Travel

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09
Mar 11

A Wedding in Wales

We headed back to Wales over the weekend, as my brother was getting married.

It was a lovely wedding, it was Gina’s first encounter to a Welsh wedding, and she thought that it was lovely.

The Marriage itself was in a wee small church in Llanllyfni – where the Bride is originally from. I was the Usher, along with my little brother Llyr and Donna’s brother Kevin, who usher’ed people to their seats as they arrived for the ceremony. The service at the Church was quite nice, which didn’t end up in a mass lecture from the Priest, mostly in Welsh, but Gina was totally ontop of it. The words ‘cariad’ come up often, so it was all good. Surprisingly, not once did ‘igam ogam’ come up.

The Wedding Couple

Us

The wedding meal, and drinks etc was held at a lovely wee place called Nant Gwrtheyrn, a beautiful place, nested just behind the Rival Mountains, just on the Pen Lleyn. Everything went lovely, lots of beer was drunk, and we also got to stay in one of the lovely wee cottages down there (Diolch mam a dad!). It’s always been something that I’ve wanted to do, to stay in one of these houses, and it didn’t disappoint one bit.

The wee cottages

Welsh Love Spoon

Pear Drops

Our room

Yes, it was a lovely wee day. Good to see my brother getting married, and to see the whole day go very smoothly (although, I didn’t fulfil my Usher duties wholly, I forgot to collect the flowers after the ceremony in the church – bad times). Geraint Thomas, of Panorama Cymru, in Caernarfon (wonderful photographs) was the photographer on the day, and he has some of the images on his blog: Priodas Donna a Celfyn

The rest of the weekend was spent chilling mostly. We had a wee walk around Llanberis, went to pay our respects to the awesome place that is Pete’s Eat, and did one image for our ‘Retro’ project, that’s quite interesting. (Will follow soon). The weather was super awesome, Gina could not believe it, Sun in Wales! Never has such thing happened before!

Pete's Eat

Snowdon from Llanberis Quarry

And that was pretty much it! Unfortunately, there was no surf (again) in Wales this weekend, so I couldn’t take Gina for a nice session in the sea. I really hope someday, I’ll be able to do this. We headed back down to London on the Monday evening, met up with some friends, and caught the bus to the airport at 4:30am on Tuesday to leave for Freiburg. ‘Twas a good wee trip!

Flying!

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20
Jan 11

New Year’s

So, it’s the 20th – January today, and I still haven’t written anything about our awesome New Year’s in Wales. Today seems like a good day to do it because Iestyn is having fun at pub quiz, so I’m home alone.

First, it needs to be said that I got awesome awesome presents, birthday ones carefully separated from the solstice ones (just how I like it), and all of them so good. I got me the ubersexy and ubertech mountain jacket that I had loved for ever, and also a beautiful print for the wall, signed and numbered – DON’T SHAVE! Can’t wait to have it with me and hanging. And, on top of that, I got The Ward Lock & Co ‘North Wales ‘ Southern Section’ book! This is the second part to my Northern section book that I already had since our last trip to Scotland, where I found it in a tiny old second-hand bookshop. I cannot believe Iestyn was able to find this, it is really old (probably even a couple of decades than the first one, and that was old already), and truly beautiful. I also got lots of other pretty, nicely smelling, snugly and buzzy things.

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16
Nov 10

Freiburg, a visit

I headed over to Freiburg last week, to be with Gina and visit where she now lives.

Freiburg is a lovely wee place. I’m very impressed with it. I loved the fact that it’s located right at the foothills of the Black Forest, and looking from a vantage point, you can see for weeks, just trees going towards the Horizon. Looking West, you can clearly see the Vosges Mountains which is situated in Eastern France, and when I went for a walk to meet Gina from work, I’m pretty sure I saw the Bernese Alps, Western Switzerland on the far Horizon. What an epic, lovely place!

The beautiful colours of Freiburg

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10
Aug 10

Glen Lyon – Wales

The weather forecast for the remaining couple of days was a bit rainy, so we decided to go to Wales, and spend the rest of time there. (Plus, I really wanted a Welsh dragon key-ring, which at the end proved to be more of a hassle than I would ever expected in a profoundly Welsh-proud place like Caernarfon, so it was good there was enough time for that. Caernarfon failed completely (all they sell is plastic kitschy stuff), and Beddgelert had to come to rescue.)

We visited Edinburgh, which was hosting it’s famous Fringe Festival, so it was full of people, but also nice and sunny, and also it was the place of the best find of the trip – an old North Wales guidebook from early 1930s. Yey! It was in a tiny little second-hand book shop for £4 (well, originally, it was for £5, but it wasn’t quite clear whether the 5 was a 5 or a 3, so we settled on a fair price of £4). For the record, it is also important to state that it was me who found it, and it’s mine mine mine, no matter what Iestyn says (and no matter that he actually paid for it, as they didn’t take cards and I didn’t have change).

The guide is awesome, and it is much fun to read the description of our favorite Welsh places, and see what they looked like ages ago. The book also contains fold-out maps, and generally it is beautiful all over. For our next project, we decided to try and re-take the pictures from the book, to see how the places look today. Taking those pictures also kept us entertained for a couple of days in Wales, until we had to go home to London, and our epic trip was over.

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09
Aug 10

Skye – Glen Lyon

Gina and Glen Coe

Iestyn and Glen Coe

Out of rainy Skye (is there ever sunny at that place?), down to the beautiful Loch Tay area, very very scenic (and yes, sunny). Awesome glen around Ben Lowers and of course, Glen Lyon. Very relaxed day with some awesome views. Castle Menzies. The area is a little bit posh though, one campsite replaced by holiday condos, so we had to go to another one. It was good anyway, as it had lots of cute ducks around.

Glen Lyon

Glen Lyon

Glen Lyon Panorama

 

Wildlife sightings:
mole
deer
ducks

 

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08
Aug 10

Ullapool – Skye

Port of Ullapool

Properly sunny! Just the day to finally do the An Teallach route, yes, the UK # 1 route by Trail magazine. We wasted no time in Ullapool, and soon we were on the trailhead. The weather was exquisite indeed, and after a bit of a strenuous rocky uphill hiking we got to enjoy the beautiful views we came for. Of course, due to the weather and popularity of the route, it was a bit of a bloody tourist highway that day, but still very worth it.

We started the ridge with Sail Liath, continued over Stob Cadha Gobhlach, Corrag Bhuidhe, Sgurr Fiona, Bidein a Ghlas Thuill and Glas Mheall Mor. The final descent through the valley was very beautiful, along waterfalls and rhododendron bushes towards the end, but proved to be a bit too long and strenuous after what we had already done on the ridge, and we arrived to the car very exhausted. A little bit over 7 hours in total.

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After nice Chinese dinner in Inverness, we wanted to camp in Tokavaig on Skye, but that proved too spooky for this time, and since it started to rain heavily, we just decided to sleep in the car for once.

Wildlife sightings:
mountain goats
frogettes
butterflies

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07
Aug 10

Mellon Udrigle – Ullapool

Wild Deer!

The weather didn’t look too good for An Teallach route; low clouds wouldn’t permit the stunning views the route is known for. We went for a huge big breakfast, but clouds hadn’t moved anywhere in the meantime, and Iestyn just couldn’t be asked to go do it. So we decided to do the Ben Eighe route instead.

The route starts with a bit if a loser trail through the valley, so there was a lot of people with kids, short-legged dogs, umbrellas etc. Even though the views were already really nice, we were still quite happy to reach the natural amphitheatre around the lake, where the loser trail ended, and to go up some real hills. We started with the highest one, Ben Eighe itself, and continued the ridge over Spidean Coire nan Clach, Sgurr Ban, and Sgurr nan Fhir Duibhe. Towards the end the clouds were finally lifting, offering some pretty dramatic views over the valleys. Altogether a little bit under 7 hours.

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We camped in Ullapool, with a shower, and a tv show style drama before sleeping.

Wild life sightings:
Plenty of deer! Got really close to some on Ben Eige

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06
Aug 10

Glen Shiel – Mellon Udrigle

We started the Glen Shiel trail, but Iestyn didn’t feel too well, so we gave up, and went to Eilean Donan castle instead. There we decided to do our beach day today, and started by going to our favorite Isle of Skye.

Well, it’s mostly Iestyn’s favorite place, I am yet to see it in good weather to really start liking it. This time we made it to Elgol, but due to low clouds did not enjoy its views of Cuillin ridge. The place was still really magical, with bulls as big as houses and beautiful coast.

Passing by Big Sand beach that turned out to be too touristy and camp-y, we made it all the way to Mellon Udrigle, one of the prettiest Scottish beaches. It was warm and pleasant, and turned into an amazing romantic sunset. We camped there for the night, while unwisely throwing away the rest of our evening pasta too close to our tent, so we got seagulls crying right by our heads real loud.

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Wildlife sightings:
seagulls

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05
Aug 10

Ardnamurchan peninsula – Glen Shiel

Iest's Birthday morning :)

Iestyn’s birthday! I totally let Iestyn sleep as long as he pleased (no ‘unintentional’ nudging, twisting and turning or anything), and after he woke up (from completely natural causes) he got all his cards and presents. He got a whole big box of hazelnut Tatranky (I think that was a winner) but also a very cool and sleek Apple remote, so we can finally watch stuff from our bed without getting up!

After that we got up, packed everything in the car, only to find out that we can’t get out of the campsite back to the road because the ground got wet and soggy overnight. So we had to take everything out of the car again to make it lighter, and it didn’t help either. That didn’t look good at all, and Iest was getting pretty un-birthday-y pissed. We gave up our combined efforts and decided to get help. Luckily, the first car to drive by was a 4×4, with a guy in a nice shirt and a tie going to work, still offering to help. So, after a little confusion with where the hell does our car have a hook for a rope (turns out it has it in the boot :)), we were rescued and back on the road.

That gave us a little bit of a delay for the day, but soon we were in Mallaig having breakfast including a proper birthday cake for Iest. After that there was no holding us back from sea kayaking for the rest of the day! (Except may be that we couldn’t find the guy with the kayaks for a while, until he actually put a red kayak by the road next to his house so we wouldn’t pass it again.)

Kayaking was fun though, the water was surprisingly warm (not that either of us would care to turn the kayak over), and after a couple of showers we even got sun for the rest of the afternoon. The coolest thing were seals playing in the water right around us, lots of them. We also got to see some big sea birds and a nice part of the coast.

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For dinner I took Iestyn to our favorite Indian restaurant in Fort William, which once again served us some awesome grub in abundance. Camped in Glen Shiel.

Thanks to Mike at http://www.seakayakhighlands.co.uk/ for renting us the Kayaks, and being super patient with us! :)

Wildlife sightings:
Seals
Little bunny rabbits in the campsite

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04
Aug 10

Fort William – Ardnamurchan peninsula

Iestyn is actually proud of this picture

Oh no, Iestyn’s knee hurt in the morning, and got swollen and red from yesterday’s slip on the rocks, so we couldn’t go do Ring of Steall trail. We decided to do a nice scenic drive up North instead, tuning into the smooth sounds of radio Nevis (really :)).

We dropped in the award-winning information centre near Fort William, which hosted a beautiful exhibition of wildlife photographs. Other than that, the award-not-winning information centre was equally as nice, and we got our postcards there.

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