A Trip to Wales!

This past weekend was a "bank holiday" weekend in the UK. A bank holiday is like a federal holiday in the US. My favorite part about bank holidays is that there's no reason or remembrance tacked on to them, like Columbus Day or Labor Day. This particular holiday was just called "Late Summer Holiday" - I dig that, because it just owns the fact that it's just a holiday. I mean, I don't know anyone who actually thought about Columbus on Columbus Day after about the 3rd grade, haha, so it's nice to just call it what it is, a day off just because.

So Jay and I decided to take advantage of this end of summer holiday to go camping in Wales. Jay has been wanting to take me to Wales and I've been itching to see the ocean, so we combined the two and headed off to St David's which is in the south west part of Wales.

If you couldn't guess, the A arrow is on St. David's. I put a red dot in the general location of where we live, in case you were wondering. We're basically in between Gloucester and Swindon (the two major places I've been applying to jobs, actually). Anyways, St. David's is gorgeous. It has a surfer town vibe to it, but still with a totally British country feel - a very neat combo. We spent the night in a campsite on a farm overlooking the water. It was pretty breathtaking.

The view from our tent.

After setting up camp, we headed into town for some dinner (I had a delicious fish pie!) and a little sight-seeing. We came across a gorgeous old cathedral which of course was St. David's. As it was starting to get dark we decided to check it out the next morning.

After a good night's sleep, I was awoken by a few mooing cows (sleeping at a farm and all) and opened my tent to that beautiful view of the ocean. We packed up all our belongings into the car and headed back into town. First stop was of course breakfast, and then we headed down to the cathedral.

The church itself was gorgeous, but my favorite part was the ruins behind it called the Bishop's Palace. We had a good time climbing through them and checking out all the little passages and underground store rooms.

Quite a fun little adventure.

After that, it was back in the car to explore some back roads of Wales. The scenery was gorgeous - lots of water, rolling green hills, sheep, and cute little houses. Occasionally the roads were a little scary (lanes that are technically two ways but barely wide enough for even one car!). We made our way along the coast, stopping for lunch at a "chippy" (a little fish and chips shop) in a little town by the water. Low and behold, right across the street was a castle! So of course we had to check it out.

You'll notice in the sign above that the text is written in two languages. Turns out it's English and Welsh - I had no idea the Welsh had their own language! I was quite surprised by how different it is...I imagine is closer to Gaelic than English. It made for some interesting road signs and town names (I saw one town whose name had no vowels in it..not even a y.) Here's an example of a road sign in both languages...

After that it was some more relaxed driving around the coast of Wales and then finding a camp site to crash for the night. We settled on one tucked up on a hill. A very simple site but one that allowed camp fires which is a bit unusual (and awesome). On Sunday, we woke up bright and early and drove the two hours back home on back roads. It was quite lovely (minus the traffic we hit about 20 min from our house!).

We enjoyed a nice night in our own comfy bed and then on Monday decided not to let the holiday or the gorgeous weather go to waste. (Note: it's a lot chillier in England than I anticipated - somewhere around 65 - 70 each day, which is lovely, don't get me wrong, but compared to the east coast when I left it's down right chilly. It feels like autumn already. I quite like it!) So we hopped on the motorcycle and ventured off to Newent, a town about 40 minutes north west of us, and home to a few vineyards! We had packed a picnic, so we spent the afternoon tasting wine and munching on our delicious food. It was quite a lovely day.

That's all for now. Until our next adventure! :)

Meg