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Published: March 25th 2008
Ridiculously awesome weekend in Wales over Easter. I didn't sleep much the night before after a very late Shabbat dinner at the Taylors and getting up early to make the 7am bus from Victoria. I also didn't get much sleep on the trip, so I was working almost entirely off adrenaline - but it was so worth it and I never felt like I was too tired to do anything along with the group.
Luckily, we had a great bunch of people who were cool and fun and we all got involved with each other (ok, to be fair there was a group of 6 Aussies, who while definitely friendly did keep to themselves a bit - which perhaps is partially everyone else's fault for not engaging them enough - though they were real fun people when I did interact with them). Like all English-speaking tours any where in Europe it was about 2/3 Aussie, which is always fun.
The tour guide was also great; he was a Scott leading a tour of Wales, so his accent with the place names was ridiculously cool (in the interests of full disclosure, I am spelling things below phoenetically, or as best as I
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The obligatory "standing on both sides of the border" picturecan), plus he told these stories that often went nowhere but were great to listen to like: "I had a girlfriend once...that's it." Good fun to go drinking with, too. To be fair, he did know a lot of stuff and had lots of great info on the places we went by - he kept us laughing, too, which is a great skill as a tour guide, particularly with a group of 30 20- and 30-somethings.
Saturday, March 22nd:
Up early this morning - set the alarm for 5:45, but Bethany called at 5:20, so I got out of bed after our conversation, took what I knew would be my last nice, long, good shower for the next few days, grabbed my bag and headed off to the tube. I got to the Haggis Tours office a bit early and chatted with a few of my companions as we waited for the bus. I first met 2 American girls (Hilary from Maryland and Shellene from New York) living and working the area, an Italian girl named Anita working as and Au Pair and an Aussie named Jemma. I could already tell it was going to be a fun trip,
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Guess which side is England as more and more people wandered in over the next half hour or so.
I boarded the bus just about last, so I got jammed in the back corner between Hilary and another American (actually 2 guys, Kevin and Kyle, who rotated between the middle seat next to me and the seat to the side next to a Canadian named Ciara). Kevin had just gotten engaged and was a teacher on Spring Break, so he and Kyle were taking a week and half in the UK. Kyle (heretofore named Kylie) was the first victim of our tour guide's gaffs - Dougie, the tour guide's, first words on the bus were "Fuck! Ok, Kylie? Kylie?...Kyle?"
The drive out to Wales wasn't too bad - only a few hours before we had crossed the Severn River over the new bridge, which is a very pretty, elegant structure. We stopped for a quick picture at a Norman castle dating to 1067 and for the requisite standing on both side of the border in the middle of the bridge pic - a la the Rio Grande. The next stop was Tintern Abbey. It's an absolutely gorgeous medieval abbey that Henry VIII almost totally razed
as he began the transformation of his kingdom from a Catholic to an Anglican state. So the ruins a really cool and quite picturesque. There's also a little church on the hill overlooking the abbey, which has a little graveyard that has been in use for hundreds of years - and unlike the abbey, is still being used - around ruins of another centuries-old little church. The view of the abbey from the curch on the hill above is perfectly medieval.
After Tintern Abbey we headed on down the road to Caerphilly for lunch and to take a look at the next castle on our tour (yes, we saw lots and lots of castles, but that's ok, b/c I like castles), Caerphilly Castle which is another medieval castle in spectacular ruins. It's very impressive, with the moat around it and thick, heavy walls - some of which are tiled over and crumbled a bit. It looks like a large fortification should. I grabbed a quick bite here with 6 Aussies who came together on the tour. One of them, Louise, and I chatted as the 5 others ran into 2 other stores until the came back...they never reappeared, so we
decided to take a walk around the castle, which is about a 15min walk, and ended up finding the rest escaping the cold in the nearest pub. Yeah it was cold, but the castle and grounds were pretty impressive - and there are plenty of pubs in London.
From there we headed off up into Brecon Beacons National Park, which is really another gorgeous stretch of mountains and valleys, and lots and lots of sheep. Because of the absolutely crazy weather, we got snow for a few minutes - the Aussies went nuts - and 5min later across a little lake, there was no trace of it. Interestingly enough, there was a soft-serve truck at the lake, so we decided to stop for a cone before going on our way. In the park, we stopped for a while to take a hike down a valley with a stream running through it that had some very pretty little waterfalls and such. It was a bit chilly and very lush there, so the Aussies and the South African were a bit out of their element, but it really was a lot like New England in winter, really even a bit milder. We
all crossed the little stream a few times, took some pics and just enjoyed the chance to stretch our legs. It was a bit muddy, as evidences by Marcia (one Aussie girl of the Group of 6) completely wiped out on the way back up the trail as she tried to negotiate crossing a log that had falled over the path.
The last bit of traveling for the day was to Abergervany through the park and out onto the highway. We did pass by the little town of Abervan - the site of a very sad tale of the child victims of the worst UK mining disaster as a slag heap avalanched down the hill. The name of place and the memory is still very strong in that part of Wales.
We made it to the hostel safe and sound, the hostel was the pub, which was cool, and we threw our things down, grabbed a few pints of Brains (the local Welsh ale - really good stuff, btw) and watched some of the rugby. We ate and drank in the pub/hostel all night - the pie was very good - and Kylie was the only one who spotted, and
was willing to try, the Faggots, which are basically the Welsh equivalent of Haggis. I did have a bite, and they tasted like meatloaf. There was also karaoke...after some goading, I did do a few numbers to thunderous applause, though I think it may have been just for the fact that I was done. Everyone really got into it, and after that grand old time, a few more rounds, and a bit of snooker, most everyone called it a night.
Sunday, March 23rd:
Didn't sleep great last night - didn't really expect to, I guess - as I woke up a few timed before my alarm went off. Jumped in line for the shower, and took a quick one with a broken head (it was shooting at about mid-chest on me). Beyond the inauspicious start, though, the morning went off well. Grabbed a cup of tea and some cereal as I sat, chatted and watched the weather forecasts with the rest of my tour-mates in the lobby of the hostel that had served as the main room of the pub the night before. We all managed to get off our asses and into the bus, as well as our
new t-shirts (mine was comically small); I snagged a spot next to Kim, a Canadian from Edmonton, and day 2 was off.
Our first stop was a quiet little town of Hay-on-Wye, espescially on Easter Sunday, that consisted of what seemed to be more 2nd-hand bookshops than people. We had about an hour to wander around, just as the shops were starting to open. For some reason, we found one of them to be just shelves in an open courtyard full of books. It was just odd, espescially considering that it had been raining and snowing on and off for the past 2 days, and Wales is not exactly Arizona weather-wise. This town has an interesting character, who we didn't get a chance to meet unfortunately, that is a bit of an eccentric. He declared the town an independent republic - everyone just sort of played along. So I went a got myself a Hay-on-Wye passport for 75p. Well worth it.
The rest of the real daylight hours were spent heading Northwest through Wales into Snowdonia National Park, enjoying the views around us. The weather was just like yesterday: we got snow and rain and sun and the temp climbed
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Aussies in the snow for what may be the first time ever and fell again. Most times we stopped to take pictures and walk around, checking out the scenery or the weather, I was fine in just a sweatshirt (the Aussies weren't, in fact the Canadiens sometimes needed a heavier jacket). We also made it to the lowest in a chain of 17 or so resevoirs in the Elan Valley. It was massive and in addition to seemingly going on forever, it was overflowing over the dam, giving it an sense of purely awesome power of water as it thundered.
The hilight of the day on the road, though, was the ruin of Castle Y-Bere. This is an old Welsh-built castle that was destroyed by Edward I in his invasion of Wales. What remains are really just the bare bones and bases of the walls, so it is not all that impressive in and of itself, but you can see that it once commanded the valley in which it sat and that it was once a very impressive and imposing place. This is also where we got the group picture - one different pic with each of everyone's cameras - so yes, 29 pics. Which amounted to a lot of different posing.
The last place before hitting our 2nd hostel, this one on Carnarfon (NW corner of Wales, just across the straights from the Isle of Anglessey), was Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (The Church of Mary in the Hollow of the White Hazel Near the Fierce Whirlpool and the Church of Tysilio by the Red Cave, for those of who who don't speak Welsh). This little town has another name, which everyone uses when talking about it, but added the last 50 letters or so to attract tourists - so far it has worked, at least with the Haggis Wales tours. It was a fun little stop, and suppossedly, if we had made it there earlier, they would have done the little touristy passport stamp.
We made it back to the hostel and got our rooms, some people showered, napped, etc, and we all sort of split and ate where we could. Most of us went to a little pizza/kabob place up the street from the hostel and came back for some chatting and eating. The we were off to the pub for some drinks, snooker, darts and generally acting like idiots. Kevin and Kylie had the idea to do a pub crawl around, but
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5min after the snowfall on the other side of the resevoir as it was already 11:30, all the other pubs but one had closed. So about 12 of us went there for some more drinking and some dancing. Then, that place closed down, so we moved onto a club on the main square. On the way, we bumped into a friendly local who regaled us of the story of David Llyod George (though not a Welshman, he did have a great history in Carnarfon as a politician) and also happened to be the contractor who had just laid down the slat in the town square. In the process, we "lost" 2 of our compatriots - 1 male, 1 female. We didn't realize this until a bit later. Eventually, we all decided it was time to shut down and we crashed back at the hostel.
Monday, March 24th:
Today began with a bang - or rather an alarm. One of the girls in my room, Shellene, had decided to get up early to make toast. This in itself was not a problem, but once she removed the toast, the toaster emitted a large plume of smoke, setting off the fire alarm. Everyone in the house woke up, including the none-too-happy owner.
miss whippy
Because you have to stop for ice cream I made it down to the ground floor, a level above the kitchen, to hear him yell "Who burnt the toast?!" and Shellene reply "The toast is fine!" Which, I guess, it was - it was the toaster that had a problem. After a nice shower, I slowly woke up with some breakfast and we got on the road back towards London and the end of our journey.
After making fun of Shellene for a while, we made it to Llangolyn - a little town on the road back towards England. It really is a cute, quaint little place, where we all got our souvniers that we needed and grabbed lunch for the road. The town also had what appeared to be the longest name for a shop EVER - see the picture, I'm not spelling it out here - and a river that ran through it. Dougie suggested a certain little place near the bus parking lot that had some great little Cornish Pasties, which I grabbed for the road.
To be fair, most of the day was spent on the road. After leaving Llangolyn, I tried to get some sleep on the bus. I failed. So, I got
to see all the lovely scenery of places like Birmingham (very ugly) and the heavy traffic on the way to Stratford upon Avon. Stratford is another quaint little town, but is completely overloaded by tourists - for obvious reasons. I went off to see Shakespeare's final resting place in a little church just outside of the main heart of town. Next was his birthplace, which I didn't have time to really go into and get a feel for, but looked tudorish enough from the outside. Now, I know I always complain that I see plains Indians in every European town I go to, but not today - today I saw Morris Dancers! A troupe of 8 or 9 springy-dressed men who danced in little squares with flowers and bells.
Then it was back to London through terribly heavy traffic - to be expected on a bank holiday, really. Interestingly enough, when we got off the bus, we all just scattered. There was barely a goodbye to be said at the bus. People just hustled off to their trains, busses, etc.
Great few days with people who were a hell of a lot of fun. I was glad to make
it home, though, for a nice, long shower and some sleep.
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