Welcome to the A to Z challenge, a blog post everyday of April apart from Sundays, covering every letter of the alphabet. My theme is travel, that thing that we haven’t been able to do over the last 12 months, so it seemed appropriate to reminisce about past travels we’ve taken, looking forward to when we can travel freely again.

Today we’re visiting the town I went to high school in, and getting lost in an historic market town with an impressive castle.

On the northwest coast of Tasmania is the town of Wynyard which is where I went to high school, and as my mum lives there we try to go home every few years – unfortunately due to the pandemic this is stretching into too many years between visits.

We love walking around the town as there are some really pretty older houses, and the gardens are beautiful, so as we go in different seasons there’s always something new to see.

• 

• 

• 

• 

We flew home to Wynyard for our wedding arriving 10 days before the service, so there are several spots around the town that are special to us from that momentous day.

This is St Brigid’s Catholic Church which was built in 1911 in the Romanesque style which is quite unique in Tasmania and a really good landmark in the town for when you’re giving directions to people.

One of the lovely things about Australia and especially Tasmania is the wide streets and roads, so different to here in the UK where there’s often only room for one car and you have to make use of passing places. Another iconic image in Wynyard is this row of palm trees, and even though a lot of Australia is very tropical, Tasmania is much cooler and gets quite a lot of snow in winter, and occasionally in summer, so these trees are slightly out of place. We spotted this great camper van when were home last time.

• 

• 

What do Amsterdam and Wynyard have in common? They both celebrate the tulip in an annual festival. That’s right, on nearby Table Cape there is a large tulip farm and when they are in bloom it creates a beautiful patchwork of colour. In the main street there are chairs that when closed look like tulips, and here we have my beloved and my mum demonstrating them.

• 

• 

The last touristy thing I’m going to highlight in this little town is the Ransley Veteran Car Collection which is housed at the Wonders of Wynyard, the tourist information centre. I think we visit every time we’re home as my beloved is a bit of a car obsessive, and it’s good to see him so happy but a little embarrassing when he starts drooling over them.

I thought I would share an incident that happened the first time we visited the historic town of Warwick in the midlands of England. It was in 1998, before we were married, and we went to explore the castle which was built for King Alfred the Great in the 10th century AD. Arriving in the town we parked in a small car park near shops and walked to the castle entrance.

The castle was beautiful and really worth a visit. When we exited the castle we left through a different door, as of course the exit was through a gift shop, and unfortunately for us a different side of the castle. We then proceeded to take 1.5 hours to find where the car was hiding from us. It was light when we left the castle and dark when we finally found the car park. I think it was quite a good test of our budding relationship, going round in circles in a strange town and maintaining a sense of humour.

We did learn from the experience, and every time we visited Warwick after that, we parked in the only high-rise car park in the town. At least then we only had to remember what floor it was on, rather than the area of town.

And now, just because I can, I’m going to share three of my favourite images from our wedding day in Wynyard.

• 

• 

• 

Thanks for stopping by and make sure you visit other bloggers who are crazy enough to be doing the challenge with me – Click Here to visit the master list of participants.

Stay safe and have a wonderful day.

Previous A to Z posts:

2018 – W is for Weird and Wonderful

2017 – W is for Whisky

2016 – W is for Walking