July 26 Harlech and Royal St. David's Golf Course

Up at 5:45, wrote up a day in this blog.

Breakfast with the gang. Dishes all done by 8:30.

Roger, David and Brian went into Harlec, about 3 miles and parked at the Pay and Display lot. Walked along the main street past some nice shops but none were open yet. Our purpose for going here was to see the Harlec Castle built in the late 1200s over a period of 7 years. It is now a Unesco World Heritage site. It is an amazing structure with it's outer walls still intact.

 Walking up the 141 steps in an inner turret you can see where the gatehouse apartments and suites are located.  At the top are some of the best views of the town and Royal St David's golf course. 

After spending about an hour in the Castle we stopped for refreshments and the hot chocolate was superb.

Walked back to the car and drove to pick up Steve. Had a message from the golf course to say that they could get us out early because the weather for the afternoon was looking poor. We rushed right over, got our gear out of the car, sorted the buggy and trolleys and were ready to tee off at noon instead of our scheduled time of 3pm.

Felt the first rain drop on 1 but it wasn't too bad until we reached 5 and it became fairly steady. There was nobody coming out behind us so we didn't really care. When else would you be able to say that we had Royal St. David's all to yourself. 

I happened to find this tribute on fence.

At any rate we continued to play until 13 and the club house was in sight. Did I mention that it continued to rain at times heavy? By then anything above and below our Open Jackets was sopping.  That meant hats, shorts, pants, gloves and hats, socks and shoes. And of course our golf bags. 

We made the wise decision to call it a day. 

Incidentally this would be a spectacular links course to play on a fair weather day. The fairways were generous,  the rough not to punishing unless you were badly off line and the greens in wonderful condition and very well constructed.  

We started for home at 3:15 and were glad to get to the house. We cleaned out our golf bags, shed the wet clothes and got into something dry. A drink of Glayva,  beer or rum didn't go amiss either. 

The Jackets from The Open were as good as advertised; fully waterproof, guaranteed for 3 years. Nothing inside them got wet. 

Off to the Victoria Inn at 6pm. It was fully booked  but ever persuasive Roger managed to talk us into a  booth.  I ordered Rarebit which is a toasted Welsh cheese product on a slab of bread and a serving of unknown pate. Both were good accompanied by an ale.

Home at 7:45. Everyone was using hairdryers to take the dampness out of their clothes and golf bags. It worked very well. We are antipating a 9:30 departure tomorrow.  Off to bed at 9pm.