Wales Part One

I've been back from Wales since early Sunday evening, but this last week and a half in London is going to be a mad scramble to finish all of my final papers while still doing everything I have left to do in this incredible city. However, I am going to take the time to write about my trip to Wales since we stopped in so many places that I am afraid I will forget about them if I leave this for too much longer. I can't go to sleep anyway since there are drunkish people from my program being loud in the kitchen, and if I stay up doing this maybe I'll get some more homework done too. So here goes nothing:

Friday morning I woke up at the obscene hour of 5:15am after spending a restless night worrying that my alarm would falter and no one would wake me in time to catch the tour bus. I packed some snacks for the weekend, in an effort to cut down on food spending, before heading out to the tube station at 5:45am with some girls from my program--Laura, Sarah, and Michelle. Each of us managed to bring only a small backpack and a handbag, making it easy to travel. Kings Cross was quieter than I had expected it to be on a weekday morning, so we must have just missed the work rush hour, since Londoners tend to go to work early and be out well before 5pm. We met Charlotte, my friend who is an RA with me at school, on the tube platform at 6am sharp and caught a train to Victoria station within minutes. We arrived very early at the tour agency, since we wanted to make sure we could find it easily from the tube station, and went back to Victoria to pick up some warm drinks and a little bit of breakfast. We checked into our tour well ahead of time and were on the bus (coach) leaving London almost on time, at 7:20am.

Our guide for the weekend was Nikki, a young woman from Yorkshire, in the north of England, with a strong accent and an indefatigably sunny attitude. Our group consisted of about 30 people of all ages from all over the world. We were cautioned immediately by Nikki that we were not allowed to say the word "rain" on the trip, and could only describe the weather as "atmospheric" (raining) or "dramatic" (pouring/storming). Perhaps this made our weekend more pleasant and positive, but it certainly did not help to appease the waether, because it rained almost the entire time we were in Wales.

We stopped to pick up lunch to go and caffeine at the Reading service statio in England, and then headed into the South of Wales. I think that it took about 3 hours or so to get to the Severn Bridge to cross into Wales, but the driving times on this trip are kind of hard to figure out because we stopped at so many places along our route. Our first stop was at Chepstow Castle, built by the Normans in 1067 in an early effort to take over Wales (a common theme between English/Welsh relations after this point). Our first castle of the weekend looked fabulously mysterious in the grayish, rainy weather, which was a common theme in Wales. If you have to see a country entirely in the rain, Wales is a pretty romantic place to do so. In the town near Chepstow was a bridge over to England, where Charlotte and I took a lovely picture fighting with umbrellas while standing in different countries (I was in Wales and Woopy was in England).

The next stop of the day was Tintern Abbey, the ruins of an abbey that was built between 1136 and 1536 before it was destroyed by Henry VIII when he rampaged the monastaries after declaring himself head of the Church of England. It is most famously the inspiration for Wordsworth's poem of the same name. The ruins are incredibly beautiful, covered in places with moss and missing their roof (Henry took it) but otherwise in good condition. They were also unfortunately partially covered by scaffolding, which seems to be covering at least part of every old building in the UK. At least the British take good care of their history. I opted to take a walk with our guide up to St. Mary's church, a little church on the hill above Tintern Abbey that was destroyed by fire some time ago, and is also very pretty, and gives a good view of the surrounding area. It was a nice walk but because I wanted to stretch my legs and go on the walk I did not have time to actually go inside the Abbey and explore (it cost a small fee). This was one of the biggest problems about the tour, that we often did not have much time at any single place and so were limited to picking and choosing often a limited experience at each stop. However, there is always a price to pay for covering so much ground in such a short amount of time, and the tour did give a good overview of what Wales has to offer (aside from not stopping in any of the "large" cities in the South. Nothing in Wales is particularly large, however, as it is inhabited by only 2.8 million people (in comparison to London's 7 millon).

We then drove to Caerphilly to see the castle there, which is the second biggest castle, after Windsor, in the entire UK. I did not go inside (not much time, again) but it had beautiful grounds and pathways that allowed you to get very close to the castle and inside some of the outer walls. It also had one of the few moats left in the UK, since most of them have been drained for sanitary reasons. It did, however, have a sign warning that the blue green algae in the moat could be dangerous to humans, so we didn't go too near it. I also picked up a cup of tea while Woopy opted for a tasty chicken and asparagus pasty (a kind of pocket pie).

Our next stop was in the beautiful area of the Brecon Beacons, a hilly area with lots of little waterfalls. It was too muddy and slippery to do the entire hike they usually do, but we did walk down to see the Talybont Falls, which were pretty. Unfortunately, it was also slippery going down there and Charlotte fell and got her knees and legs all muddy. Luckily she wasn't hurt and we were already on our way to the stop for the evening.

Finally, we arrived at our stop for the night, the small town of Abergavveny, in a hostel called The Black Sheep or the Great Western, which is located above a small pub. A large group of us went to get dinner in town, about a 15 minute walk, since the pub downstairs was not able to serve food that evening. We went to a chain pub that I can't remember the name of, and Charlotte and I each got Welsh lamb cawl, a traditional stew made from lamb (Welsh lamb is supposed to be the best in the world, and they certainly have enough sheep to be good at raising them by now) and root vegetables and served with bread. It was quite tasty and filling, and nice and warm after a cold and drizzly day where we felt quite damp for most of it. I had my first Pimms and lemonade to go along with it, which is a popular summer cocktail in the UK made from Pimms (a reddish gin drink flavored with herbs and citrus), lemonade (which is really sparkling lemon soda here) and fresh fruit and cucumbers (the latter was sadly lacking in my drink). It was pretty tasty and very light, so I can see why it is a summer drink. It didn't really go with the stew, but oh well.

After dinner we went back to the hostel for quiz night at the pub downstairs, which was run by a transvestite, who at first only had painted nails but later in the evening was persuaded to put on his high-heeled black leather boots and long curly black wig. I had a pint of Brains, a malty beer made and sold only in Wales, and my team (consisting of myself, Charlotte, and some Canadian girls) lost at quiz night terribly. To be fair, we were one of the only teams without someone actually from the UK, and many of the questions were about UK roads and politics. Still, it was a fun night and afterwards I went straight up to take a quick shower and go to sleep. The bed was a bit rickety (but no bedbugs, I checked carefully) but once everyone in my room (about 10 people) got into bed around midnight, I slept very well.

More tomorrow I suppose, I should go do some work. A majority of my program is drunk and singing and dancing in the hallways, and I'm pretty sure when we were warned not to be obnoxious drunk Americans, this is what they meant. I suppose that makes my choice between going to bed early and waking up to do work and staying up to do work late easier...I couldn't sleep if I tried. Bad a capella Madonna isn't exactly bedtime music.