A visit to Wales, part 1: family matters!

We took a simply lovely, though far too short, visit to Wales to visit our cousin.

... OK, let's see: your great-grandfather is my great-great-grandfather, right?

Yes, that was John Francis Xavier Goggin; here's a picture of him! He was born in 1847, in Limerick, Ireland.

OK, yes, that's my Irish side, for sure. But: 1847? Wasn't that the time of the Great Famine?

Oh, yes, definitely. I think they had to leave Ireland; pretty much everyone did. In fact, he was actually baptized in England in 1850; the family ended up in Hartlepool.

...

Wales is a beautiful place, particularly during late May, when the sun is shining and the grass is growing.

We stayed at an absolutely beautiful country house hotel.

The hotel was not far from LLandudno, a Victorian-era seaside resort, famous (or infamous) as, possibly, the place where Lewis Carroll stayed when he was writing Alice in Wonderland.

In addition to visiting the coast, we went walking in the Snowdonia National Park mountains, utterly beautiful, even on a day when the RAF are practicing their mountain-flying tactics overhead.

And we spent many lovely contented hours at the home of our cousins, which is nestled on a quiet country road, with a flock of sheep on one side and several mares with their colts on the other.

I'll have more to say about the entire trip later, just putting something short up now.