Sunday, July 20, 2008

Ice cream when you are frozen solid



After a freezing Welsh night in July, I could barely get out of the tent as my knees refused to work completely after yesterday's 'ramble. Another shower in the mouldy curtain public showers, tent down and off we went to explore Beddgellert and the gorgeous ice cream. We took a scenic drive to see Snowdon and the rest of the national park and then homeward bound. Ali just about warmed up when we got back to Bristol.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Don't trust ramblers guides




What better way to start the day but by eating the leftovers from the BBQ the night before. I stupidly bought 'the ramblers guide to North Wales'. What I didn't know is that Ramblers speech is very different to normal peoples speak so when it said 'easy walk, 1 and 3/4 hour max, we thought it would be a nice stroll so off we went to find Aber Falls.

The first section was a nice, gentle gravel path and then it got steeper and steeper but it was fine and worth it to see Aber Falls. After we had a shower at the falls, we had two options. Either go back to the car along the nice gravel path, or go around in a big loop. We took the loop option. After 3 and a 1/2 hours, clambering over stepping stones over a river when we both suffer from vertigo, putting my arm in a gorse bush (deja vu), causing a landslide on Ali when going down a really steep decline, opening our mounths when walking to try and get some liquid from the rain, being stopped by tree felling along the path, wading through bracken and all of this without water and food....we got back to the car. It''s never felt so good to sit down. Trouble was that we didn't have liquid in the car either so while ali drank a cup of water, i drank 2 litres of coke that dehydrates you anyway. Needless to say, we were in a sorry state but the feeling of accomplishment was amazing.

We drove onto Llandudno where we were going to walk along the gorgeous beach but by this time our legs have falled to work so we walked to a cafe and looked out the window. In the evening we had dinner in the pub and then fed a lot of midges with our blood.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Good old British camping


Our mamouth drive started at 3pm. At 8:30pm we finally arrived in Snowdonia after playing '20 questions' that was more realistically '120 questions', playing any game we could think of, singing along to tunes, cursing the Birmingham traffic, going through every welsh city and passing every place that Rae and Jue have lived. Not surprisingly, we were the last so while someone else cooked our dinner on the BBQ, we set up the tent...in the rain. Then we were good British campers and ate our BBQ in the rain and then chatted to everyone else in the rain. I love good British camping - if it rains, put a coat on but still sit outside cos thats what campers do.