Friday, April 18, 2008

England and Wales driving holiday


Basically, we spent 5 days, a LOT of money and drove 678 miles. We arrived in Liverpool and spent an evening then made our way down the M6, driving through cities like Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham, Worcester before taking a side road hour drive into Stratford-upon-Avon, where we spent a few hours. We headed south again on the M6, got onto the M50, which later, in Wales turned into the A40. We drove through towns such as Abergavenny, Merthyr Tydfil, and Glyneath, until finally reaching the city of Neath. We spent about 2 hours trying to figure the town out and trying to find a hotel (all the "Inns" were not hotels, rather bars) and the roads seemed to keep leading us in circles. Eventually we drove to Swansea and got an extremely expensive and upscale hotel room for the night (but we were desperate to stop driving and eat some dinner). Then the next day we were able to get up early and explore Neath.

After spending the day in Neath we headed west to the coast, driving through towns such as Carmarthen and Haverfordwest up to Fishguard, our firststop off. In Fishguard we headed north up the A487 and didn't stop for the night until Aberystwyth. Aberystwyth was a pretty nice coastal type town with a big seaside "Promonade", tiny streets and a lot of people. But the people didn't really seem to be tourists, although I'm sure they were there...but we stopped at 4 hotels before finding one with vacancies.

Near Aberystwyth we did a hike at "Devil's Bridge" and then drove up to Corris for another stop off along the way. Then we entered Snowdonia National Park which basically is a mountainous region, along with big rolling green hills and a GOjillian sheep. Man, those sheep were everywhere. It was awesome. We kept seeing baby lambs and wondering how we could smuggle one into the car and get it on the plane with us. For Fun - a sheep game from the BBC. Those dang little lamb were jumping around all over the place and we've even see them standing on top of the mamma sheep and even once I saw two little lambs playing together and they jumped and they bumped butts together...if that wasn't the cutest thing! I'm serious, it was awesome seeing all those sheep and spring lamb.


We stayed on the A487 until Dolgellau and then got on the A494 up to Bala (still in the Snowdonia National Park---lots of very skinny roads, hardly any place to stop for gas or bathrooms and still a gojillian more sheep and pretty scenery to entertain us). Then we made our way eventually out of the National Park area and drove the rest of the Welsh country side in the North and making our way to Chester, England and back up to Liverpool.

On our travels, we pretty much ate a bunch of fish and chips. I wanted to have some meat pies but never got around to it. One day when I was sick and tired of fish and chips I was able to talk Jake and Ann-Marie into Chinese Food. It was interesting to hear the Chinese people speak English with a very Chinese-English-Welsh accent. One interesting restaurant was Circo which we had fish and chips. However, at the time we were in the mood for just a plain ol' pile of greasy, salty, vinegary plate of fish and chips...having just arrived in England. But we got a very small portion of fancy fish and chips with the plate decorated with sauces and stuff (that type of place). Anyway, it was a fun place. Other than that we ate at the hotel restaurants pretty much and also did one take out fish and chips which gave us TONS of food for only 10 Pounds and it was rather good. However, we didn't realize that scallops (we ordered two orders of it) were actually only potatoes- huge slices of potatoes, put into the fish batter and then fried...we thought we were getting some scallops.

Jake and I had many of those moments where you are in a situation, trying everything you possibly can to stifle back laughter, tears streaming down your face, embarrassed at yourself kind of situations- a complete riot of fun, seriously. It was great to have him around to laugh with like that. Ann-Marie had a good time with both of us and would earn her spending money for each day by giving us awesome back scratches and back massages when we got back to the hotel rooms at night. And she was a great back seat navigator, she would watch out for the turns and help us make sure we were staying on the right roads when going around the round-abouts. She pretended she was the princess in the game super mario brothers when we were in the Neath castle (and Daddy was Mario and had to save her). At times, we were trying to bump our heads on the pretend blocks and were looking for mushrooms. (you gotta know the game)
Ok, have a look at our photos and maybe later this weekend I will try to post more pics. It was a nice time.

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