Cymru am byth

A few weeks ago my Canadian friend Robin and I decided we wanted to spend a weekend in Wales. So, on March 5, we headed to the train station with only backpacks and our Wales Rover passes, which are similar to Eurail passes, but only to be used in north Wales. Some drama with our seats on our first train caused me to accidentally cause a man, who was thankfully quite good-natured, to spill his Coke on himself. After another encounter with some elderly people, a woman winked at us and assured us that, "Not all Brits are like that." I will not go into detail about the events that led up to her having to tell us this. By the time we got to Warrington Bank Quay, where we transferred onto Arriva Trains (the main Welsh train company), we were getting nervous, as our morning train ride had not gone as smoothly as it could have. However, the rest of our trip went more smoothly than we could have hoped.

The first thing that stuck out to me was the Welsh language. The places all have odd names, such as Blaenau Ffestiniog and Betws-y-Coed. "Wales" itself is "Cymru" in Welsh, and is pronounced kind of like "Come-ree," but with the last syllable accented differently. Of course I was pronouncing it "Sim-rue" the whole time we were there, though thankfully I do not think I ever said that to an actual Welsh person. All of the signs had their message first in Welsh, then in English, like this sign at our favorite castle: random double "l's" and double "f's," everywhere.

None of the names of places are pronounced even close to how they are spelled. We talked to a young Welsh guy and he told us that he knew Welsh somewhat but had not started really learning it until high school. At least he had the pronunciations down, though, unlike us.

We arrived in Llandudno Junction via Arriva Trains, the provider of our bus and train passes. We then walked through the town and crossed a bridge, and the Conwy Castle spread out impressively before us. Around this point we started to get very cocky and self-congratulatory about this epic adventure we had planned for ourselves. Conwy is a quaint town, but you can tell it used to be a fairly epic stronghold. The stone walls that once surrounded the city now wind through it, fallen completely into disrepair at some places, but standing tall and strong at others.

Our first destination was our hostel, which was at the very top of the hill the town was built on. By the time we had climbed to the top, our spirits had fallen somewhat. We dropped our bags and said we would be back before 10:00 in the evening (or 22:00) to check in. In hindsight, we probably should have asked for some type of security to make sure our bags would be there when we returned. They did not ask for any ID or give us any type of bag tags to give back to them when we returned to retrieve our bags. But at this point we were on a we're-about-to-explore-an-epic-castle high. The lady at the desk recommended a few places in Wales that we should go, so we decided to change our already shaky itinerary, cutting out one town and adding in one or two others.

First we explored the walls that ran down from our hostel and through the town to the castle.

Then we explored the castle itself.

The rest of the town was very quaint, but the stone fortress was always visible. Also, the tides in the bay seemed to be confused, or perhaps they just confused us. We also had tea in a tea shop run by several old ladies. It gave me a slightly creepy, "A Rose for Emily" vibe, but we escaped with our lives, and even tried some Welsh cakes, which are basically just flat, small scones.

This photo was not edited at all. Cut out the cars and I would think I had somehow found my way into a fairytale!

That night we put our Wales passes to use, walking back to Llandudno Junction and taking the train 15 minutes away to Llandudno. We were… a bit nervous in this town. It was dark, rather empty, many of the restaurants were closed, and every time we try to go into a pub together we end up in an "old man pub." But we managed to find a quasi-authentic American diner; they even had Heinz ketchup and French's mustard, as well as an Elvis tribute wall and red and white vinyl booths. They also had large statues of Alice in Wonderland characters throughout the town, for no apparent reason. *Clarification: I have since found out that Alice Liddell, the supposed inspiration for Lewis Carroll's stories.

The next day we went back to the train station with plans to take a train to Betws-y-Coed, or at least part of the way there. As it turned out, the train was not coming for a few more hours, so we took the bus, instead. Every time we showed bus drivers and train conductors our Wales Rover pass, we went out of our way to over-explain it, but they never seemed to care. Truthfully, if we had just had any little orange and white piece of paper, we could probably have made it through most of Wales for free.

We passed through beautiful Welsh countryside, including great slate mountains and fields dotted with sheep and so many tiny lambs. One of our goals was to pet a little lamb, but alas, it did not happen. Hopefully Scotland's lambing season will start soon. Hmm, I wonder if I could somehow sneak a lamb into my tiny flat… Anyway, we eventually arrived at the little hamlet of Betws-y-Coed. Nestled in between the River Conwy and its three western tributaries, this town reminded me of Star's Hollow, from Gilmore Girls. Unfortunately there were more bed and breakfasts and fancy vacation restaurants than diners, and while I did not run into Taylor Doose, I did see the town meeting minutes stapled in a glass case in the park, for all to read.

After Betws-y-Coed, we took the train, and then the bus, onward to Caernarfon, and then Beaumaris. It is only because of Robin (and her data) that I am not still in Wales to this day. She bravely planned out our journey, and got us from train to bus and back again. Sometimes this involved running from the train to an about-to-leave bus, other times it involved a helpful stranger a few seats over giving us advice. Luckily, as loud North Americans, everyone always knew our plans and knew when we needed help.

Later that day we saw some more castles. I never thought I would say that so nonchalantly. First we explored Caernarfon...

Next we saw Beaumaris Castle, which is known as the most technically beautiful castle in the UK, and has its very own moat.

All the castles we visited were built by Edward Longshanks in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. He built and rebuilt a string of castles across Wales, and we saw three of the "four great castles." They were all incredible, and massive, and made me wonder what type of man Edward was.

When we got off the bus at Beaumaris, I specifically asked the driver how often the bus back to Bangor comes, and he told us every 15 minutes. Well, that was a lie, so we waited in the wind and cold for over an hour until the bus finally came. A young Welsh guy was also waiting for the bus, and when we dropped him off at his stop, his next bus was just pulling away, so at least we did not have his luck.

We spent that night in Chester, England, at another hostel. This time we had a roommate which was a wee bit awkward. She spent a disconcerting amount of time sitting on her bed with no phone or book, watching me. But we made the most of it. The next morning, we hopped on a bus to our last destination, Llangollen. We originally put this town on our list because they were having a steam train festival, but when we arrived we decided to skip it, as we had already been riding trains, albeit not steam trains, all weekend, and it was more expensive than we hoped. Instead, we wandered around the town, which was a very nice little place with a river running through it, and fruit, vegetable, and flower markets spilling out onto the sidewalk.

A little old lady approached us in the street and asked if we were lost. We told her "No, we're just wandering around." She said we simply had to see the ceiling of their church, as it would be like nothing we had ever seen before. She then commanded us to go around the church to a building where they were serving free breakfast, and tell them that Pam said to tell Mike to open the church for us. We did, and not only did we get a free full English breakfast, complete with beans, tomatoes, and two kinds of meat, but we also got to see the exquisite, wood carved ceiling of the church.

We spent the afternoon taking a canal boat down the Llangollen Canal to the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. Collectively they are another UNESCO World Heritage Site. Honestly I'm not sure why I'm so excited about going to these UNESCO sites, but why not? Most of them we went to without even knowing what they were. We chilled on the boat with people a few years (or 30-50 years) older than us, and then embraced our youth by running down into a random farmer's field to get a closer view of the aqueduct we had just crossed via boat. There was also a viaduct in the distance.

All in all, Wales was much more spectacular than I thought it would be. When I first came to the United Kingdom, Wales was at the bottom of my list of places to travel to, but now, northern Wales is one of the first places I would recommend to people traveling in the UK, after the Scottish highlands of course. The Welsh motto, "Cymru am byth" means "Wales forever" or "Long live Wales." I could not agree more. I hope Wales lives on for a very long time; it will live on in my memory as long as I live.


Thanks for reading,

Carrie

In Which I Try to Make Weather and School Interesting Topics to Read About

It is raining in Scotland this week. This is fine... to be expected… I might even say it is a part of the reason I chose to come to Scotland. (I'm weird, okay. Leave melancholy people alone. Let us be. We like being sad, we like clouds, we like rain. Don't try to understand us.) Of course, this rainy week I'm in the mood to be outside, to drink up some sun, to be warm. Maybe it has something to do with my family at home continually flying off to tropical destinations. Maybe it has something to do with missing beautiful places like the Ayrshire Coast, which I visited a few weeks ago, and loved.

I mean, check out that blue sky meeting that even bluer ocean, and the rocky coast? Exactly what I imagined when I thought of Scotland. There were also some castle ruins…

And some sheep chilling on a lush green field…

And a dragon to protect the coast from future viking invasions…

So, that was my throwback to happier times, about two weeks ago, when it was sunny and there was water but it was not falling from the sky.

I've had a few people (my mom, mostly) ask me about what I'm actually doing here. You know, school? As it turns out I do not actually spend all of my time traveling and taking in pretty sights and Scottish culture. Sadly, most of my time is spent in class, and studying, and writing essays, or at least trying to find the motivation to go to class, and study, and write essays.

I have only three classes here, which is quite different from home, where I generally have 5 or even 6 classes in a semester. These classes will transfer back as more credits than my classes at home (or so they told me), and I even get an added bonus of not having to take the dreaded Perspectives course, since I suppose living in a foreign country is exposing me to enough new perspectives and different cultures and ways of thinking.

Two of my three classes are English classes, and they are somewhat similar to my English courses at home. I am in a Renaissance course, which is okay but most of the works we are looking at I have read before and did not find too enlightening the first time. There's only so many times I can read Ben Jonson or Andrew Marvell without wondering why I'm even bothering when the majority of the population (non English-majors) just reads Shakespeare and maybe Milton and calls it a day, when it comes to the Renaissance. One thing that is interesting about this course is seeing how differently my professor here analyzes works than my professors at home. I'm starting to think she may be making up her analysis on the fly and it may be 100% wrong, but hey, maybe she's just interpreting the works in a more... British way? (That was me being generous. Her interpretations are wrong in any culture.)

My other English course is called "Arthurian Legends From Monmouth To Monty Python." I actually really like this one. It is all about King Arthur's court, and how Camelot and the whole story has been seen and interpreted through the years. Scots, and Brits in general, seem to have much more of a connection to these stories, as at least some aspects of it are the history of their nation. Even the parts that are clearly myth they kind of claim as history. It's interesting because I received very little exposure to King Arthur in the past. I knew the basic characters (Arthur, Lancelot, Merlin, Guinevere, Mordred), and the basic plot, but that's about it. Everything I did know, I learned through books and movies I read and watched on my own, not in school.

We started out with a text from 1138, Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Kings of Britain then moved on through a few other books, including one of my personal favorites, Tennyson, though we read his Idylls of the King, which was much different and a few hundred pages longer than "The Lady of Shallot," my favorite of his poems, which also happens to be set in Camelot.

Now we are moving on to versions of this story that were created in modern times. We just read Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court which was actually the most disturbing. Now, as my brothers will tell you, I am not Twain's biggest fan. We have an on-going argument about whether Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the great American novel (it's not). But this was even a little far for Twain. It started out funny, but then part way through it took a dark turn and ended with (spoiler alert!) everyone dying. So that was fun. I'm still ruminating on this book, so in a day or two I may decide I loved it. Either way, we now get to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so all will be right with the world again.

My final course is a History class, called "The 'Highland Problem?': Crown-Clan Relations In The 16th Century." To be honest, I am lost in this course, because I knew nothing about the highlands except what I learned from Braveheart and Brave, and apparently most of that was wrong. I spent the first few weeks of the course trying to figure out why "MacLeod" is pronounced "McCloud." I'm still confused about that. Even though I feel like I am playing catch up to the Scots when it comes to my knowledge of highland and lowland clan interaction, I am enjoying the course because the professor is brilliant. Also, the first day she told us while she'd be asking all the Scottish students if they did the readings, she'd be asking the study abroad students where we traveled over the weekend, so she's my kind of woman. (It should be noted that she was probably joking. It should also be noted that I took what she said at face value.)

There you have it; this is what I am doing in school. Also, I feel as if this is a good time to tell you that this entire post was merely me procrastinating and not starting my Arthurian Legends essay. I have three or four essays due before and during spring break, so I am trying to work ahead (clearly this is not going well), because come spring break, my best friend and my cousin are coming to see me. And, let me just say, I have never been so excited to see anyone! It is like home is coming to me, and oh how I miss home. In fact, I think my next blog post may be a Lancaster/America appreciation post, because none of you realize how good you have it (she says, from Scotland, where she dreamt of going for a very long time). I love it here-I really do, but I miss home none the less.

This weekend I am going to Wales with my Canadian friend, Robin. Wales was not one of the places I had on my "Must-See" list, but ever since we started researching it, I have realized how incredibly beautiful it is. I think they have the best castles in the UK, like this this one, and this one, or "the most technically perfect castle in Great Britain" and we are going to see them all, or at least the three I listed. Wish us luck. Neither of us have done a multi-day trip over here, so the trains and the hostels and all the planning it takes is all a little new to us, but either way, we will have fun, because WALES.

Cheers,

Carrie