Southern England

I've just attended a one day conference in Southampton, and took the opportunity to take a nice tour of Southern England and Wales. The family and I went to see Stonehenge (tremendously cool, especially as you drive up to it - it sits right on the side of the road like it was a reststop or something), the Roman Baths in Bath (funny how they decided to build them in a town named Bath, huh...) and a small town in Southern Wales called Abergavenny.

Bath and Stonehenge were great, but the real fun was in Abergavenny. We attended a pretty well known food festival there. Southern Wales is absolutely beautiful. I had been lead to believe that Wales was very rural (and not in the good way...in the West Virginia kinda way) and downtrodden. That impression was completely wrong. Wales was almost idyllic. Small towns with sheep herds traveling along main roads. It's what I envisioned British villages would look like.

Anyway, the Abergavenny Food Festival was great. I attended a session called Perfect Partners, which was a talk about matching different cheeses with beers to maximize the taste of both. I was really impressed. My wife, who is an amateur chef, was loving it. She got to attend a session on chocolate, which she loved. All in all, a really good time if you like food. If you're able, I would highly recommend attending the Abergavenny Food Festival.