Wales

Last weekend, Laura, Kaley, Heather and I ventured to Wales.  We
jumped on a train at Paddington station, and three hours later we
arrived in Swansea, which is 30 minutes north-west of Cardiff.  When
we arrived in Swansea our friend Sheryl picked us up in her little
Nissan Micra.

and we drove to her beautiful flat in a small town north of Swansea. 
Sheryl is a Canadian working as a Social working in Wales.  Kayley is
a Canadian Social worker, working in London, and Heather is a Brit Nanny
from London.

Saturday morning we all packed ourselves and our luggage into the
Nissan and we began the three hour drive to north Wales.


The drive was extremely twisty and turny, and the roads were much like
Ireland.  No shoulder, and *just* enough room for two narrow cars. 
The landscape in northern Wales is great.  A lot of rolling hills,
then a lot of mountains.  We stopped for the occasional picture and a
quick lunch in a little road-side restaurant/pub.



Our eventual destination for the first day was originally undecided,
but we figured that we would aim at our B&B in Carnarvon then go from
there.

The B&B was very nice, and a very good price.

After we checked in, we drove to
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.

No seriously...

The second picture has the English pronunciation underneath the Welsh
spelling.  The third picture has the English translation.  Absolutely
crazy!

Then we drove to a spooky old castle.  It was a little too late to get
in, but it was neat to see from the outside.


The next morning we toured around Carnarvon castle.


We had the run of the castle, so we did just that.  Ran around and
explored the various passageways and extremely tight and winding stair
cases.  Some of the stairs were pretty dodgy and took a lot of careful
and slow steps to safely navigate.


Vertigo begins to kick in at the top of some of the turrets, but the
view is great.


Later that day we drove down into Snowden National Park, and went to
the base of Snodonia Mountain.  We would have loved to do a bit of
climbing/scrambling up the mountain, but we were running short on
time.  Instead I made mad dashes across the peat, trying to avoid
sinking into the water.  Unless you're standing on a rock, you never
know if you're going to get a wet foot.  There were lots of people
climbing the rocks and cliffs, so I figured I had to do a little
myself.


The relative solitude of northern Wales was a welcome thing.  The
Snowden valley screamed out "take pictures of me!" so I did what I was
told.


On our way back to Swansea we had lunch in a little town and I took this shot.


The drive back was pretty painless, but we had to catch a bus to
Cardiff because of rail engineering works.  We caught the last train
from Cardiff to London with literally 30 seconds to spare.  It was
indeed a whirl-wind tour of Wales, but that seems to be the way things
go for Laura and I, so it was fun.

Here are all of our pictures!

Next weekend we're flying off to Budapest Hungary.  Fun fun!