Saturday 19 July 2008

Wales Day 2: and you thought yesterday was lazy

Most of our trips have been 3 day trips and Day 2 is usually the most exciting day of these trips.

Not this time. Day 2 was started off as one of the laziest days, even more so when you think that this was to be a full-on hiking day. We were supposed to hike up mount Snowdon. Guess what we ended up doing.... if you know us, you have guessed right. We woke up late, lazed around and finally made our way into town and had the biggest & best breakfast possible :-) Well, in all honesty, weather was a big spoilsport today. It was a horrible day with non-stop rain till late afternoon.

After the filling brunch, we got to the station to take the mountain rail up to Snowdon and even bought the tickets but then exchanged them for tickets for tomorrow, since tomorrow is expected to be sunny and bright. So with tickets and a plan for tomorrow but no plan for today, we all kind of stood there scratching our heads as to what to do and we started walking back to the car.

Before getting into the car, I saw this interesting sight of the parking attendant talking to a Ferrari driver. In order to just talk to the guy, he had to take a knee and salute the Ferrari. Thought this was interesting.

Right beside the carpark was a stream, a crystal clear stream which Anusha wanted to pollute by plonking her feet in it. Oh! did I mention that it was cold and we all were pretty sure that the water would be freezing. But then again Anusha's 'feet in streams' fascination knows no sense. For the next few minutes, we all watched her hop and scream in the cold water. Well, you had to be there to truly enjoy it.

After our little scream-stream episode, we spotted a small trail off the back of the parking lot. We decided to take that and landed up at the old ruins of what was once a small fort with amazing views. I'll let the pictures do the talking. Take special notice of the details like the faces by the hanging jacket from the window of the ruin and the mountain rail in the background of the second picture.

With Smita navigating and Raghav driving, the infamous four headed off once again in search of exotic locations and prettier locations. A beautiful 2-hour drive took us through many a curvy roads, each with a better picturesque view. It was one of those stop - look around - soak the scenery - off again journeys. We finally ended up in island county of Anglesey, an island with some awesome views of the Welsh coast of the Irish sea.

We stopped by a local pub on the way back to grab some food. As usual we overstuffed ourselves and crawled our way back to our hotel room. Somehow, all of us got re energized by looking at the pictures from the day and a cup of tea and finally decided to embark on that elusive hike. It was a really nice hike up the hills & away from the village. We were supposed to be on this circular path that would get us back to the village from another side. However, we strayed off our path because the one we were supposed to take was being guarded by some really mean looking bulls that were watching our every move. We trekked for a little over an hour along whatever path we could find and finally with Raghav claiming 'aama yaar, idu straighta bullukke poharade!' (this path is heading straight towards the bulls again!), we turned around and came back to our village.

Finally going to be sleeping light after the hike. Have a fairly full day ahead of us with the train ride up the mountain, another hike and the drive back to Hitchin. Stay tuned ....

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