James' in the UK

Northern Wales was very spectacular. I didn't have many expectations of Wales because I don't think I've seen many other peoples photos or heard others stories about visiting Wales so it was a good surprise. We did have fun trying to pronounce the names of the towns, or more accurately making up our own pronunciations which were in no way close to real names.

Rather than hitting the M6 towards Wales on the Friday night of a Bank Holiday weekend, we set off on Saturday morning. We headed towards Llandudno and lunch there, or should I say drove through it at lunch time. Llandudno is a classic Welsh seaside town and it had some festival on so it was crammed with people. We couldn't find a park anywhere in the town so we ended up parking on the Great Orme. We found out that the Great Orme is one of the most likely places in the UK to get abducted by aliens but we managed to escaped without an anal probe - it was a close thing though I'd expect.

Next we headed to Conwy, a small walled town with a castle. We asked the satnav to take us to the castle and that it did....smack bang of the middle of the castle, inside the castle walls. When Warwick Moss (our name for the satnav) said 'you have reached your destination' it was never more true. We went for a bit of a walk around the castle but didn't pay to go inside.

Conwy Castle

As it was already after lunch we didn't want to hang around to much before heading to Cricceth where we were staying. But we did pass through Caernarfon (Carnivore) which was an interesting little town. There was a castle (very common in these parts) which was in the strategic position of next to the mouth of a tidal inlet. This meant you could walk around a get views of the castle over water. There was a pub right next to the castle which Adrian liked the look of. You could literally sit on the outside tables at the pub and go fishing. The ultimate fishing where you can walk a few feet and get a round of cold pints.

Caernarfon Castle

Cricceith was a small coastal village with (no surprise) a castle. The castle was on a headland and there were little rocky beaches on either side of it. Apparently from here you could see another castle that is on the other side of a large bay, but it was to wet and hazy for that.

Cricceith Castle

On recommendation of my friend we headed out onto the Isle of Anglesey and went to Beaumaris, which (you guessed it) had a castle, and this one actually had a moat. We spend a bit of time running around this castle before heading back onto the 'mainland' and going back through some of the towns that we'd passed through quickly the day before. Well this went OK until we got back to Conwy, we parked the car and went into the town, had some lunch, looked around a bit more then went back to the car and tried to start it. Absolutely dead. There was no way it was going to make even a small noise. So we called our trusty RAC guy and 2 hours later he got there and fixed it in 5 seconds.

Having lost a fair bit of time we heading straight inland to Snowdonia National Park. Now unlike most of the National Parks we'd been to since arriving in the UK, this one had trees and no farms - yay. The national park and the mountains were very spectacular. There were people camping everywhere which was unfortunate for them because it was raining. But I guess that is what a lot of UK camping is all about. We stopped in a pretty little town called Beddgelert which from memory had a shop that sold fudge.

Bridge in Beddgelert

We started heading back toward Cricceith via Pwllheli (said with a lot of enthusiasum and a french accent). Pwllheli was supposed to be the good beach in this part of Wales, but We were a less impressed with the rocks as far as you could see and the freezing cold.

Monday morning we knew we had to head home but we did it the long way. First we headed to Porthmadog (Port my dog, Fork my dog, Pork my dog) and went on a steam train. Now there are a few narrow guage train lines in northern Wales and that bought with it a different breed a person - the train nerd. These people got so excited about the steam train operating and knew all the different types of engines and talked about the day they spend 5 hours each way travelling to see a rare whats-a-me-call-it train from outer Mongolia, and relentlessly taking photos. And when the gravity powered slate truck went past - train nerd heaven. Anyway we went up to Blaenau-Ffestiniog (Festinog, said with a german accent) a thouroughly underwelming destination but the trip was very scenic.

Ffestiniog Steam Train

After the train we headed south along the coast. We got down as far as Barmouth where we stopped and had lunch, and then continued home through Shropshire, which I still can't say with a straight face......Shropshire, really!

Food of Choice in Wales: Welsh Lamb