Wales

The day after I got home from Budapest, I went on a roadtrip to Wales for the weekend with Nicole. I got the train in to London around midday and met Nicole at her Wimbledon flat when she'd finished work. We had Nandos for dinner, packed our bags (well, she did) and got a relatively early night in preparation for our roadie the next day.

We caught a tram and made it to the car hire place by the time it opened at 8am and were introduced to our little VW. It was a cute little red 4-door that was perfect for the two of us. So, with Nicole behind the wheel and me in the passenger seat with the route mapped out on google maps on her iPad in front of me, we set off. Aaaaaaaaand got lost after 3 turns. HAHAHA. But seriously though, getting out of London is a MISSION, especially for two girls who are used to the easy, quiet Palmerston North/Hobart roads. Once we got on to the M4 it was a breeze though, and we could actually relax a bit. English motorways are excellent. There were about 5 lanes going in each direction the entire way, so no one can really hold up proceedings too much. There is also lovely countryside around you as you're driving, which is nice, and it's all really well signposted. This part of the trip was really fun - we had snacks, we had a great playlist full of singalongs and we had great chats. 

Being foreigners, there were a couple of things that we were confused about during our road trip. Firstly, the motorway has a "variable speed limit". Neither of us knew about this and were therefore unsure what this went up to and when it stopped again. In addition, in NZ there are speed signs all the time, but on the roads in England they are VERY rare, so half the time we were just guessing what speed we were supposed to be doing. But there were always cars whizzing past us in the right-hand lane, so we figured we must be ok. 

Another odd thing that happened was when we were cruising along, a scooter hooned past us really fast. We both stared at it because it was going crazy fast, but when it got in front of us the person driving it was wearing a vest that said "BLOOD" in big, bold letters on the back. Because it was never-before-seen for the both of us, and totally unexpected, we then looked at each other with a similar look of confusion and then cracked up so much that we ended up in tears. It was one of those moments. Afterwards we figured maybe it was someone delivering fresh, emergency blood to someone or something like that. 

Another really entertaining thing about the drive was the increasingly strange place names as we neared Wales. The vowels became fewer and fewer and the names stranger and stranger. We sniggered at Hoarwithy, LOL'd at Muchdewchurch and challenged each other to pronounce Cwmyoy. It was great.

There were a few routes we could have taken to Hay-on-Wye, but we decided to take the route through the Cotswolds, via Gloucester. Because Gloucester Cathedral. Because Hogwarts. We stopped here around 11am and went straight to the cathedral. My oh my it's magnificent!! It's glorious from the outside, but even more fantastic on the inside. And then you go through a little door and into the halls of Hogwarts!!!! It was so cool to be in the place where the films were filmed, especially for absolute potterheads like Nicole and me. It was very cold inside though, which was the only downside. Oh and we had a long chat to a priest about where we were from and what we were doing in England blah blah and the whole conversation I was wondering "How on earth can you be wearing sandals?!" because it was so freezing and his feet were out. After that we went to a nice cafe for lunch (I had soup, because I needed warming up) and then continued on to our destination.

 Gloucester Cathedral 

I'm at Hogwarts!!

Nicole and I chose Hay-on-Wye because it's a town for book lovers, which she and I most certainly are. It's a quaint, tiny little village that oozes with charm. A town with about 4 streets, a population of just over 1000 and 30 bookshops. 30!!! How awesome is that?! We arrived around 3.30pm and were immediately smitten with the place. But we were on a mission: visit as many bookshops as possibe before they closed at 5.30pm. We probably made it to 10 which was disappointing (we were leaving early the next day before the shops opened), but probably a good thing for our wallets and luggage situation. Nicole bought around 8 books and I was very good and only bought 4. If I hadn't had to carry them back from London to Wycombe with me on the train and then bus, I probably would have bought 20. I didn't buy as many as I thought I would have either because I found the bookshops so overwhelming. They were all multi-storied, multi-roomed, beautiful and HUGE. Like Massey University Library huge. They had sections for every subject matter under the sun, new and used, and I just couldn't pick!! So we were book shopping till closing time, then we went to our little hotel, dumped our stuff and went to the pub for dinner. It was a nice little pub called the "Three Tuns" and it was cozy. After a lovely meal, we went back to the hotel, showered and jumped in to bed with a hot drink (tea for me, hot choc for Nicole) and our books. We had another laugh-till-we-cry moment when we realised we were sitting in our bed drinking tea, reading our books at 10pm on a Saturday night. What wild girls we are! (also laughed when we saw that my book was called 'Die Again' and hers 'Death Song').

The next morning we got up, checked out and left the lovely Hay-on-Wye. It was such a shame we were there for so brief a time. I would like a week there. (Also, fun fact, Hay on Wye is twinned with Timbuktu!) Anyway, our next destination was Ross-on-Wye (Wye is the river) where there was a big mediaeval castle Nicole wanted to check out. It was called Goodrich Castle and wasn't like other castles I've been to in the UK. This one was more ruinous, but it was still pretty cool. I could imagine Lords and Ladies, knights and squires living in the castle, a kinda Game-of-Thrones type scenario. After the castle we left Ross-on-Wye and made for our next destination: Cardiff. It was a lovely drive, made more so by the fact that part of it was through Brecon Beacons National Park, which was beautiful hilly scenery. One and a half hours later we reached the Welsh capital. We found a car park, grabbed a coffee and went to Cardiff Castle.

Goodrich Castle

Dale in Wale(s) 

Cardiff is really nice because, like Windsor, there's a massive castle smack-bang in the middle of everything. It was also really thriving for a Sunday morning! It's a nice place, with cobbled streets and nice shops and lots of rugby stuff all over the place (not to mention Millenium Stadium is right in the middle of town). I think Wales is like NZ in a lot of ways: lots of sheep, lots of greenery, lots of hills, rugby mad. Anyho....Before we went around the castle itself, they showed us this little movie, which was the weirdest thing we'd ever seen. It was strange because it showed these actors going through time but it didn't tell us anything about the castle's history, which we found quite odd. It was just a general, going-through-the-ages film, nothing at all to do with the castle we were visiting. Many confused looks were exchanged. The castle wasn't as big as we thought it would be, and didn't take very long to get around. It did offer great city views from the lookout points, the apartments were very luxurious and you could go inside the wall that surrounded the castle, which had a whole lot of war history detailing what the castle was used for during wartime. The castle also had an interesting museum where you could play dress-up, which Nicole and I had a great time doing.

The walls surrounding Cardiff Castle - right in the heart of the city

Inside the Castle walls

Lovely interiors inside the Castle apartments

My favourite - the library (also inside the apartments)

Views of Cardiff from the Castle wall. It was such beautiful weather too!

Playing dress-up

Sergeant McTye and Private Wicken

(also, notice the Welsh on the sign behind Nicole? It's the strangest language!)

After our time at the castle we left Cardiff and started our journey back towards England. We did stop in at the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum in Sussex, which was a collection of old-style farm buildings that you just walk around and look in to. There was a cute little farmers market on, and a fair with a merry-go-round and a couple of sideshow games as well. It wasn't that interesting of a place, if I'm honest, but it was something to do. After that we got in the VW again, stopped in at a Tesco for trip snacks and hit the road. We took a different route back, which took us near places like Bath and Bristol. The traffic was quite heavy on the road heading back to London, so we didn't want to make any other stops. We did cross a very cool bridge on the way, and went past a toll booth! First time I'd ever seen a toll booth before! 

The cool bridge

It was such a good weekend away with Nicole. Lots of laughs, lots of interesting sights and culture. While I do like solo travel, doing a trip with her was awesome. I'm soooo blessed to have found a friend that is so similar to me in terms of sense of humour and interests. What are the chances that the first person I interacted with on this side of the world would become such a treasured friend?! No, it wasn't 'chance'. It was someone watching over me.

xx