We entered Wales at 9:30 pm on Friday after the disaster that was England and started searching for a safe place to pull over and stay for the night. This is more difficult that it sounds as there is NO off street parking but eventually we found a place and pulled over. This turned out to be right outside a church and, if we were questioned as to why we were there, we had prepared a story about seeking sanctuary.
The next morning we woke to the lovely sound of rain falling on our roof. This is a pleasant occurrence while we are warm and cosy in our motorhome but was not quite so much fun when the rain persisted in Conwy, our first destination for the day. Needless to say our visit to Conwy Castle, which is in complete ruins and therefore has no protection from the rain, left us looking like a pair of drowned rats. It was still quite interesting to wander through the ruins and take in the views from the towers. I imagined Carol from Our Day Out standing on one of the ledges but felt the lyrics needed rewriting -
Why does it have to be this way.
Why does it rain, for days and days and days.
The clouds in the sky.
The rain not passing by.
Oh I just don't want to stay.
Cos it's been raining most of the day.
From Conwy we headed inland to Snowdonia with the intention of seeing Mount Snowdon. Unfortunately the rain kept falling at an increasing rate as we got closer. By the time we were passing cottages and BnBs with names such as 'Snowdon View' we were surrounded by clouds and mist and knew that the chance of sighting any evidence of the mountain was dim. The next train to the top was in over 3 hours (silly us didn't book) but a sign at the ticket booth admitted that there was virtually no visibility on the way up or from the top. And it was still raining.
We researched wether there was anything else to do in the area but the majority of things we were keen to do involved some level of being outdoors which was not at all appealing. The weather forecast for the following day was just as grim so we instead decided to continue on our way and find a place to stay lower down. Despite still being the long weekend we found a lovely place in the middle of nowhere and recovered from the day of windy and rainy driving, which had left both of us quite exhausted.
The next day we hit the road again and found ourselves nearing Aberaeron, a seaside town where Matt stayed with Ann (in some complex way related to the Bevans) in 2004. Completely without warning we knocked on her door and provided Ann and her daughter Enid, who happened to be visiting her mum from Cardiff, with a happy surprise. We had a lovely catch up over a cuppa and left them still in shock at seeing a grown up Matt at the door. We enjoyed lunch in the bustling colourful town at the New Celtic Restaurant, which boasted it had "Probably the best fish and chips you've ever tasted" and it probably was.
From Aberaeron we continued on to Cardiff which was such a great experience that it deserves a post all of it's very own.
It's worth noting that navigating in Wales is made difficult both by the fact that the signs are in two languages, and that the names of the towns are unpronounceable to us and don't stick in your memory. To combat this we created alternate pronunciations using almost the same letters:
Aberystwyth = Abba wrist watch
Dolgellau = Doggy lau
Blaenau Ffestiniog = Blue new festival
Tan-y-Bwych = Tan, you bitch!
Machynlleth = Macking... Let's! (said with lisp)
It's also worth noting that the iPhone autocorrect knew the correct spelling of all those town names.
To our Welsh-speaking readers, we hope we haven't offended your beautiful language too much.
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