Easter in Wales - preview

This is the first time i’ve written a travel diary entirely in retrospect. It’s an odd sensation - I took just over 1,000 photos on the 6 day trip, and you’d be surprised how easy it is to link in the feelings and sensations between these moments. But it’s still odd - it’s like looking back and doing a running commentary. It isn’t good or bad - it’s just different, and isn’t that what doing new things is all about?

So here’s the first few paragraphs - i’ll post this as a bit of a preview for where things are headed…

It was the day before we were scheduled to leave for our 6 day adventure into the Celtic Hinterlands of Wales. As i’m cleaning my camera lenses, I get a phone call from Nikola - “Mate, you won’t believe it. I busted my foot playing netball, was carried off court, cabbed home and now can’t even stand up”. It’s exactly what you don’t want to hear when you’ve been planning something for weeks, inspecting Flickr photos until 2am each night, and trying to decipher town names such as Aberystwyth. So like a true Designer I umm’d and arr’d and delayed things until the morning. And like a true Account Director - Nikola went to the hospital, got himself a crutch and said “Let’s go”.

We caught the tube to Ealing and picked up our Hybrid, a gutless little thing which had one single outstanding feature - seat warmers which gave a similar sensation to that of wetting yourself, without the social embarrassment. We hurtled out of London, a day before Good Friday, expecting to get relatively easy traffic. However, the morning’s events put us back somewhat. In fact, our whole schedule had been turned on its head - Nikola wasn’t going hiking on his swollen foot. So we thought to surround ourselves in Welsh culture since we’d be spending much of it in and around our car. As we adorned the interior with pictures of Catherine Zeta Jones we realised how little we knew about Wales itself.

And what better way to learn than go exchange knowledge on the 4 hour drive to Cardiff? Human Traffic. Celts. Castles. Dr Who. Tom Jones. I admitted my pathetic attempt at trying to grasp the landscape by watching Braveheart. Nikola gently reminds me to not get the Scots and the Welsh mixed up while in Wales. Or in Scotland. In fact, better just not mention the Braveheart thing again. So we turned up the 10-hour long 90’s music mix, and watched the city peel away and be replaced - surprisingly quickly - by vivid green fields, Lidl supermarkets and the finest bitumen the M4 has to offer.

After about 3 hours, our first goal was to stop at Tintern Abbey. Not realising exactly how small Wales was, Nikola’s navigational skills were quickly put to the test. We took a few turns and convinced we were lost - why would we pay for a toll bridge when there was a perfectly good one less than a mile away? We meandered through the tiny town of Chepstow, a gentle wash of rain creating the kind of mood reserved for movies set in medieval times. We pointed at the dual English/Welsh names (Araf means “slow” in Welsh), and as we wound our way along what could surely not be a main road, convinced we were lost, the Abbey reared it’s frail frame through the mist. Grey skies claimed the tree line in the distance, giving the feeling of arriving somewhere not entirely on this planet.

—–

Stay tuned for more!