The Top Floor Flat

Wow. So… Wales.

I’m not sure I can possibly sum up the last three days in a single post but given that not too much is going to be happening this week, maybe I can break it up and do a post about the trip over the rest of the week. Lord knows I’d better get caught up before France or you’ll never hear about Wales. To start with, the Welsh call their country Cymru (pronounced coom-ree with enough of the ‘r’ rolled that sometimes it sounds a bit like coom-bree).

Wales was wonderful. It was everything I expected and more (and I had high expectations). There were castles and mountains and scenic drives and friendly people and cheap beer. It was beyond gorgeous. Wales is quite unique in that it has an absolutely stupendous array of landscapes even though it’s a fairly small country. It’s mountainous in some areas, costal, flat, forested, pastured, and more.

But before I get into the country let me say a bit about the trip I went on. Haggis Adventures runs trips all over the UK (most predominately Scotland, thus the name) and since this weekend was the Bank Holiday and I had Monday off, I booked this a while ago. It’s a coach bus trip and the best way to describe it (as put by my tour guide Adam) is that if Wales were a movie, the Haggis tour would be the trailer. I got a taste of Wales and have a little sense of what it’s about but really there’s a ton more to discover. We spent more time than I might have liked on the bus but I did manage to see a lot more of the country that I would have otherwise (like… the whole thing).

Tonight I’m absolutely knackered after the trip so I’ll just get started with day one… if I can stay awake for that much!

We headed out of London at about 7:30am Saturday morning (which meant I needed to leave my flat a little before 6am to make the bus) along with the rest of the holiday traffic which meant we traveled at a crawl out of the city (and pretty much for the rest of the weekend through any other city). I met up with the rest of my group which was a mixed bunch – we had a lot of Aussies and Indians, a handful of Americans (myself included), two from Korea, two from Brazil, one Kiwi, one German and some assorted Brits. I ended up chatting with Natalie (the German woman) and Abby (American) and later we connected with Mel (Kiwi) and two sisters Louisa and Gemma (Aussie). The six of us roomed together for the two nights… but I’m getting ahead of myself already.

Once out of London we headed for Stratford-Upon-Avon, the home of the one-and-only Shakespeare (who, incidentally, signed his name many different ways on the historical documents recovered from the time but never actually signed the way it’s spelled today. Funny, that). We, somewhat disappointingly, only had 40 minutes there – something that would be a trend for the rest of the trip – so I had to tell myself that I wasn’t actually there visiting, that I was just in a very nice town that happened to have a lot of Shakespeare stuff. I can’t wait to go back, though, the teaser of Stratford was enough to make me want to spend a full weekend there. I looked, but didn’t see David Tennant. Sadly. I did see Shakespeare’s house which is, to be fair, cooler as well as the pub where he was rumoured to have downed pints with his fellow actors after the plays. I enjoyed seeing the house in which Shakespeare grew up (I didn’t go in this time… next time I will) although I have heard it said that during the “preservation” of Shakesperian heritage, in their eagerness to make the area look nice and build a museum for which they could charge entry, they knocked down the wrong house – so what you actually visit is the house next to the house where Shakespeare grew up. Either way, it’s as close to genius as I’ve ever gotten.

After Stratford, we continued to head north towards Northern Wales. We learned quite a bit about Welsh history and legend from our tour guide who was incredible. The tour was worth it just for the local history he provided. Our first stop in Wales was a place called Llangollen (pronounced something like High-lock-len) where the ruins of a castle called Dainas Bran stood on a peak about 1000 metres above the town. We had the chance to walk up to the ruins which was amazing – it was a strenuous hike, very steep and ragged, but it was worth it when you got to the top and you could see miles and miles in every direction. I was glad to get the exercise too after sitting in the bus all morning. It was hard to imagine how the castle was originally built as it was hard enough to get myself up the hill without building supplies, but it was definitely a good location for the castle defenses – nothing beats that view!

After Llangollen we continued north towards the Isle of Anglesey which is a largish island off the coast of Northern Wales. We passed The Ugly House and because it’s such an interesting story, I’ll give a quick recap:

Lords of the land back in the 15th century taxed their tenants based on the size of their house and the number of houses on their plot of land. Therefore, if their children moved out to a new house on the land, they would pay twice as much in taxes. When the Welsh tenants complained, the landlord told them that if between the time he left when the sun went down and when he arrived in the morning, a fully built house with a fire burning in the hearth appeared, he wouldn’t tax them for the house. Of course he didn’t believe it was possible but the tenants gathered the materials during the day, and their friends at night, and roughly threw together a house, got the fire lit, and by morning got the house for free. The lack of precision and roughness of the materials and workmanship meant that the house was very basic and the walls jagged and protruding. Thus the name, The Ugly House. Few examples of these still exist in tact and we got to see one on the way to Anglesey.

We made a quick detour across the Menai Strait to Anglesey for the sole purpose of stopping at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch which is the longest place name in Europe (and the third longest in the world). The town has an official abbreviation but I got some great pictures of the entire town name on the train depot sign.

We then traveled to Caernarfon (something like can-off-ren) where we would be staying for the night. There was some amazingly rich history of the area, not much of it pleasant for the Welsh who were basically abused by the English from the 1280s onward, but there was a truly stunning castle built by Edward I of England in the late 1200s and the castle and most of the castle wall still stands today. Our hostel was just inside the castle walls and the entire castle was on the sea. We got fish and chips and walked along the sea wall before stopping in the local pub, again right on the water, in the shadow of the castle, for local beer and to overheard some Welsh.

I called it an early night as it had already been a long day, and was out like a light by 10:30pm.
…As I hope to be tonight! I’ll pick up with day two of Wales tomorrow hopefully. It really was a fantastic trip and I can’t wait to go back.