Wales
Thursday June 15, 2017
After coming back from Amsterdam, I spent the weekend in London vegetating and catching up on sleep. It was good to just do nothing, and it helped that the weather had been every permutation of cold, windy and rainy for a few days. I managed to do some work on my blog as well, hammering out all the writing I did for the food in France, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, as well as working on a new feature which should be ready soon.
My mate Theodore has finally arrived too, so we met up for dinner for a few nights. Theo will be accompanying me on my final leg around Europe - we hope to cover the east and northern side this time: Germany, Poland, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. It's scary to think how little time I have left here...!
On Tuesday, Theo and Beth, another of my friends from New Zealand, met me on a bus to Cardiff for a three day excursion around western Wales. We had one objective: see puffins on Skomer Island. We rented a car and drove out of Cardiff towards Pembrokeshire, stopping by a cute little castle called Carew along the way. We based ourselves at the YHA in Broad Haven and explored the peninsula around Saint David, then retired for the night.
We got to Marloes around 9am to try and get tickets for the ferry to Skomer Island. Being a weekday, we didn't think it would be that busy; we were shocked to find that tickets to land on the island had sold out an hour ago. We went through a small period of grief before decided that the only viable option was to take a boat trip around the island without landing. They said we'd still be able to see the puffins, and that's all we really wanted.
The boat trip turned out to be surprisingly good. We did see our puffins; we saw hundreds bobbing about on the water. As we approached, they would flap their wings awkwardly and hop along the surface of the sea before taking flight, it was such an awesome sight. There were tons of other waterfowl as well, including gulls, gannets and even a peregrine falcon!
We had a quick picnic lunch at Dale before heading back to Carew Castle. We visited the mill there, as we ran out of time the day before. We also took a detour north to visit the National Woollen Museum. It would have been around 6pm that we got to YHA Cardiff; we had dinner in town and wandered around Bute Park and the central city before heading back to the hostel.
We took it slow today. We had a good sleep in and then got some coffee at a small hipster cafe in one of the city's shopping lanes, then wandered around Cardiff Castle for an hour. It's quite a remarkable structure; they used the walls as air raid shelters during World War II, and the keep in the middle of the castle green has a fantastic view of the city in all directions. After lunch, we returned the rental car and said our goodbyes to Beth, and now Theo and I are en route back to London.
I think despite being unable to land on the island, we still had a really good time. We got to see a particular aspect of the birds that you wouldn't have been able to get from land, and more importantly, we achieved our one objective. We stumbled upon lots of cool interesting sites along the way as we aimlessly drove through the Welsh countryside. We even managed to pick up a bit of Welsh - they say, anyone can cuddle but only the Welsh can cwtch. Good times.
Posted by Jeremy at 3:28pm on Thursday June 15, 2017 :: 0 comments :: 