In a room full of friends...
In the middle of a forest...
In Wales.
:)
I went downstairs to breakfast and found that an awesome buffet was going strong for the many people there at the hostel and those who were camping on the grounds.
It was cool to get the English/Welsh perspective on breakfast food: scrambled eggs are pretty standard, though strangely white. The sausage was not bad, but tasted a bit more like a hot dog than what I typically consider 'sausage.' Bacon isn't served in strips, but more like in rounds. Breakfast cereal is served with a really powdery stuff like raisin bran that I rather like. Marmalade is a must on toast. Yogurt is spelled and pronounced with an 'h' in the middle. And hashbrowns are called...hashbrowns. (note: I didn't actually eat all of that for breakfast, good heavens. That was just stuff I learned.)
I sat down in the only available seat, at a table mostly filled with my fellow travelers, and an unknown lady to my immediate right. I'm not super great with strangers, but I've really been trying to work on that this trip. I didn't really say anything to her at all, though I sat next to her...until everyone else at my table left just a few minutes after I got there. Awkward.
The lady next to me had actually left shortly before my group left, so I suddenly had the whole table to myself for a bit. Not quite as awkward. I happened to glance over at the book that I saw the lady reading that she had set down. It was a travel guide for England and Wales, but there was something strange about reading the cover. As I got looking at it, I realized that it was all written in GERMAN!!!
Glory be!! I have always wanted to speak German with a native just off the cuff! But it has been so long since I've had a chance to really exercise my German, so when she returned, it took me a minute to gather myself before striking up a conversation.
It turned out super awesome! When I got talking with her, she admitted after a little while that she didn't know English very well, so our discussion turned into a delightful mix of the two languages. See, when I would say something in English, but she wasn't able to translate it, I would go back and say it in German as best as I could, and we would continue speaking German until we came to a part of a sentence that I didn't understand and then she would say that part again in English.
As I got more of her story, I decided she was a really cool lady. She was a German professor of travel and culture, and so was on a long trip across England and Wales to keep up her credentials. She was one of the campers outside and had been pretty much walking everywhere. In a country this gorgeous, I was almost envious of her...almost. She told me about her family, what her kids are doing, and where they want to go. It was so cool to be able to understand and then speak back in a language other than my own. I know I must have made a gazillion mistakes, but even though she seemed like a pretty straight up person, she actually complimented me a few times on my pronunciation and my vocabulary. There's nothin like having a native German tell you that your German is pretty good, even if they were lying :)
So breakfast ended all too soon, I grabbed my gear from upstairs and met everyone at the van by 8:30.
Our first stop was in the middle of nowhere. Nothin wrong with that :) This is because 'middle of nowhere' here means a vast expanse of crop and grazing fields. Yes please!
We walked straight into a field of thistles, tall grasses, and nettle along a narrow path of crushed vegetation. We walked probably the majority of a mile in this crazy deserted place; there wasn't a town or city for 15 miles, and it was nothing but solid green plants and sporadic purple tufts for as far as the eye could see. It was strange, though, because we were very much confined to the safety of the tiny path we were on, as the plants were so thorny, fierce, and overgrown that there was absolutely nowhere else you could safely tread but on that trail.
After a lot of purple and green, we eventually reached Chun's castle (a rather disappointing rock outline of what used to be a small-ish castle). We walked a little farther down the trail to a quoit that was set up a bit differently. We highly doubt that it was originally built this way, but this quoit was not especially tall, and its main top stone was held up by three upright stones, forming a kind of pyramid. We couldn't really get in this one, as there wasn't much in the way of gaps in the three stones, so I just climbed on top. (I'm actually really afraid of heights, so I actually made it a goal to climb on top of every quoit I came to...and some are tall!)
After we left the quoit, we walked back to the van and drove a few more miles through the country into a more cultivated part of the county. We again parked the van beside the great hedge and found ourselves on a very windy and bumpy path. We hiked along this dirt path for about a mile. This area was a little strange though because it was lined on both sides by 5 foot stone walls. The stones were very dark against the light gray mortar, now flourishing with black lichen. Thick flower bushes and plants hung heavily over the tops of almost the whole expanse of wall, so that made the trail even more leafy and green.
We eventually went up and over the wall at a gap and walked through some grazing lands that weren't being used for sheep now. Eventually we came to three large stones sticking out from the ground.
This was Men-an-Tol, a sacred group of rocks used by the Druids long ago. Two skinny tall rectangular rocks stood on either side of a large circular rock with a large hollow hole in it. So it was like a big strange letter 'O' coming out of the ground. While a lot has been said for how it lines up perfectly with the shadows of those rocks on the solstices, there is still a lot of mystery resting within those stones.
It's amazing how much more incredible and beautiful things become if they can maintain mystery, especially in a world such as this where we have learned so much about so many things...
Tom arrived just a few minutes behind me, saying something about how some think that this is the gateway to another realm. Pretty sure I was already on my way to the center before he had even said anything. I was just small enough to get through comfortably. So just to let you know, gentle reader, but actually now living in a different realm, since I'm on the other side of Men-an-Tol now. But it's okay, because your realm is cool enough that these two realms actually connect a ton, so it's pretty much like there's just one. Cool huh? Tell you what, when I get home, lets all just celebrate everyone being together! Yeah, it's a good idea, I promise :)
On my way back, I noticed some great big farmhouses that had been abandoned and overrun with time. They were so gorgeous. It was like time had put wrinkles into the dark brickwork and tin roofs. Gone was their ability to accomplish heavy work, and they seemed to sag for lack of purpose. But while they lacked the demeanor of youth, they seemed to burst with the luster of a life truly lived, now sent to pasture.
Back in the van. Drive, drive, drive, drive. Write in journal, sleep a little, sing to the radio a lot...
Arrive at another field. This time the quoit was very close to the main road. We hopped out and walked about halfway through the grassy field when we came to Lanyon quoit. This used to be the tallest quoit in all Great Britain, as a man on a horse could easily pass underneath the cap stone...until one day, lightning struck. Literally. A bolt of lightning hit this quoit about 40 years ago and split the upright stones. It was put back together, but now stands at about 6 and a half feet high. Not too tall to climb up.
After we left Lanyon quoit, we took a drive over to a forest area. We walked through the trails here for about a mile and a half through the green tunnel. Seriously, the trees and bushes contained and roofed the trail so much that some parts of the trail felt like we were walking down a living, indoor tunnel. We eventually came upon a thinner spot, thin enough that we could see deeper into the forest at the collection of crazy tall pine trees. In this particular clearing, there was an odd tree, one that looked like a smooth-toned cherry tree, but wasn't cherry. It's branches were just more open and exposed than many of the other trees I had seen in that forest.
This tree was special, not just because it was unique, but becuase it was a wishing tree. I remember getting a quick lesson on these trees in Welsh class over winter semester. You tie something meaningful to your wish on the boughs, and then the elements take over from there as they please. Sure enough, the whole tree was covered in ribbons, papers, mesh bags, necklaces, and other little trinkets that people had come to leave as a message and make a wish with. Tom took a small moment to pause and look at the tree, only noting that the last time that he was here, the whole tree had been covered in little baby booties and shoes. I think I preferred this decoration; I think my heart would have broken to see the tree adorned with so many sad baby shoes.
We walked down the trail a bit farther and arrived at the Celtic chapel we were there for. It was just the lower half of the walls, with what was left of their sacred indoor well and altar stone. We were short on sitting space, so Nate and Theresa sat on the altar stone and asked me to sit with them. I started to, but then just felt super weird about casually sitting somewhere upon which who knows what sort of ceremonies took place, so I was willing to just stand. It was nice just sititng and talking about that place.
Leaving the country was fun. Okay, I say fun, but more than anything I just mean that I am SO grateful that Tom and Anders don't get upset when driving gets stressful! The roads here are so tiny all the time, but in the country, you have that constricting hedge that keeps everyone on the tiny road. That's all fine and good, until someone needs to pass our massive van. Then things get crazy. At that point, then it becomes a battle of the road. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to tell our awesome van to 'suck it in,' but I try to keep my conversation with inanimate objects to a minimum when I'm in public.
We drove into the nearby major city of St. Ives. This is a harbor city, right on the edge of the ocean! This means that the roads are crazy super steep. We had to park high up on the hill-town, because the roads are far too steep for anything other than powerful small cars. We walked down into the city and split up for about three hours. Miya, Josie, Theresa, Abby, and I all started off together. Everyone but Miya and I really wanted to pick up some cheap swim suits so they could go in the ocean.
Here were my thoughts on that. First: it was crazy hot again that day, but the ocean here is super cold. Second: I like swimming, but I didn't really want to pay money for a swimsuit just to go swim. Third: Miya and I were both randomly craving milkshakes, so we set out to find some.
So the two of us left the others and set off on our quest. This mission was successfully accomplished when we ran into an ice cream place cool enough to mix almond brownie and toffee together in a shake. Delish!
We were walking down one of the countless tiny shop streets that made up the majority of the main city when we came upon a high-end swim shop. They sold all sorts of fancy outdoors clothing, so of course they were nop-notch and expensive. The funny thing though, was that they were having a huge sale that day: high-quality wet suits for 20 pounds!!! We saw some wet suit rental places, and they were all renting suits for 15 pounds A DAY! These were like $140 wet suits that they were trying to restock, and so put out for insanely cheap on a hot day. So, Miya and I gave each other some incredulous looks, and then tried on some wet suits. Calysta had actually come by at that point and helped us find suits that fit (well, Miyas suit fits great, but I needed a suit with a long enough torso, so I had to go with a suit that is not quite as snug as Miya's). We knew we wouldn't have a lot of places or time to change, so we actually asked the guy at the counter if we could pay for them while we had them on. When he said yes, we each changed, then had him cut the tags off as we paid for them. Then it was a quick jaunt through the town, down to the beach where Calysta was content to munch on her lunch while babysitting our bags.
We dove right into the sea. It was freezing! Miya said it was so hard to breathe when she plunged in. Fortunately, our suits had us feeling much warmer within the first few minutes. I didn't mean to taste it, but the water tasted so awful. The cool thing was that the sea was so salty that you could float by doing little more than just standing perfectly straight, with nothing at your feet but an eternity of blue. It was so easy to stay afloat there! It felt so great to just kick back and float on my back on top of the super salty water.
Miya had never done a back float, so she told me that she wanted help to figure it out. I took her back over to a spot shallow enough that I could feel the sand and put my hands under her back. After a bit of validation and comfort (its what we all really ever need, right?) I got her to relax enough to straighten out. The water took care of the rest, and soon enough, she was chilling out just enough to float along the top of the ocean too.
We decided to go baby otter style (did you know that baby sea otters all hold hands while they sleep on their backs, so they won't drift apart and get separated?? How darling is that!?) for a while. Then we swam back and forth lots, played with the sand under the water, looked for cool rocks and shells, talked with people on the beach, played in the shallow water, and just had a blast. Mostly we just kept exclaiming how freaking awesome it was that we were really right there, in Wales, in the ocean, in our own awesome wetsuits, on such a rare sunny day! Gah, that was a fantastic moment, one I'll always keep.
We swam in the cold ocean for about 45 minutes, then got out and let our feet dry off on the sand before we gathered our stuff and hiked back up into the city with Calysta. We found a bathroom close to the harbor that we were meeting our group at. We changed as best as we could and then went back out. We had a few minutes left, so we stopped in a few more shops and then looked at a royal rescue boat exhibit before we went to the meeting place and waited for the others to come.
We hung up our wet suits on a gate in the sun for a few minutes while the group gathered. In about twenty minutes, everyone had arrived, and so we bid a fond farewell to St. Ives and trekked up the crazy steep hills to the parking lot. Once there, we made the 5ish hour drive back to Cardiff.
I was so excited to take a shower that night and eat some of my own food. I cut up a bunch of my potatoes and put them in the oven to make myself some American Chips (oven-baked french fries! Yum!) while I took a shower.
I was about halfway through washing my hair when I happened to notice a great big spider on the ceiling by the door. I thank the great heavens that I didn't see it moving, but that thing was all legs, like daddy-longlegs size legs, but all black and a creepy shape. Bad news ALL OVER the place. Fortunately, I could hear Theresa was in the hallway right outside the bathroom for some reason. Sweet. With the help of my towel and her shoe, all became well with the world again. Thank you Theresa and everyone Upstairs involved.
Once I was all cleaned up, I cleaned all the salt water out of the two wet suits and hung them out to dry. By this time, my chips were perfectly done, and so I had my funny little dinner. I really need to go to Tesco soon.
After dinner, I got ready for bed, did everything needed to really end a day, and then faded into a lovely, though short sleep (see the next days entry for details).
Thank you so much to everyone and everything that made today click and just keep clicking as it went along. It really was an honor to be a part of such a fantastic day.
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