Deep, deep Wales

It’s been a very long day and an even longer drive, but we’ve finally arrived at Colwyn Bay, north Wales. Wales is everything I thought it would be, except five shades greener. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen a more picturesque landscape. Hill after hill after hill of knee-high grass, being eaten by the whitest and most fluffy sheep imaginable (it’s enough to make a New Zealander go weak at the knees).

A typical Swansea street in the old section of the city

Where old meets new - Swansea Castle amid a backdrop of new development

Wales is indeed lovely, but completely foreign to everything we understand as 'normal' in Oz.  For a start, there are villages every few kilometres, in which the houses literally come right up to the road. In many places, the roads are so narrow cars cannot pass each other abreast. Believe me, it makes for some very interesting driving experiences. The villages themselves are straight out of something like All Creatures Great and Small (different part of the UK, I know, but you get the idea). In fact, they are quintessential Welsh, right down to their black slate roofs – which is used just about everywhere.

How green is my very Welsh valley?

While I’m on the topic of driving, it is fair to say I’ve not handled it particularly well. There are roundabouts in abundance, but unlike ours back home, where there are perhaps two or three exits at most, Welsh roundabouts can have up to six or seven exits, none of which are displayed on our GPS. We are making use over here of our trusted Australian GPS, with some European maps we purchased off eBay, but it’s not as straightforward as back home; our poor GPS voice, Karen, is so confused I’ve ordered her to bed with a couple of Bex (and a large bottle of gin).

Colwyn Bay

Our trip today was only around 120 miles, and should have only taken around three hours, but I thought it might be nice to go the scenic route (or should I say the even more scenic route), via Snowdonia National Park (Mt. Snowdon is the tallest peak in Wales). Six hours later, we pulled into Colwyn Bay, tired and very stressed (by now Karen had knocked off completely for the day, and it was Alison’s turn to screw up the directions). I’ve got to admit, even though we didn’t see all that much of the peaks, as they were shrouded in heavy fog, this is a most rugged and beautiful area. Pity we hadn’t seen it in the sunshine, but apparently that bi-annual event has already come and gone.

Snowdonia National Park - Very cold and foggy

Colwyn Bay is a typical British seaside village, very quaint (this is probably our most used word since arriving) but quite lovely. What we did not expect to see was a battalion of wind turbines stuck out in the sea, around ten miles from shore. This is Wales’ largest off-shore wind farm, and the second largest in the world, and powers around one-third of Welsh homes. Pretty impressive stuff (now if they could just get those bloody roundabouts sorted out!)

That's an awful lot of wind power.

On the road from Wwndnnllywnmf (I made that up) to Colwyn Bay

Tomorrow it’s off to look at Beaumaris Castle, and then to the ferry at Holyhead to take us to Ireland. Must sign off now, as I’ve got at least another dozen Father Ted episodes to look at before I get the accent right.