A Wales Tale – Part 1

This past weekend was one of the many, many bank holidays here in England, so Kevin and I thought it would make the perfect weekend for a quick getaway.  We had been wanting to go to Wales and hike Snowdon for awhile, but either the weather never cooperated or we were busy.  Luckily, our friends Sarka and Allister used to live in North Wales, and were free this weekend so we decided to take a camping trip to North Wales with built in guides. 

We set off Friday afternoon, in the little VW camper van that could, affectionately called Lucie by her owner Sarka, with about 20 pounds of meat, a box full of beer, camping gear, and our co-pilot Floss. We were all amped up to go camping, hiking  and (for Kevin and Al) drink  beer and eat meat.  However, Floss had no sooner stopped her start of a car ride barking when we hit a queue. (For you normal English speakers, that’s a line of traffic).  What should have been a 3 hour car ride wound up taking 5 1/2 (with a short stop at McDonalds right over the Welsh Border.  That makes 8 countries of McDonalds in my quest to eat a double cheeseburger in every country.)  It seems all of England was out on the motorways for the bank holiday.  Regardless, we finally made it to our campsite just before dark. 

Lucie.  Jeremy Clarkson, eat your heart out!

Like smart women, Sarka and I left the men to set up the tent while we took Floss for a walk.   The campsite was nestled in between mountains just outside the village of Llanberis, where Sarka and Al used to live.  

The view from our campsite

When we arrived back at the campsite from our walk, Kevin and Allister had finished setting up our tent and started on a beer, after which we decided to head up to the pub to grab a pint or two and check out the band.  When we walked in, I immediately knew we were in for an interesting night as we were easily the most attractive people at the bar and 3/4 of the clientele appeared to be in high school.  Allister likened it to the  Star Wars bar)which had me hearing that annoying song in my head all night.   The band was horrible.  The clientele was straight out of Star Wars.  We had a guy named Trevor come over with the line “oh, I thought I knew you” as he grabbed Sarka and I who proceeded to talk to Sarka all night about ridiculous things.  The most entertaining thing was when he went on an on about how alcohol ruins lives and its taken him 30 years to get away from the evils of alcohol at which point he informed us that he was drinking a Rum and Coke.  Luckily, he finally went away and we hurried out of the place once we had finished our pints.  As it was supposed to rain the next day, we headed to bed with the intention of hiking Snowdon as long as it wasn’t pouring.