Wales Part Two

OK so Wales day 2, Saturday. I apologize in advance, once more, for what will have to be an incredibly long posting, but I am almost a week behind in posts and I want to remember everything I do, and typing is soooo much faster than writing! Please, please don't feel like you need to read the whole thing. I tried to abbreviate but you can only abbreviate 12 stops so much.

We woke up at around 7am on Saturday to pack our things and grab a complimentary breakfast of tea and buttered toast in the hostel basement. One of the things I really do love about the UK is the proliferation of tea drinking…I fit right in and have definitely upped my consumption since being here (partially because it is much cheaper to buy out than coffee). We left on our trusty bus at 8:15 for what was promised to be one of the longest days that the tour group runs. We headed north from Abergavenny to the small town of Hay-on-Wye, by far one of my favorite stops on the entire trip, even though we only got about an hour there. It was one of the most adorable towns we stopped in, with immaculately clean streets and quaint buildings, an old-fashioned chocolate shop selling “the best fudge in Wales” according to our guide, lots of fresh bakeries and food shops, and…wait for it…over 30 book stores. In a town with a population of between 1 and 3 thousand, there are 30 bookshops. How could you go wrong? We stopped in two particularly good ones, the first of which was stocked with random books for only a pound each (I bought two, one by Margaret Atwood I haven’t read and another by Anne Perry) and the second of which is the largest secondhand bookstore in the world. The second one was truly incredible, multi-level and everything (why it is in this little tiny town is beyond me) but sadly I did not get to spend much time perusing, although I did buy a book of Thomas Hardy’s short stories for 2 pounds. I’m shocked I made it out of that town with only 3 books. Charlotte and I shopped around some more, and I purchased a slice of brie and caramelized onion quiche and two kinds of fudge, one of which was Bailey’s flavored. The town holds a huge book festival every year and I would love to go back for that. Anyone want to join me?

After that we made a brief stop at Climery, where Llewelyn the Great (or the Last) true Welsh Prince was killed by the English (the name is pronounced something like Clue-Ellen…Welsh is a damn hard language to pronounce but it looks and sounds really neat). Apparently the English scooped out his brains and put a candle in his head to parade it to London where it was put on the spikes of the London Bridge to intimidate insurgents. That’s where we get jack-o-lanterns from, according to our guide. Pretty gruesome, yes? After this we drove for awhile and had lunch on the bus before stopping at Llyn Clywedog, a beautiful reservoir area surrounded by miles and miles of hills and green (and the inevitable sheep). Some of my best pictures came out of this area and when I post them I will be sure to put the link here.

After that we drove through the town of Machynlleth where there was a huge parade and festival of general celebration, with a Hollywood theme. We saw bugs bunny and tweety bird drinking pints and smoking as well as a transvestite Edward Scissorhands, so it was an amusing drive even though we didn’t stop. We did stop at a Tesco (supermarket) in Porthmadog so everyone could pick up beer and other beverages for our upcoming evening at the farmhouse. Then it was to Caernarforn, the town in which groups normally spend the night, but the hostels had been booked way in advance for some event in town, hence the fact that we had to journey further on to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere that also serves as a hostel. Caernarforn is a beautiful Edwardian castle, begun in 1283 and set on a bay with lots of little boats. Edward I built it and his son, Edward II, was born there, allowing Edward I to make him the first “Prince of Wales” which is why there are now English princes of Wales. Apparently the Welsh actually like Prince Charles quite a bit because he pays attention to them. Charlotte and I walked around the entire perimeter to get lots of good views and then opted to do a little bit of souvenir shopping instead of paying to go inside the castle, since apparently the outsides of castles are often more worth it than the inside. The town was nice and the view of the bay/ocean was lovely as well. One of the highlights of our visit there was hearing some of the people in one of the stores speak in what we believe was Welsh. How cool! Only 30% of the Welsh speak the language, and most of them are in the north (which is where we were, so it does make sense). Sorry if I’m repeating trivia.

After Caernarforn, we made a quick jump over to the Isle of Anglesey specifically to go to the town with one of the longest names in the world…apparently a town in New Zealand actually holds the record (although the website listed below claims there is a place in Thailand that beats it). The town is known as Llanfair (pronounced something like Clanfair) but is actually
Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which translates as "The church of St. Mary in the hollow of white hazel trees near the rapid whirlpool by St. Tysilio's of the red cave." There is even a website (which I just discovered) that is www.(insert name of town here).com. Anyway, all we really did there was stop and take pictures of the signs before getting back on the bus and taking the historic A-5 route to Snowdonia National Park. Snowden is the highest point in the entire UK and the whole park is simply beautiful. I really, really regret that we were not able to stop there for longer and do some hiking. We only got out and took a few pictures before having to get back on the bus, and I know that if I ever get the chance to go back to Wales I want to spend a significant amount of time there. So beautiful. It was also one of the places where the icky weather did not matter much at all, since the mist on the top of the peaks made the scenery even more incredible and mysterious.

FINALLY we arrived at Tyddyn, the farmhouse hostel we stayed in for the night, owned and ran by a woman named Linda. It is actually surrounded by cows and sheep and is a real working farm. The beds were nice and neat and clean, and there were good kitchens and a barbeque, so our guide had collected four pounds from everyone and bought hamburgers, potatoes, sausages, salad, and other good things to eat which we proceeded to make for dinner. Unfortunately, my night spent in the comfortable hostel was rudely interrupted by a pair of hormonal teenagers doing inappropriate things in a bed while there were 10 other people in the room and talking for hours after everyone else had gone to bed and I had asked them to be quiet several times. However, I will not dwell on this aspect of my stay there because it’s not fair to the farmhouse or to Wales. But really, some people need to get some manners.

On that, unfortunately not happy note I need to end for tonight because it’s late and I’m getting up early to go to St. Paul’s Cathedral in the morning, one of the touristy things I still really have to see. I’ll try to do more tomorrow but I am attempting to finish one paper by tomorrow evening so I can start the other and still enjoy my weekend, so we’ll see how that goes. Hope the weather is nicer wherever you are, because it has been cold and windy and rainy here and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change any time soon.