For our final full day in Wales, we decided to visit the house and gardens at Plas Brondanw. This was the home of Clough Williams-Ellis who designed Portmeirion but is much less well known. The house now contains a free art gallery showing works by his daughter as well as works by living artists. There was a modest charge for the garden but the gallery was free.
The garden was modest but pleasant and the gallery was interesting although most of the works were rather too “modern” for our tastes.
After an acceptable lunch in their cafe, we explored some of the estate on the other side of the road. This included a large and quirky folly apparently given to Williams-Ellis as a wedding present. Clearly, he moved in monied circles!
There was also a rather clever construction based around an apparently pre-existing small waterfall.
We then moved on the inspect the nearby Osprey centre. We weren’t expecting to see very much as normally when you visit wild animal based attractions such as this you get met by someone who says “If only you’d been here last week. Two of our visitors caught a brief glimpse of an osprey”.
But no, they had two nests on poles a few hundred metres from the centre which you could clearly see through provided telescopes and which boasted genuine ospreys sitting and flapping about. You could also view live footage from cameras adjacent to the nest on large monitors. All round it was well worth a visit and they just asked for donations.