Thursday – A Quiet Day

We are starting to wind down our activities as the trip nears its end. We leave Wales on Saturday, overnight near Newbury, England, spend a final night overseas at Gatwick Airport, and fly back to Las Vegas on Monday. We’ll be home on Tuesday.

Today was the coolest and rainiest day of our trip, but it was still only an on-and-off drizzle, nothing to get excited about. We started the day doing something indoors, a visit to the Sunderland Heritage Trust just across the channel in Pembroke Dock. A Sunderland is a British flying boat (or sea plane) that was an important coastal defense and submarine hunting aircraft during WWII. It was thought that they were all had been lost in battle during service. Then divers right in Pembroke Dock, once a Flying Boat Station, discovered a Sunderland T9044 submerged in the harbor. The Sunderland Trust is dedicated to eventually bringing the T0944 to the surface and restoring her. It’s a huge undertaking.

Meanwhile, the Trust has restored the old base chapel (and movie theatre during the week) into a museum containing many stories of both ship building at Pembroke Dock and the Sunderlands. Artifacts from the sunken T0944 are on display. One amazing story is about Sgt. Ogwyn George whose Sunderland was shot down over Norway by the Nazis while on a reconnaissance mission. The nine RAF airmen who lost their lives that day, 9 April 1940, were the first Allied servicemen to lose their lives in the defense of Norway. They are remembered with a special ceremony each year at their graves in the Sylling churchyard, north east of Oslo. There was one survivor – Welshman Ogwyn George, the radio operator – who fell 3,000 feet without a parachute, hitting trees and landing in unusually deep snow. He was discovered and rescued by a Norwegian.

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Then we decided to take a chance and drive to Angle, a small village on the coast, despite the clouds and rain. It was only about 12 miles but on very narrow roads. We stopped at West Angle Bay for a look at the beach and had a walkabout. Right at the beach we discovered the newly opened Wavecrest Café and decided to try it for lunch. It was excellent. Elaine had a nice cheese and leek pie while I had a locally caught crab removed from and then served in its own shell (no claws to deal with).  Both came with couscous salad and delicious home-made coleslaw.  We saw the ferry going by as we ate as Elaine is indicating in the photo, but it doesn’t show up.

After lunch we returned home for a quiet afternoon. Cocktails at 5:00. Dinner was at the Marina Bar and Restaurant where we dined on Tuesday night. We had deemed it worthy of a return trip.  The servers there are all young, enthusiastic, and very friendly.  Our server tonight had gone to high school and college in Florida but was now back living in Wales.  And the food is excellent.