concher

We are staying at Thornbury Castle in July and want to go to Portmeirion from Bristol. What would you suggest?

MagicRat

First, you'll love Thornbury Castle. Make sure you have dinner there (as I'm sure you will).

Will you have a car? If so, I'd say it is a long leisurely drive from there up to Portmeirion. The direct way through Wales is slow, as there aren't really any fast roads up through Wales. Very beautiful drive though. The faster way would be to drive up the M6/M54 then the A6 from Shrewsbury. Still a long drive though.

Or are you planning to go by train? Possible to get to to Porthmadog (a few miles from Portmeirion) via Birmingham - would be about a 6 hour journey. Let me know if you need more details - Portmeirion is a fantastic place, and it's worth staying in one of the "village" rooms there.

Be seeing you

Alan

concher

Thanks Alan:

We are staying at Thornbury for 4 nights. It looks and sounds great. We are also staying at Portmeirion in The Castell.

At this time we were looking at the train. When we checked last year, there was a train from Bristol to Bangor, involving one change, and took about 5 1/2 hours.

Is leaving from Bristol, by train, better or should we consider another departure station?

Many Thanks.

Jim

flanneruk

If you're more or less in Bristol, it seems pretty bizarre to think about starting from another station.

But what's your love affair with Bangor? It's miles away, and on another coast. If you were starting from Prestatyn or Dublin, it might be a reasonable place to go through. But the nearest station's Minffordd. It's a long, slow (but occasionally stunning) chug through mid-Wales. But it avoids the hour-long can ride from Bangor and the pretty boring (IMHO) train journey that involves changing at Crewe and the tedious crawl along the North Wales coast (caravan park capital of the universe).

I realise the website leads the unwary to think Bangor's the place to aim for. But, ever since that ridiculous TV series, the operators of Portmeirion have laboured under the delusion that confusing people is a good thing.

MagicRat

Jim - Bristol is definitely the most obvious place to start your train journey - Bristol Parkway is closer to Thornbury than Bristol Temple Meads, and I think most of the trains north from Bristol stop at both. You could change at Birmingham for a cross country train to Porthmadog - within a mile of Portmeirion - this is probably the slower but more attractive option - or change higher up to the Bangor line. Bangor is about 20 miles or so from Portmeirion. Look at www.nationalrail.co.uk - you can then search around the options. Feel free to ask anything else - I live just south of Bristol.

Alan

MagicRat

Quite right FlannerUK - Minffordd is closest of all. And the Prisoner may have been ridiculous, but it was fun...