"Though lovers be lost, love shall not."

That's a Dylan quotation right there. Dylan Thomas, that is. Yes sirree, I have been in the land of one of the greatest Masters of the Simile of all time - unconvinced? "Smiling like a razor blade." Wowzers - as well as the land of Charlotte Church and her cheeky Vimto shots. The land of sheep and mining choirs. The land of Mr Tom Jones.

And we had a lovely pre-Valentine's/thank-God-above-it's-half-term break.

We walked and talked and made some plans and put the world to rights.

We spent a full hour on Sunday morning in bed with a coffee and the Saturday papers. That was a little bit glorious.

And I played with the camera.

We stayed at Pennant, near Llangollen. There was freezing fog when we arrived. It felt like we were on top of the world, although not in a euphoric way. More like a 'can't-actually-see-if-this-road-is-tarmac-or-a-dirt-path' kind of way. Look at that ice formation, I told Bedders. A theist would use that as part of a teleological argument for the existence of God.

Mmm, said Bedders.

There were woodland pigs at Chirk Castle. They were utterly monstrous.

They were definitely representative of the colour palette of the weekend, though.

We saw a sliver of blue sky in the gardens at Chirk.

But was it enough to make a pair of sailor's trousers? Bedders wanted to know.

Thank you, Paul and Claire for our National Trust membership-as-a-wedding-present. The perfect gift for a pair of utter nerds. You know us well. 

The animals on the farm had pretty Welsh names. This chap's girlfriend was called Beti.

We did a bit of hiking in between all the wine-drinking and blue-cheese-eating (obvs), for which we needed a map. I once again marvelled at how studiously Adam consults maps. I'm happy to wander*; he, alas, is not. 

My new walking boots are wicked. Merrell, don't you know. And I bought them with a wedding voucher**. Gerrin! Free boots!***

And then I did something very reckless.

On the way back, we stopped in Manchesterrrrr, land of the nasal twang. The land of the Gallagher brothers. Land of-OK, ENOUGH ALREADY!

And I purchased one of them ol' iPads. And I am clearly destined to be completely obsessed by it. Cue a lot of laborious faffing about with my photos from the weekend.

But I'm fulfilling my promise to work out how to make photos look prettier (I did actually vow that. Here)! Surely that must be worth a 69p app and a hell of a lot of fiddling?!

* OK, so I mean dither.
** Thank you, English department colleagues.
*** Well, significantly subsidised.