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Published: March 18th 2023
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We picked up our camper van, Art, from Bangor, Wales after a gorgeous and easy ride through the rolling English countryside. Train travel is really the way to go here. I found the van hire on quirky campers.com, which rents out privately owned vehicles all over the UK and elsewhere. Art is lovingly owned by a couple who designed and built it themselves and who travel all throughout Europe, and it is easily our favorite van we've rented yet as far as the design and space goes.
The owners left a perfect cd collection of British rock, and Dennis was delighted to be driving through the harrowing narrow winding roadways driving a large manual shift box van whilst listening to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden. We were lucky to have arrived with no rain, but the weather quickly turned into rain, sleet, snow and hail as we left town and up into the mountains. We quickly understood why Sir Edmund Hillary and his team practiced for Everest here on Mt. Snowden, the highest peak in the U.K.
Dennis made fast friends with an even bigger Tolkien nerd than himself in an outdoor shop when he recognized a
Sauron tattoo on his forearm. One can't help but picture every fantasy story and legend while driving through the spooky and magical landscape here. It's no surprise Tolkien was largely inspired by the Welsh language and myths and it attracts many to this area for that reason. The Sindar elvish language was based on Welsh in the lord of the Rings novels. While speaking of language, Welsh is one of the oldest and most difficult languages in Europe. The longest town name we drove through is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, to give you an idea.
The Welsh are fiercely proud of their unique culture and traditions, and have spent over 1,000 years trying to fight off the Romans and then British to keep their ways of life. There is still some nasty discrimination against the Welsh seen today, allegedly some BBC commentator is quite notorious for weighing in with his anti-Welsh prejudice regularly. Oh I'd be remiss to neglect to mention King Arthur was Welsh, hence the red dragon (Pendragon) on their most awesome flag. Apparently the British over time appropriated the King Arthur legend to their own, but it was originally bore right here in the north of Wales.
We
spent 3 days driving around just a small area in the NW of Wales around the national park of Snowdonia, Conwy, Betws-y-Coed, Caernarfon, Bangor, Angelsey, Beddgelert, and Porthmadog. We easily could have spent 2 weeks or more just for the north to have time to see it all. We visited beautiful small villages whose names I couldn't even try to pronounce, walked on desolate long stretches of beach, and explored castles and medieval walled cities. Wales has more castles than any other country, over 600, which averages 1 per square mile.
The wind and rain was almost constant until our last day, but our caravan was dry and cozy and we had a thermos of tea always in hand. As Billy Connelly said "there's no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes" and we didn't let it interfere with our time outdoors. We couldn't help notice just how outdoorsy the locals are, and almost all with dogs in tow hiking wearing rain jackets and sweaters, and allowed entry into absolutely everywhere, they'd love their dogs here!
And with that we are off to Ireland for our last few days, taking the 3 hour ferry from
Holyhead, Wales to Dublin, Ireland Wales is surely a country we will return back to one day soon.
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