Gunpowder and plots – Bonfire Night at Bluestone

No doubt you’ll be holding your own display in the garden at home or attending one somewhere. You might even be making your own Guy Fawkes effigy to burn on a bonfire.

Poor old Guy Fawkes! He could never have envisaged how his failed attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605 would lead to centuries of celebration. He surely wouldn’t have appreciated becoming the modern, scarecrow figure that goes up in flames each year.

It is said that on the very night that the gunpowder plot was discovered, Londoners lit fires in the streets to celebrate. This may or may not be true, but there are certainly records of bonfire festivities being held in Bristol in 1607, when children rubbed their faces with ashes in imitation of Fawkes, who was supposed to have done so in order to camouflage himself whilst negotiating the darkness of the cellars under the Houses of Parliament.

Television presenter Josie d’Arby gets together with sisters at Bluestone and gets fit

For the second year running we’re very pleased to be associated with S4C’s Cariad@Iaith:Love4language programme which starts this week. Last year’s runner-up, TV presenter Josie d’Arby won a break here at Bluestone National Park Resort.

She’ll be trying to catch up on this year’s programme which includes BBC CBeebies presenter Alex Winters; BBC Wales Scrum V and Sports Wales presenter Lisa Rogers; Welsh tenor Wynne Evans – or Gio Compario from the TV ads; BBC Wales news presenter, Lucy Owen; rugby legend Gareth Thomas; former X-Factor contestant Lucie Jones; actor Robert Pugh and actress Di Botcher.

Here she tells the Bluestone Blog about her stay here at Bluestone and what a great prize it was to win – helping get together with her sisters for their first holiday together and how they got fit in the process:

Winifred gets surprise 90th birthday party with family at Bluestone

Great grandmother Winifred Rowlands loves coming on holiday to Bluestone with her family. It’s a great place for generations,  young and old to get together for a short break in the spectacular Pembrokeshire countryside.

Last weekend she arrived with her family for another break – but this time she had nearly 40 members of four generations of her family join her for a surprise 90th birthday party!

Winifred, known affectionately as Win, from Frenchay in Bristol, said: “It was a complete surprise, but ever so nice to have everyone together, especially in this lovely part of Wales where many of my late husband’s family come from and still live and close to where I spent my honeymoon.”

Organised by daughter Marion, from Bradley Stoke, she said they were determined to make the day special and Bluestone was somewhere her mother enjoyed visiting for holidays.

“When we were thinking of how to celebrate her birthday we appreciated that mum’s best present was to be surrounded by her loved ones, and she does love Bluestone where we stay regularly,” said Marion.

“There aren’t too many places where four generations, including a 90-year-old and a lively seven-year-old, can holiday together and both have a really good time.”