Our Big Adventure

WALES

Being so close to Wales we decide we might as well go and have a look, so after many train and bus timetables are consulted we’re off again. Avergavenny is our first stop and we leave the train, and our bags with the stationmaster, for a brief visit to this village. We stop for a pot of tea, (we have given up trying to find a good cup of coffee), and a Welsh Cake, which is sort of like a flat scone coated in sugar, and then race back up the hill just in time for our connecting train to Cardiff. Cardiff We had booked ahead our accommodation at ‘The River House’ a newly renovated hostel right on the banks of the Taff and opposite the Millennium Stadium, home of the Cardiff Blue’s Rugby team. We drop off our bags and head back out again into the warm sunshine and venture down to the bay area for a glass or two of cider. Like the coffee, we have switched from red wine to cider for two reasons. One, the red wine here is overpriced and secondly, it’s just not very good. Therefore, cider at the reasonable price of about 70p a 750ml can and readily available from any pub, supermarket or convenience store and packing the alcohol content of a good stiff scotch, cider is our new drink. The Welsh, like the English are all enjoying the unseasonably warm weather, and everywhere there are pale bodies ( and some burnt one’s) that have not seen the sun for months exposed in varying degrees, some of these guy’s should really leave their shirts on!. We take a day trip to see The Big Pit, a coal-mining museum where you are given a hard hat complete with a miners light and a belt with attached breathing equipment then lowered down 90m, or 300ft into a coal mine by a retired miner, and explained all about the workings of a coal mine. A very interesting afternoon and makes you appreciate not being a miner. Aberystwyth, Two day’s, 5 buses the first day and 3 trains and 3 buses on the second day, we arrive at Aberystwyth (pron Aber-ser-wth and must be said very quickly, (as it seems with all Welsh names). The town names are getting more difficult to say the further we get up the coast. You can just imagine Brian and I standing at the station and trying to book our tickets, just getting a confused look from the attendant. We have tried phonetic pronunciation but they seem to randomly skip vowels and consonants, I think if I had a lisp, I may have more luck. Take Wales for instance it’s CYMRU, who would have figured that buy the way it’s spelt. Welsh is spoken here as the first language, but once they realize we don’t understand, they quickly change to English. The accent is also changing as we go further north to be harsher and more guttural sounding. We visit World Heritage listed castles at Aberystwyth and in the beautiful walled town of Caernafon, both built by King Edward 1 in the 1200’s to protect England from the marauding Welsh . Caernafon Castle is where the Prince of Wales (Charles) had his investiture in 1969. We stay at a quaint B & B in Caernafon, Caer Menai, that is inside the walls of this ancient town, our room actually overlooks the tiny backyard, with a medieval watchtower in it’s back wall. Brian was interested in the Llechweld Slate Works at Blaenau Ffestiniog and we catch the bus to there and down into another mine for a self guided tour. The hills all around this town are piled mountain high with discarded slate and it’s probably one of the dreariest places we have seen in Wales. The rail line follows the northern coastline of Wales and we can only imagine how busy this area must be in the summer as we have seen literally thousands upon thousands of on-site caravans in park after park on both sides of the rail line. Along this coast the beaches do actually have white sand, as opposed to others further south that a stoney. Riding so many trains and buses we have lost count, we have now worked our way up the west coast, across the top of Wales and now are coming down through Snowdonia, in the centre on our way to Chester and back to England Day eight of our Freedom of Wales bus/train ticket and we are just about back to Leominster, our starting point, and where we have left our big bags in storage while we have travelled Wales. We certainly have gotten our monies worth from these tickets. They cost ₤69 each and we figure we would have at least spent triple this on all the buses and trains we have used in the last 8 day’s.

posted by Brian and Julie @ 6:09:00 AM