Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (Contd)

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Ok, for some reason, the previous entry was cut off early. So, here is the exciting conclusion to my trip to Wales...


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 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. 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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