Dafydd, Dai, Dewi?

David is behaving like a foreigner, which of course he is. If we have to interact with anyone in shops and restaurants and so on, he makes me do the talking in case “they start speaking in tongues” (Welsh). He has learned a few words that help him navigate while I drive which is very useful. His pronunciation isn’t bad either for an Irishman. Someone must have taught him "Rydw i’n hoffi coffi" (I like coffee), but he only remembered the “hoffi coffi” part and kept suggesting we stop for a "hoffi coffi". Sweet. I explained that hoffi is actually a verb (like) and he’s stopped doing it.

Do I belong in north Wales?

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I think I could fit in here. I have felt more at home here that anywhere else we have visited over the past 15 years or so. I love the mountains and the scenery. I am enjoying re-learning Welsh and I love hearing and seeing it around me everyday. I am into the tea and cake culture. I love that there are so many interesting old castles and buildings. I enjoy being near the coast and getting fabulous sea views. I am enjoying all the beautiful wild flowers. I love seeing sheep everywhere (although I can’t seem to be able to bring myself to eat lamb anymore – sheep are way to cute to be food). I love the range of breads you can get here and the locally produced preserves. Perhaps I should move here. What on earth would I do though? Not many vacancies for applied linguists I imagine. I’m not sure I could survive a winter here either.

The Carneddau Circuit

Great hiking day today. We were up and out early hiking a circuit from Llyn Ogwen. 3 major peaks and 5 ½ hours of wonderful views, good weather and interesting terrain. I love north Wales so much.

Stopped in Beddgelert on the way back for tea, coffee at Lyn’s Caffi with apple pie and custard (David) and fudge (me). The staff at Lyn’s all know us now.

Break from the mountains

Today we gave our legs a rest from major hiking and did some proper sightseeing instead. The weather was gorgeous and a perfect day for visiting Portmeirion – the Italianate village on its own peninsular. I have always wanted to visit. They filmed a 1960s show called The Prisoner here and I have vague memories of some of the scenes involving giant balls and messages via a tannoy. The village is really lovely! It stands on a beautiful stretch of coast and incorporates extensive woodland trails. The buildings are all guesthouses, shops and restaurants and it really draws the crowds.






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Next stop was Tremadog for a gourmet lunch at a fine restaurant called Y Sgwar (The Square) situated on the market square. We sat at the window and occasionally locals would stop and look right in at us and pull faces. Strange. Have you ever seen “The League of Gentlemen”?

After lunch we visited Cricieth Castle. We drive passed it everyday, but this was a great day to stop because of the fine weather – we thought we would get some decent views and we really did. We stopped for afternoon tea at a tea garden called Ty Te in Cricieth. I am really going to miss Welsh tea shops.

Climbing Snowdon

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We didn’t exactly get off to an early start, so by the time we got to Pen y Pass car part to climb Snowdon, it was already full. Instead we parked down the hill and got a bus to the start of the hike.

As we got going, we saw a sign where every sentence began with “dim” dim dim dim dim. Basically, the café at the top wasn’t finished so there would be no tea, no shelter and no toilets. No train either which hopefully meant there would at least be fewer people.

There were a lot of people hiking up Wales’ highest mountain, but compared to a popular mountain in Japan in hiking season, it wasn’t too bad. I admired people who had the patience to march their kids up there. One guy even had his baby in a backpack. I assume it was a baby, he/she was covered with a kind of tent to keep out the wind and rain and we could just hear the screaming underneath. There were a lot of dogs too.

It took us about 2 ¼ hours to reach the top along the Pyg track. We weren’t brave enough to attempt the knife edged Crib Goch track, but could see people above walking on all fours above us (I thought they were sheep at first). The weather stayed fine throughout the walk, but we could see the summit of Snowdon ahead enshrouded in cloud. As we neared the top, we entered the thick cloud and could no longer see the valley below. It got very cold and windy and after taking our turn of standing on the summit, we got out of the wind and brewed a cuppa. We didn’t hang about long, but started the ascent, this time via the Miners’ track which went alongside the lake which was lovely. We passed some old ruined mine buildings and machinery which made the place seem very mysterious. We think the Snowdon climb is the Welsh version of the Inka Trail. A bit busy, but really beautiful and well worth doing.

We stopped off at Lyn’s Caffi in Beddgelert on the way home again for tea and apple pie with custard.

Evenings

I haven’t described anything we have done in the evening. Life is very quiet in the countryside. We get home around 7pm, shower and just cook something simple, watch a bit of TV and have an early night. We are usually pretty tired after the daytime exertions. When you have been away for a while, British TV is fun and exotic even if it is just The News and Midsomer Murders.

Y Garn and Beddgelert

The weather looked a bit sketchy, but we thought we would attempt another mountain walk starting near Beddgelert called the Nantlle Ridge. We sat in the car for a while wondering whether it would be a good idea to start climbing up the peak of Y Garn in the spitting rain. We decided to go for it, but the weather was bad pretty much all the way up. My already wet boots were uncomfortably squelchy the whole time. When we got to the top of Y Garn, we decided not to do the rest of the circuit as the weather was really horrible. We climbed down again passing a drenched family of 4 (including the 3 year old daughter). That’s hard core.

We thought we’d go to Caernafon Castle instead but the rain was so heavy that we could barely drive. We could see blue skies the other way so decided to turn around and head towards them. We passed 2 ladies walking along the road in the torrential rain and we offered them a lift. They looked very jolly and said no thank you. Mad.

We got back to Beddgelert, parked the car and enjoyed tea and coffee sitting in a tea garden by the river in the sun…. until it started to rain and we huddled under the sun umbrella until it stopped. We explored Beddgelert a bit. What a lovely town! Pretty touristy, but not ridiculous. I wished I had taken the house there instead of the one we had miles away in Rhiw. The money I saved on rent I would just pay in petrol anyway.

We followed the riverside path to the grave of Gellert, Llewelyn’s dog. Heard a lot of Brummie accents. I guess Birmingham isn’t that far from Snowdonia. People had picnics beside the river and some brave souls even went for a dip. We went for tea and bara brith at “Lyn’s” caffi.

There was a big outdoor shop and I decided to have a look. We both got new jackets, socks and boots. We didn’t actually go in for boots, but there some quite good offers. David was due to replace his and I discovered that my new ones weren’t actually Goretex, so unless I wanted wet feet for the rest of the trip, I had better buy some new ones. We came away feeling really pleased with our purchased and wanted to try them out on Mount Snowdon the very next day.

The tip of Llyn

Today we drove to Aberdaron on the Llyn peninsular and did a coastal hike. This was really beautiful until it started to lash rain as we walked back via the lanes. The Saturday travel supplement of the weekend’s guardian featured some of the remotest places in the Britain and one of them was the tip of the Llyn peninsular opposite Ynus Enlli (Bardsey Island) exactly where we had been today! It is pretty remote where we are staying. We can’t get a phone line and forget accessing the internet! Back at Aberdaron, we had a pub lunch at The Ship. Nice enough, but overpriced just for a Ploughman’s and a bowl of Heinz tomato soup. The barman could have been the twin brother of our friend Joe-Joe in Japan. Joe-Joe loves making fun of Welsh people (he’s English) so I found this really amusing. We overheard two people talking in the bar, rather the woman was talking in a really loud voice at the man who said very little. She went on and on about herself – how tedious! At one point she started talking about how she had given up smoking because there were too many holes in her aura. I gave David a look, but he hadn’t heard properly so I had to wait until they left to tell him what I had heard. We have been running with this ever since: “I had better not have any more coffee as there are already too many holes in my aura” etc.

That afternoon we went to Pwllheli as I had to access the internet to send an article I had promised by mid August. I had to do this in the basement of the town library in the kids’ section on a computer which censored Facebook. We also had to find a launderette as when we asked our landlady about a washing machine, she said “I’ll have a think about it.” Did she think we’d go for 2 weeks without washing any clothes after hiking on muddy mountains everyday

Cnicht - the Welsh Matterhorn

We were out early and drove to a town called Croeser. Village. Hamlet even. Just a few houses and a car park actually. We parked the car and started to get ready to hike. Lots of cars started turning up and we got chatting to a few other hikers – they were from the local Ramblers Club. Often when we go somewhere to do a hike (Indonesia, Malaysia…), the only people climbing the mountains are foreign. We wondered whether this would be the way in Wales, but apparently not. We met mainly Welsh people on the mountains of Snowdonia. We spent the next few hours hiking starting with the impressive ascent of Cnight, the Welsh Matterhorn. I slipped while scrambling up near the top and couldn’t find any where to put my feet so just hung onto the rocks. I shouted for David to help, but the wind was so strong, he couldn’t hear me so I had to scream. He came back and lifted me to safety. I have a few big bruises on my legs now. Tricky things mountains. After reaching the summit of Cnight, the Ramblers turned left at the cairn and we planned to turn right (even though they warned us that the ground would be very mucky). The ground was really mucky and I discovered that my “waterproof” boots weren’t waterproof at all! I squelched through bogs and my boots remained waterlogged for the rest of the day.

After coming out of the bogs, we came across a spooky disused slate mine. I took some eerie pictures and we continued along the miners’ road back to Croesor where we discovered a little renovated cottage doing teas! We took off our boots and sat in the sun enjoying hot drinks and freshly made Victoria sandwich. Wales does tea and cake so well that I sometimes wonder why I ever left.

More photos from this trip are on facebook https://www.facebook.com/jomynard1/media_set?set=a.34331095819.57151.630680819&type=3 

Haunted House

The house is really scary. Definitely haunted. There is a room at the end which is the coldest room and we never use it. On that first night, I went in and started playing the (out of tune) piano. David thought it would be really funny to sneak up on me and make this toy clown peer at me round the corner. It absolutely freaked me out. I screamed and when I saw it was just David mucking around, I burst into tears of relief. I haven’t been in the room since. It has the same mirror in there as in the movie “The Ring” (the American version). I never go upstairs on my own at night and there is no way I will go downstairs in the middle of the night if I need the loo. The house is pretty grotty. Our landlady knows this and her excuse for the broken furniture and sketchy flush is that it’s not worth getting things mended as she won’t be letting again after the end of this season. Nice.

Finding our cottage

Back on the road we soon joined the holiday traffic heading into Porthmadog. We dug out the directions that the agency had given us to find the cottage. They were really funny involving exotic place names like Pwllheli, Llanbedrog and Mynytho. And instructions like “Follow this road until you come to a tractor workshop on your left – Dafydd Glyn Jones, Seithbont Garage”, “carry on until you come to the Rectory”. We found the rectory OK, but drove up and down the narrow lane a few times looking for the steep road track down to our cottage. We just kept missing it, which was easy to do as the fog was really thick and we could see nothing around us. The lane was really narrow and it was totally impossible to turn around.

I dialed the number of the landlady on my mobile phone. No signal. We pulled into the rectory to ask for directions. There were two cars parked there and two wooden doors with no bells (back doors? Where was the front door?). David went out into lashing the rain and knocked on both doors with his knuckles. Nothing. I started to remember a horror movie I had seen as a child where an entire village was enshrouded in fog. A visitor stumbled on the village and was made welcome there only to find out later that all the residents were flesh eating zombies. Then there’s Silent Hill. Shudder! In a good horror movie we knock at the “wrong door” or the landlady turns out to look like Mrs Danvers.

We knocked at another house. We could see into the sitting room and a very old lady and a middle aged man in a vest were sitting on a tatty sofa. The place was littered with papers. The man opened the door. The house smelled of cats and dirt. Even though we were standing there in the pouring rain, I hoped he wouldn’t ask us in. He took our address and directions without smiling or saying anything. It turned out that he knew the house and amiably pointed us in the right direction – back the way we had came down that narrow lane again. We thanked him and ran back to the car.

Back we went down the lane. This time going really slowly so that we wouldn’t miss the track. We found it and began to drive down until it became too steep and slippery so I pulled into a kind of layby and we walked the rest of the way down.

We found the house. 200 year old Welsh cottages always look sweet and welcoming from the outside, but this one looked really creepy in the fog. We went into the garden and called “hello”. Nothing. We tried the front door. Locked. We went round the back and found the door unlocked. In we went. The smell of damp hit us. Hello? Nothing. Back outside. We heard a small voice with a posh English accent “Hello! Hello!”. The landlady! She was about 4ft tall, hunched with sore-looking varicose veins over both feet. Her grey knotty hair hung limply around her shoulders. She came running out of a hole in the hedge. It turned out that through this hole is the garden shed where she lives. It was a peculiar setup.

She showed us around the house. It was like something out of a museum. Ancient wooden furniture, low beamed ceilings, scary old pictures everywhere. This couldn’t be further away from our life in Japan. As we were leaving, a man with a flat cap knocked on the door and asked if it was our car blocking the lane. Woops. He didn’t seem to mind that he had had to walk all the way down the hill and back up again. I was relieved that we had another neighbour. A rich one too apparently who drove a BMW off roader. I had to park in the lay by on the main track and our landlady came up with her jeep to collect our stuff and drive it down to the cottage. Once we unpacked the car, she disappeared into the fog and we haven’t seen her since. We tried to give her the money for the electricity, but she said there was plenty of time for that. Was there something we didn’t know? She knew we wouldn’t last the 2 weeks for instance?

Castell Harlech

There are two car parks for Harlech Castle. The one where all you have to do is walk over the drawbridge and you are in. the other one involves climbing up hundreds of steps to the back entrance…. You guessed it, we were at the lower car park and climbed up in the wind and rain. I did start to wonder why on earth we hadn’t stayed in Thailand longer… Harlech Castle however was really spectacular and the views from the towers even on such a crappy day were really breathtaking.

Heading North

After a fun few days in Cardiff, it was time to head off again.

Mum and Dad got up early to help us pack the car and see us off on Saturday morning. I admit I was really excited about going off on a trip into the unknown (at least to me): north Wales. The land of beautiful landscapes, mountains, beaches and famous castles.

I had run the post codes through the AA route finder so we had a printout to follow, but we still got lost within 20 minutes and ended up in a housing estate in Newport… After getting back on track we had a straight run through until we stopped for tea somewhere near Builth Wells. I had a pot of tea and a slice of excellent bara brith (fruit cake). The coffee machine was broken, so David sat there nursing his Brecon Carreg water willing me to hurry so that we could go and find somewhere that did proper coffee.

Next stop was for lunch at a pub called The Brigand’s Arms which was built in the 16th century and used to be a coaching inn. I have low expectations when it comes to Welsh pub food, but this meal was REALLY excellent. I went for homemade leek and potato soup (my favourite!) and goats cheese tart with salad. David had venison sausages and vegetables. I asked the waitress where we were and I think she said “Machlin”. I couldn’t find it on the map, but it was on the road to Llanidloes – look out for it if you are up that way.

Back on the road and the rain was getting really heavy. Somewhere around Machynlleth we spotted a sign for “Harlech Castle” and as we were making really good time, we decided to take a detour. The landlady wasn’t expecting us for hours yet. There probably would have been quicker ways to get to Harlech, but this coastal route was quite nice (apart from going through Barmouth – full of tacky cafes and souvenir shops and miserable people all walking round in the rain).

Bangkok Nightlife

Wilailuck picked us up from the Radisson and took us to a place that looked like a beach club right next to the expressway. It had sand and swimming pools and fantastic food. Having a Thai friend is really useful for getting the tastiest food cooked exactly how you like it.

After dinner we headed to the nightclub area. There is a row of clubs all free to get in as long as you order drinks. We picked a very cool looking place where most people were sharing bottles of Johnny Walker and buckets of ice. Apparently bars keep your bottle with your name on it for next time. We sat on bar stools and enjoyed some live music from a Thai R&B band called Calories Bla Bla. Wilailuck said she had heard some of their songs on the radio recently. They were pretty good. The club was so much fun that I could have stayed much longer, but we had a long flight the next day.

Koh Samet

Not much to blog about in Koh Samet. Just a lovely, relaxing 4 day trip to the beach. Good food, pool time, massages, and bonding with local scabby hounds. It is definitely a good idea to go during the rainy season. Everywhere is very quiet if you don’t mind a bit of rain and it doesn’t rain all the time. There were a few characters in our resort including John the friendly American there with his Bangkok bar girl. They didn’t have much in the way of a common language so whenever anyone new arrived, he tried to make friends with them for some conversation. He even hit on other women who arrived in front of his “girlfriend”, but she didn’t seem to care. He got really drunk on his last night and got the barman to play all his favourite American rock songs and he drummed along to them on the bar. We were glad when he passed out about 8pm and then left the next day.

We were sad to leave Koh Samet, but excited about meeting up with our friend Wilailuck in the big city.

More pictures from Thailand on Facebook http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=51355&l=6383b&id=630680819