Jeff and I were invited to spend the weekend with the Salmon Family in Wales. Imy works with Jeff, Will and Imy invited us down for the weekend for one of the annual pheasant shoots on her family farm. We left Thursday evening after work and got up Friday morning rested and rearing to go shoot some birds!
The Salmon farm is quite large, so we had the opportunity to go on several different drives. The boys went in pairs for the shoot and I went with the beaters and flaggers. I learned so much about the sport! So Julian, Imy's dad, raises the pheasants on the land every year. For the shoots, there are beaters that go through the woods with dogs to drive out the pheasants. Once the pheasants are out of the woods, the flaggers are at the edge to scare the birds and make sure they fly high enough to be shot.
We had the perfect day.. it was blue sky and not that windy :)
Imy was a pro at the shooting... she got several birds through the day!
The boys didn't do bad either...
with a bird or two!
I got some hands on guidance from Imy... but didn't end up shooting anything.
After the shoot, Imy's mom, Maggie, had a delicious feast ready for us back at the house. It had a proper Thanksgiving feel to it. They also had a beautiful christmas cactus that was in full bloom. It made me think of all of Othermomma's flowers and christmas cactus. Love you!
After dinner we played the UK version of Apples to Apples. We had no idea the number of references that we would not know.. but we still had a good relaxing and hanging out.
The next morning we got up and went to the local museum, The Judge's Lodge. They had tape audio recordings for the tour! It was actually a pretty good tour in a historic building.
Over the weekend we learned quite a bit about Wales. I had no idea that it has its own language (Welsh) .... or that it has one of the highest population of castles due to the border between England.
They had a few props to play with on the trip...
Of course the guys played a little with them
After the museum, we went to a great local pub. They had hops hanging around the whole place. Hops are a very popular to grow in this area of Wales. We saw several tall vine looking things on the way in and didn't realize that it was hops. Turns out that Imy's dad grew up picking hops for his summer job.
After lunch a few people went on a good little hike to the top of the ridge and walked back home. I was feeling more like nap time! But the pictures from the walk look like they had some awesome views!
Here is one of the sheep on the farm
Later on that evening, we were relaxing by the fire and Will finally introduced us to Settler of Catan! The name does not sound like it would be fun... but you shouldn't judge a book by its cover or name I guess. This is by far my new favorite game! Even though the boys dominated with the wins... I highly recommend it for the next game night... we even went out and got the game for ourselves :)
Overall it was a great weekend in Wales!
On the way back to London we stopped at the Welcome to Wales sign for our last group photo! Special thanks to Imy for inviting us to your home and sharing this awesome weekend with us!
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