Saturday 27 August 2011

Men of Harlich


Photo - view down to the Halich station from Harlich Castle. Looks like toy town.

Day 8: Cardiff to Chester via Wales

First thing on the agenda today was to meet Molekilby, a Welsh geocacher who had been in posesion of one of TheHunterGatherers geocoins for several months. Originally we set the mission of this coin to travel to Scotland. Molekilby picked it up in Edinburgh and has held it ever since. We had arranged to meet at a Cardiff Bay geocache, where he would return the coin to us. I met him this morning as planned and over a coffee discussed geocaching, travel and life in general. I gave him an Australian flag geocoin and he gave me a Welsh geocoin to drop in Australia when I return home.
We then made our way up through Wales. The beauty of Wales far surpases anything I expected. The narrow winding roads and the many, many small villages with parked cars making the road almost impassable make for slow travel, but the villages are just beautiful and the countryside spectacular.
The two highlights of Wales were Harlech castle – a 12 century castle and our first castle visit (we drove past Cardiff Castle but didn’t go in) and the slate mining village of Blaenau Ffestiniog. Actually all the Welsh villages were lovely, especially in the north of Wales in the Snowdonia region, but these Welsh people really need to buy a few vowels, and then learn how to use them properly. Seriously, I’ve got no idea how any of the Welsh place names would be pronounced –but the sound of the Welsh people speaking is lovely. Once we were away from Cardiff they were speaking in Welsh everywhere we went. All the road signs are in Welsh (I’ll have to look up what the language is really called). Even the ATM had a choice of languages.
In the one day we saw the south, west and north coasts of Wales, including seeing the massive wind farms in the Irish Sea. What a great place to put a wind farm!
After leaving Wales we headed for Chester. By luck we managed to drive through the main street as we drive around looking for potential accommodation. We found a pub, Chester Bells,  about a block from the city centre with available rooms. We found a parking spot (difficult in any of these cities), dropped our bags and had a wander around town. Wow. This is one of the most beautiful city centres I’ve seen. The Tudor buildings are so well preserved. Spanish tapas for dinner (served by Manuel’s younger brother), then a bit more of a look around town. Tomorrow: Scotland.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Dear Hunter Gatherers,
How fantastic, love reading your blog and I am sure you will to when you return and cannot remember what you did in the first week.....lol.
Yes we loved Chester as well, ashame we didnt do Wales, sounds like we should of. Its lot to fit in as you well know. Cooking the famous masterchief lamb shanks tonight, not that you care....bec had to pull out of her prac, is working fulltime and earning 50K, excellent we can get board now right??!@!!, kylas planning big trip to europe next year then onto canada to do a winter work/ski thing, i will fly and met her somewhere in the world for her 21st?.
I loved getting messages, hope you do toooo...
Love Katrina xxx