Conway 3 - going stir crazy and a rail disaster

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Suzy is standing on our drive . Suzy is going stir crazy . Sion, Drag and Ba Ba are going stir crazy. Or perhaps it's me who is going stir crazy. The desire to travel is strong and we want to get on the road again. Time is moving slowly. Just as it did when I was a child. Waiting waiting for Christmas morning. It seemed to take forever to get to Christmas morning to be able to open presents .

Every weekend we seem as if we are floundering. We are in the doldrums thwarted by the weather. It is either too wet or going to be too wet , it's too cold or the weatherman has given cold winds tomorrow. It turns out too windy or there is too much snow to go anywhere. This weekend is the first weekend when the world of Britain starts to open up again for the season. Yippee it's half term.

A handful more campsites are opening their doors to visitors. On checking websites a few more National Trust properties are beginning their season and unwrapping all their furniture. . There are snowdrop walks at a nearby castle and other venues are opening for the half term influx of visitors. It can only get better, This week half term in Wales,next week half term in England and before we know it it will be March. The nights are getting lighter and with each week it improves.

Suzy is counting down to her habitation check in two weeks time. Once sorted we will have a weekend away with our shakedown list. The bedding can go back in, the food cupboards refilled, the water tanks filled. We cannot wait. I dont think I realised just how stir crazy I could become not being able to travel in the van and wake up to that different view every day. It is hard to believe we have had the motorhome almost a year. This time last year I was working full time - over the last year I have reduced my hours at work to 26 which equates to 3 days a week. Would I change things? - not really.

It's tax time and we have paid our road tax to the tax man. Our new tax disc has arrived and needs fixing in Suzy's window. Insurance sorted . It did cost more than we would have liked. Even taking me off it it has climbed to over £500 to include Bosnia. We struggled to find a company who were happy to include Bosnia even though we only needed insurance to travel the 22 odd miles across the country from Croatia in the north to Croatia in the South. At least next year it should go down again. The new route joining the north and south of the country is long overdue.

We sent off for our Tesco Rewards and they arrived yesterday. Monday we will ring Eurotunnel to book the September crossing. Another step towards the holiday.

8 weeks to go and we have been out for our first drive in Suzy. It was lovely to pay our insurance and get our certificates through the post. Our vignettes have arrived and also our rewards have been received and sent on to Eurotunnel. Costs of the holidays so far - insurance £538 per year, vignettes £36.00 and £51 paid for our train tickets. It is quite hard to cost out a holday but our first holiday and we need to remember to add in these costs averaged out for the year and also to add £220 van tax.

We have booked a break in two weeks - a weekend in the lovely Shropshire countryside staying in the newer 5* camping sites at Ludlow and Bridgenorth. Not too far to travel - a little over two hours to sites that will give us chance to look at the lovely town of Bridgenorth and ride the Severn Valley Railway and then on to Ludlow to see the castle. It should be nice start to the 2013 season.

Today we are down to 57 days away from our holiday and have taken Suzy for her habitation check. She passed with flying colours apart from a fridge which seemed to only work intermittently and a touch of damp in a locker door. Another cost of £190 to be added to the years holiday costs. We have approached the company we bought the van from to see if they will repair the locker door. Given our success in dealing with them over the past year it will be interesting to see if they play ball.

While she was being checked over we walked into the small town of Abergele. The weather was particularly awful with an Arctic wind blowing in off the sea. Our first stop a local cafe for a welcome pot of tea, a breakfast and a bacon sandwich which was delicious and ever so slightly salty. The warmth in the cafe was very welcome and we whiled away an hour. Abergele was an old Roman town and sits on the north coast of Wales in between more genteel Colwyn Bay and its more noisy neighbour Rhyl. It lies on the Irish Sea which looked particularly grey today. The waves whipping up the water-the wind turbines in the distance whirring in the wind. . The town centre of the town had the usual mixture of small shops, pubs, cafes and quite a few funeral directors. And of course empty shops. The main A55 runs right passed the town.

Our next stop after breakfast was to the church hidden away off the main street. The church was built originally in the Welsh style of a double nave and it is possible that one or other of the naves is 14th century. We believe that the church retains its medieval roofs although the doors were locked when we arrived and we did not get the chance to see inside. . The features of the church that can be dated to the 14th century are the rood screen, part of the font, a medieval oak chest and a few fragments of glass saved from the English Civil War when the church was occupied by Cromwells troops. What a shame we have lost so much of our history because of Henry VIII and the later civil war. There was a rather lovely oak porch added during Victorian restorations of the building which actually added to rather than detracted from the fabric of the building. By the lyche gate was the usual war memorial commemorating the men of Abergele lost in the First World War. We stopped for a while reading the names - 12 Jones , 11 Davies , a handful of Williams. As usual as we read the names we thought about the futility of war. Many of the gravestones stood but others were leaning up against the church walls. Luckily for family historians they were placed with the inscriptions clear to read.

Behind the church stood a rather poignant monument to the Abergele Rail Disaster something that we knew nothing about. The disaster occured on the 20th August in 1868 and was caused by runaway goods wagons. At the time it was the worst railway disaster in Britain. The Irish Mail train from London to Holyhead was being pulled by the powerful Prince of Wales. It seems it was travelling at 40 miles per hour which must have felt fast to the passengers more used to more sedate methods of travel. The train was late only by 5 minutes but put the train and the mail carriages into a dangerous position. Ahead of the train a goods train with 43 wagons left Abergele on the same line and they were in the process of being moved into sidings to make way for the Mail train. It seems that shunting went wrong and six of the wagons broke away and and moved off on their own down the incline towards Abergele. No-one was able to stop them. The trains collided part way down the track and derailed both of them. 33 passengers died and the cause of death was not the accident itself but the subsequent fire that broke out as the paraffin oil which was being transported ignited. This was used as lamp oil and was highly inflammable. The carnage left everyone in the back carriages dead burnt beyond recognition. Most of the passengers who died were nobility and their servants and relatives . The remains were buried in a communal grave and commemorated with a headstone put up by the railway company. Not one flower was placed on the graves and all looked sadly forgotten. A sad reminder again that train travel in the early days was fraught with danger.

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Photos

Abergele
Railway Disaster Memorial

Abergele
Victorian Church

Abergele
Church

Abergele
Sign on wall

Abergele
The Irish Sea - cold grey and windy . Windfarms out at sea

The Irish Sea
Looking towards Colwyn Bay