Act XIV- Gene and Time Visit Part II

 

 When I left-off in my last post, we had just said good-bye to my sister and her husband and sent them off for a few child-unfettered days of UK tourism. While they were away the boys and I spent the lazy days, enjoying their mid-term break. Since the British do not celebrate Columbus Day (rightly) or Thanksgiving (wrongly) they are able to roll their Autumn time-off into one long week. In our copious free-time we visited the library and the computing museum, made Halloween decorations, and spent many an hour at the soccer pitch.

  We were also able to cross another U.K. Must-See off our list- attending a real English football game- Cambridge United vs. Manchester United. So a few qualifiers before you football fans fall out of your seat thinking we saw Manchester United play. These were actually the junior teams of each organization meaning that the teams are comprised of teenagers with aspirations of someday being on the main team. We got the tickets for free from the boys' school and sat in the family friendly crowd. Still we feel pretty good about crossing the line off our list though as we had an absolutely fabulous time. The teams were pretty evenly matched which made for a really exciting game. In the end Cambridge prevailed for the home-town crowd and pulled off a 2-1 victory.

  On Thursday, we once again rented a car (Kurt really has the left-handed driving and shifting down.It is impressive) and drove up to North Wales to meet up with Gene and Tim in stunning Conwy. Our string of sunny days was unfortunately broken that day but it did not make our first destination, Conwy Castle any less impressive. One of Edward I's (grandson of King John of Magna Carta/Robin Hood fame and great grandson of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II) many building projects meant to serve as a visual aid for any Welsh that continued to think of themselves as a sovereign nation was begun in 1283 and finished in 1289. This hulking castle sits on a small rocky peninsula of the Conwy River right before its junction with the Irish Sea. It sports eight massive towers, four of which are topped with smaller towers that stretch even higher into the sky. Most of the tracery is unfortunately gone and the castle is visibly eroded from centuries of Welsh rainstorms and yet it is easy to feel dwarfed by the might of the place. Hundreds of years later Edward's message is still very evident.

Gene and Tim on the wall, admiring Conwy Castle at a distance

 In addition to the castle, the king who was known as the Hammer of the Scots, also walled the entire town of Conwy as part of his building campaign. Today it is heralded as the most complete exampled of medieval city walls and the still-sturdy wall-walk is open to tourists (as long as they you handle the scant number of safety measures put in place to keep you from toppling off). Before dinner we braved the wall, marveled at its stunning views of the surrounding area and the clever construction of the many village buildings which incorporated the wall into their own structures.
   After our rampart adventure we had a cozy dinner at The Erskine Arms Pub and headed to Deganwy, a neighboring town where Gene had secured a vacation rental house for us. Like many a vacation rental the owner sent us a code for a lock box wherein we were to find the key to the place. After each of us tried the given code in turn we determined that there was no way all four of us could be misunderstanding the mechanics of the lock box and we tried to contact the owner. For a good 30 to 40 minutes we called all the phone numbers we could find that were associated with the locked rental house before us but got nothing but answering services. Deciding that there were cozier places to wait for a phone call we all hoped back in our rental cars and went in search of a pub. On the way the owner finally returned our call with the excuse that he had been that"off with the faries" or "out with the ferrets" (We were not sure at the time- turns out it was ferrets! Of course Kurt and Tim quickly enfolded this phrase into their lexicon for meaning "out for a drink") when we had called. We related our trouble with the code to which he asked what code we were using. When we gave it he chuckled "No, that won't work," as if we had pulled some random number from the air. He went on to apologize and admit that he gave us the code for the place across the street which he apparently also owns. Correct code in hand we returned to the house and settled in to enjoy the Prosecco and treats the owner had left (He was actually a very nice guy and we all forgave him pretty readily).
 

  On Friday, the weather continued to be a little finicky so we searched the fine itinerary my sister had compiled for somewhat indoor activities. How about a lovely steam-train ride through Snowdonia National Park complete with tea and Welsh cakes? Perfect! The train took off from the tiny town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, which is often called "the town that roofed the world" for the slate mining operation that dominates the huge hills abutting the town. While waiting for the train we got to talking with the super friendly train engineers who let us take pictures of the boys in the engine room and showed them the huge coal furnaces that would be pumping us along the tracks. When the engineers asked us where we were from I hazarded just saying Gettysburg to which one of them replied "Oh I have been there!" I love my famous town.
 

We picnicked on the train and enjoyed the gorgeous views as the sun started to break through the rain clouds, tossing rainbows here and there in the rolling hills. The ride was about an hour and took us to another adorable Welsh town, Porthmadog, situated on another ocean inlet. The periodic rain kept us wandering in and out of the gift shops near the train station but everyone seemed pretty happy with the excursion nonetheless.

  Saturday we had set aside for another Edward I castle tour, Caernarfon, as it was advertising special kids Halloween activities. This castle is just as impressive and imposing as Conwy, but several periods of restoration, most recently one in the early 1900s has left it in a bit better shape without so much of that eroded look. It has a striped pattern to the stonework that is reported to have been influence by Roman architecture. In the last hundred years or so this castle became the traditional investiture site for the Prince of Wales as the first English Prince of Wales, Edward II, was born here. So far just Charles and his great uncle have had their ceremony's here but I'm sure plans are in the works for Wills as soon as...well... God Save the Queen!

The Halloween activities were not as pervasive on the castle grounds as maybe the kids and us were hoping for but they did get to do some archery and sword fighting, try on some chain mail, and eat a giant chocolate lollipop in the shape of a demons head. Leif was dressed in his Harry Potter costume and looks perfect in all the pictures amid the giant chess set.
 The numerous winding staircases of the wall walks and towers and the smattering of exhibits kept us all busy for a few hours until we all got hungry. We had planned to picnic on the castle grounds with some things we had gotten at the Welsh Food Center (was more like a 'World Food Center' as there is apparently not that much unique Welsh foods to fill an entire store) that morning but the wind was pretty cold so we tucked into a small local dinner where most of the customers and waitstaff were speaking in Welsh. The food was good and fortified our traveling party for the next task- a hike through the Welsh countryside.
 
 Thanks to the National Trust, Gene and Tim had come up with a list of good hikes near where we were staying and we selected one between the towns of Craflwyn and Beddgelert. The drive to the trail head took us past Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales and England, and we got the chance to marvel at its snowy peak from the comfort of our warm rental car. When I say 'we' I really just mean me as Kurt was having to contend with narrow winding roads hemmed in by dry stack stone walls and the runners from whatever marathon just happened to be going on that day and the boys really didn't care

The hiking trail was just what I am always looking for in a nature hike- a fairy wonderland surrounded by an elven paradise. The already beautiful Welsh scenery was exceptional under the sun's low golden light, with its sprightly waterfalls, bright green moss-covered rocks, and curly branched oak trees. There were so many times that I had to double check to make sure that I was not actually just in one of my lucid lord-of-the-rings-willow-princess-bride-panfantasy daydreams (This does happen to other people too, right?). I think we all filled up the memories of our phones taking picture after picture of the path and the panoramic view of the summit. Ir was hard to leave the place but the high hills around us swallowed up the sunlight pretty quickly and we just made it back on the road as it got dark.
  That night Kurt and Tim made us some delicious Welsh Rarebit (toast with melted cheese and mustard) for dinner and, inspired by the fantastic hike we had all just enjoyed, we plotted how to squeeze in more time in Welsh nature before our drive back to Cambridge.
 
  The hike we landed on, Ogwen Valley, turned out to be just as magnificent as the one we had just taken though, as the totally inadequate car park will attest, much more crowded. Somehow we managed to find spots for both rental cars (Kurt pulling off another impressive parallel parking feat) and set out for the boulder paved trail. The ascent was a gentle uphill slope leading past one impressive mountain lake to another. These two lakes claim, as at least one other Welsh lake does, to be the lake of legend where King Arthur received Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake ("Strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords, is no basis for a system of government.") We did not witness any sword-based king-making but could imagine from the majestic setting why ancient peoples would have assumed those kinds of things to be possible in this place. 

 The end of our hike heralded the end of the vacation for the Buehrer-Andresen crowd (The Buehrer-Pritchard crowd had two more days) and so after warming up with some tea at the visitor center we sadly bid goodbye to Gene and Tim. It was really nice to spend some time with family after being away from home for so long. Hopefully it will tide me over until December (or at least November when Sam and Lars come to visit. ) 

  Next weekend we will reprise our time with the Alfonso-Reinbolds as we host them here in Cambridge. Eight people in a house with one toilet- what could go wrong?