Visiting the National Football Museum

On a brief trip to Manchester, Cathy and I took the opportunity to visit the National Football Museum.

Our visit started with a photo op with some trophies. The Women's Euro trophy was built out of Lego. 

It was nice to be greeted by a staff member who was learning Cymraeg and was keen to practice! She also took the photos.

As the Euros are on, there was an interactive wall-chart where people could predict the results of the competition. Cathy decided Wales and England would compete the final. (Although at the moment it seems unlikely either team will feature.)

The exhibits feature a good mix of artifacts arranged by theme. 

I spotted a few mascots as well!

There are also plenty of cultural exhibits - showing how football has been represented in popular media. This brought back memories! It's a long time since I watched Escape to Victory but I want to now!

I found a couple of Shrewsbury Town references. 

The interactive football grounds need updating. The CCFC Stadium was missing it's top tier and West Ham were still at Upton Park, not the London Stadium. 

The bonus highlight of the day was having lunch with Connor afterwards in the Dug Out Cafe. We really loved meeting up with him on his home ground.

The museum entry is a "season ticket" that lasts for a year so hopefully I can spend a bit more time there if I'm in Manchester again in the next 12 months. 

And the Women's Euros have begun

Cathy very kindly put my When Saturday Comes wall chart up for the Euros.

Last night I got to wrote in the first results. That means the Euros have officially started!

We have another wall chart - it's the one we got free outside Caernarfon Castle on our recent holiday.

I like how there is a lot of Cymraeg on here - but it's a real mix of Cymraeg and Saesneg.

I'm not using this wall chart but the other side says "C'mon Cymru" so we have got that up on display underneath the other one.

Long hot summer - June 2025

June is probably my favourite month of the year. Long nights. Warm weather. It's usually busy. And it definitely was this year! 

It marked the end of the football season. I saw both Wales women's and men's team playing within a few days of each other to round off my season.

One of the big life events of the month was replacing dear old Marco the Polo. I'm now droving a Mazda 3, in "soul red" (their name for it) and we've called him Vincent. 

Here's a picture of Vincent looking suave and a teeny bit sandy on our holiday in North Wales at the end of the month.

My first long distance trip in Vincent was to Swindon because the British Thematic Association was holding its AGM at Swinpex, the annual stamp show of the local philatelic society. This year we had a presentation about daffodils, but there was surprisingly little Welsh content in the display. There was some, though.

Speaking of flowers, I went along to the Grangetown History Society's talk about Grange Gardens on the park's 130th Anniversary.

It was very interesting seeing pictures of the Gardens when they were newly opened, and also when it was turned into vegetable patches during World War 2.

There was even a cake, provided by the Friends of Grange Gardens. 

I've already mentioned our week on holiday in North Wales, where we encountered butterflies on Anglesey and played underground golf! 

But on the way back we stopped in Shrewsbury. Joy, our eldest niece, had her birthday during the week before we popped in, so we were able to give her some presents.

She so big now!

We arrived back home with just two days of the month left. On the last Sunday of the month we went to a big print fair at Chapter Arts Centre. 

I really liked this big print, but decided I didn't have the wall-space to do it justice!

And then on the last night of June, I accepted Sara's invitation to an event with Rhun Ap Iorweth, leader of Plaid Cymru. He was a very engaging speaker and came across as honest and realistic. I liked him. (He was funny too. When I told him I'd driven past his office in Llangefni a couple of days before, he told me I should have popped in!)

Sara is standing as one of the Plaid candidates in her area in next year's Senedd election. It was great to meet some of the other Plaid members who will be helping her try to get elected. 

And that was a wrap for a busy month!

Underground golf!

I'm a big fan of adventure golf courses and when Cathy told me there was an underground golf course in an old slate cavern, accessible only by an incline train, I knew what we were going to do on one day of our North Wales Holiday!

The course is at Llechwedd, just outside Blenau Ffestiniog, and is part of the Zip World complex. We just did the golf, but we did see some intrepid zipliners coming in to land. 

I was very interested in the train! It's more like a trolley on a very steep track. But it was still quirky and fun.

It's an 18-hole course at the bottom of the incline. There weren't many people in our time slot so we were able to go round at our leisure. 

The holes are themed around mining and industry, and it had a bit of a junkyard feel to it. 

Overall, I'd say this compared favourably to the mini-golf we played at Legoland back in April, but I did feel it was a bit pricey for an activity that didn't take much time (we were done and back on the surface after just over an hour). 

Also, there were no souvenirs about the underground golf, just for the zip lines, so we ended up not buying anything in the gift shop. It was a shame, because I would have liked a badge or something. (Especially as I won the round!)

Anglesey butterflies (and other beasties)

One of our days out on our North Wales Holiday was to Pilipalas Nature World on Anglesey. The centrepiece for the attraction is a butterfly house (pilipala means butterfly in Cymraeg) and it was probably the best tropical house we've experienced. Butterflies everywhere! 

The butterflies fly straight at you when you come in, and are very comfortable sitting on your shoulder to take a rest.

It's not just pilipalas at Pilipalas Nature World, though. There are small mammals, birds, reptiles, bugs and some fun farmyard animals in a small petting zoo - including a very needy goat called Dahlia who did not like me showing attention to any of the other animals when I could be stroking her!

Lots of fun lizards and snakes and things.

Just kidding - this was a model

I'd not seen zebra mice before.

The meerkat cafe overlooked the meerkats, which made for some fun viewing while partaking of refreshments. 

There was a very tame kookaburra who was happy to pose for photos. 

The kune-kune pigs were called Bert and Ernie and liked having their backs scratched.

And the rooster with a very fluffy bum was hilarious as well, strutting around in his feathery britches. 

We had a thoroughly enjoyable day out at Pilipalas and it's now on our list of places we would happily visit again.