For some reason, they don't shrink in the rain, even though wool does (I was quite concerned for them, as it rained when we were there – if it rains really hard, they do try to gather under trees though).

Sometimes they stare at you.

Sometimes they all munch together.

Grayson is quite hairy, but he is not a sheep. Our backyard had some huge trees.

We were near a town called Oswestry.

They are very modest.

In the UK, a huge system of canals were built for transportation (this was before railways). These were huge engineering and construction works, and in this case, the 46-mile Llangollen (in Welsh, LL is pronounced THL, with the TH as in they) Canal (which was completed just over 200 years ago) had to cross a valley, so this aquaduct was built. The taller structure is railway bridge built later.

The aquaduct is 70 feet high, and crosses the River Ceiriog (it is really weird to see two rivers crossing at right-angles on a map).

It uses a cast iron trough to keep the water from leaking.

Just after the aquaduct, there is a ¼-mile viaduct (tunnel). Here the tunnel ends in a huge man-made ravine.

This canal was built to transport coal and iron. Ironically, iron made it possible to build railways, and the canals are now obsolete, but now do a good business as tourist attractions, and you can rent a bed- and washroom-equipped canal boat for a vacation.

If there are two ways of doing something, then the English do it the opposite way we do. We use 110v power, they use 220 volt. We use 60 Hz AC, they use 50 Hz. We drive on the right side of the road, they drive on the left. We put our plumbing pipes in house walls, they put them on the surface. We push the top part of a light switch to turn it on, they push the bottom. We pronounce vitamin, aluminum, and controversy properly, they don't (they even spell aluminium differently). And here, they make a slide latch for a gate with the locking notches in the slider handle, not as part of the barrel.

Margot had a great time reading to Grayson and Diane.

And the sheep enjoyed listening too.

Here we are in the cottage's back room.

More reading.

Diane is very good at playing the game Set.

Chirk has a Cadbury chocolate factory, a particle board factory, and here is their "big box" Shannon Sales Furniture and Carpet Superstore (the other side has a sign saying "Thank you for your custom").

Here's is the town's telephone company central office (that's a microwave dish washed-out against the sky, the diesel back-up power generator is around back).

But I was most impressed that the bakery doesn't charge for slicing bread.

No matter where you go, there's a garbage pick-up schedule (they do recycling, but you need to take it into town yourself).

Bala, Ontario (near Gravenhust) was named after Bala, Wales. The drive there (about 100 km west) was gorgeous.

Can you see Grayson waving.

Can you spot the sheep.

The town itself is in the Snowdonia National Park.

Here's part of the main street.

Even the gas station is quaint (that's a kayak on the roof of the car, one of Wales' few lakes is nearby).

Here's the post office.

The area has many lead, coal, and slate mines. Here's a parking lot with slate slabs instead of concrete or ashphalt.

Y Bala (which is Welsh for "the outflow of the lake") is on Bala Lake (which they call Llyn Tegid), and is very pretty.

Strangely, there were fighter jets flying over the lake (and on the topic, military aircraft were constantly flying over London too).

But the area doesn't look anything like Bala, Ontario.

Shrewsbury and Ironbridge are east of Chirk, and this area is the heartland of the Industrial Revolution. It had water, iron ore, and some smart people figured out how to reduce the sulphur content of the coal enough to make good iron. A museum there notes that some companies charged a royalty for operating their engines (sort of like a software license fee), so they were high-tech in business practices also (or are we old-fashioned).

It was a 300 km drive from Wales back to Heathrow.