Wales, UK
This weekend, I headed up to Wales with some people from the same program for some biking, hiking, and rafting. Wales was really nice because of the green, the trees and hills. More like home. There were about 9 americans, and 3 candians. What happened to everyone of other nations? still trying to figure that out.
Speaking of trying to figure things out, how do you say ldllcymds? what about accellden? its way different than you might expect. Everything is in welsh as well as english. The picture above is the farmland, fairly typical of this region.
One thing unique that also characterized the area, was the stone fences. Everywhere, for every little piece of land. It makes me wonder how much time do you spend moving rocks around. Seriously, even on (what they call) the mountains, there were stone walls up and around the sides.
The biking was fun. Many trails that we hit were very large gravel trails, and some single track. The good parts were really good rocky trails. Its a good thing no one who went was really really fit, i don’t think anyone was fit. That was the complete opposite as to what I was expected, because I was biking in the fitness center at the school the last while. It was a hearty ride, despite beeing fit or not, and our tour guide paul (he did everything) was the guide for that. I was the winner with wipeouts. In the begginning I was testing out the bike for grip, at the back of the pack, sliped, took a bow, and got back on. On the way back, hit some rough stones really fast, and wasn’t leaning on the back enough. The back went everywhere, the front went, well, i’m not sure. After some circus balancing acts, landed with my hands in a thorn bush. I will be picking those out for a week, it was rather nice that only a couple saw either. Such small thorns bring such immense pain.
Paul was the driver, the cook, the organizer, and only the rafting he wasn’t guiding. Seems like one great job!
Our hike, was unfortunately, not up the Snowdian mountain (largest in England and Wales). The mole hill of a mountain, would have taken two hours to climb. I bought some postcards to mock the size of the mountains. Instead, we took a more scenic path, with a stop at an old copper mine, which was barely big enough to crawl through. After Celeste went in, I decided why not and jumped in too. Mex from texas decided to join in too. It was amazingly refreshing in the blazing hot day. I kept wondering (while swimming) if swimming out in the middle of an open lake (the below) was a good or bad idea. The water is very clear, but you don’t see the bottom. This is the side of the lake that we swam out from.
Sunday we went rafting. The funny thing with the rafting, was that there are no huge rafting areas around Great Britain, but this was supposed to be one or the best. Its an engineered site, where they have moved rocks so that there is consistent rapids (class3), and people are always there training. It was a fairly nice 5 min ride down. Then we got out, drove back up, and did it again. We did this four times, over what must have been two hours.
A quick stop for lunch, and on our way back. What a nice weekend.
Tags: London, London Trips, UK
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