Still finding it difficult to finish painting figures at the moment, preparing lots, a world of plastic conversions! Napoleonic Hungarians and Grenzers, Westphalians for 1809, Austrian dragoons, hussars and uhlans so fun but no finished product. I have spent the summer working in Wales which is stuffed with castles but I only went to two, one of which I failed to take photos of and another I walked through to go and get a coffee at the weekend when my wife came down to Cardiff. Caerphilly castle is the second biggest castle in the UK after Windsor and I got to go there for the first time since March 1st, 1979, I happily climbed all over the castle as a pre teen child on my own as health and safety was something that largely didn't apply much in those days, my dad was working in the area so I had to tag along which in the quid pro quo meant I got to go to a castle. It's enormous with a moat and concentric walls and lots of towers including one that's at a mad angle which is supposed to be after it was slighted by team Cromwell, either that or lousy foundations?
It's a great big monolithic lump with only the windows and doors dressed masonry. It survived a few sieges but the same family owned Cardiff castle and once it wasn't in the front line after Edward's conquest of Wales it fell into decline and a lot of what we see is late nineteenth/ early twentieth century reconstruction but definitely one of my favourite castles.
The other castle is Cardiff castle which is in the centre of the city and was nice to wander through it to get a coffee, more reconstructed Roman walls around the outside, paid for by the same family who funded Caerphilly and lived in the other castle we visited, castle Coch, which they pretty much entirely rebuilt and I haven't got any photos of , the keep on top of the motte is still original .
Other than that lots of prep, but I will finish painting some stuff sometime!
All the best,
Iain
