Atherton Family Notes

I hope that is right! Frankly I am losing track of the days and everything is running together. Guess that is the problem with long vacations.

I truly believe I had the worst shower of my life this morning. The water or I should say, the trickle, turned from scalding to freezing every few seconds. I know we have all had showers like this and can all remember but this really was the worst one I have ever seen! Not a good start to the morning. Today was the day I was to meet an internet friend from the expat board, for the first time so it had to be done. I was a bit worried about how breakfast would go after the not so pleasant accommodations, but it turned out to be a wonderful meal.

At 9:30 we hit the road. By my calculations, we should have been in St. David’s church by 11ish and be back on the road by noon. Sadie fell asleep moments before we reached St. David’s so I opted to sit in the car with her while Ken explored the church. He was the one who really likes to see churches anyway. St. David’s is the largest cathedral in Wales and the smallest city in Britain. (I think I got that right. Maybe it is the other way around.) A bit of information here: For an area to be considered a city, it has to have a cathedral. For a church to become a cathedral, it has to possess some form of a relic. For this reason, it makes St. David quite interesting. Ken would be able to tell you more about how David became a saint and even the history of his parents who were also saints. But that would assume that you even cared to hear the story. It is interesting and I recommend asking him or looking it up.

The next phase of my plan was to travel to our next hotel and maybe stop off at Portmeirion. My calculations figured to put us arriving around 4 pm. Well, the lesson to learn here is never depend too much on my calculations. We arrived only moments before our 6PM dinner reservations. We followed several tractors moving at snails pace and pulled over way to many times to take pictures and find restrooms. Then came the fatal error. Ken and I turned down a road to get an amazing photograph. Things kept getting prettier and we were having a hard time finding a place to turn around. We discovered the road eventually came out where we wanted to be (Cricieth) so we decided to follow the scenic path. The path took much longer than anticipated but was well worth it. It was breathtaking to see the mountains on one side and the ocean on the other. The mountain bases were covered with dry stone walls laid out in all directions and giving boundaries for the thousands of lambs roaming and grazing there. I have personally never seen so many lambs before.

We checked into our beautiful guesthouse and I fell in love with it instantly. Everything is soft, pretty, and flowers abound everywhere, inside and out. Our dinner was at a restaurant called Poachers and is owned by a lady I know from the internet named Jill. Her husband has been a chef for several years now and even came from parents who were both chefs. Let me be the one to tell you… that man can cook! He does all the meals himself and only has the help of one lady for the salads and desserts. We had a wonderful meal and the kids even behaved. I guess the bribes paid off! I had roasted lamb with gravy and mint sauce. Ken had pork and apple meatballs in gravy. Both were excellent and I am wondering how much sweet talk I would have to do to the chef and his wife to get the recipes. I was just so happy to have a wonderful cooked meal as opposed to fast food and lunch meats. We have reservations there again tomorrow night and I already am having a hard time figuring out what I will eat! Now dessert on the other hand I already know! It will be the very same thing I had tonight! It was an apple, walnut, caramel cake served warm. It was rich, moist, and melted in my mouth. I will have sweet dreams of it tonight.

After dinner we walked along the beach with my internet buddy and her two kids. It is so fun to meet people I feel I have known for years but have never seen. We will spend more time with her tomorrow morning after our breakfast and then head out for a bit of sightseeing. We still have yet to decide where we will head for the day. Guess it will all depend on the weather.

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The weather today just plain sucked! It turned a bit cold and rainy. I knew that the UK was having some rainy and cold weather but so far we had been having great weather and I was hoping our luck would hold out. We were not sure what the plans for the day were, the things we had once chosen were now in conflict with other things we found that looked interesting. It was looking like a laid back kind of day.

I am amazed at the friendliness of folks in Welsh B&Bs. Every morning you are greeted with a rush of “good mornings” and “how was your night?” Everyone smiles and you find them sitting around in the lounge talking with each other. You find yourself drawn in too. I had a wonderful chat with several people staying in the hotel. We talked of plans for the day, places we lived, and even of our families.

I had a wonderful nights sleep in the new hotel, a good breakfast with great coffee (none of that harsh French roast), and more good coffee sitting with my friend Jill and her family again. They invited us over and we spent a good hour talking and getting travel advice while the kids played and had a grand time. We met her husband who is very kind and I must admit has a fantastic accent! I loved listening to him talk.

We decided the slate mines sounded like the best option. It was indoors and we would be out of the rain. (Not like a deep, cold, wet, cave was any better!) The mines were interesting and the kids enjoyed wearing hard hats and riding the train all the way down. Carissa was a little scared when the lights went out for the story to begin but got over it fairly quickly. For the life of me, I could not figure out why they were digging for the slate. Every mountain we drove by had piles and piles of slate on top them. (Ummm… hello there people!) There was hardly any greenery around and it somewhat looked like large piles of trash dumps for a lack of better description. The area was not much to look at and the rainy weather fit right in with the feel. I did not find a good piece of slate to purchase so we headed for another shop a few miles away. There I found a fantastic slate door stop hand carved and listed as slate from 300-500 million years old. (Impressive ain’t it?)

The next stop was to find some fun for the kids. Their memories are short and they forget fast how much fun they had. So every few days we have to do something entirely for them. We found a brochure for a place called Piggery pottery where kids paint their own pottery. This was right up our alley and fit right in with the relaxing laid back day we were having. I had planned on Carissa and Celia painting and I thought I might try my hand at the pottery wheel. I was very excited (probably more than the girls) and was deeply disappointed that the wheel was closed up. I sat back and watched all THREE girls painted a face mask. Carissa and Celia painted a blue cat while Sadie painted a brown monkey. I was met by fierce disapproval from Sadie as I tried to help her paint. She saw her sisters doing it themselves and she had to do the same. There are times I feel like I am stifling my kids’ creative progress. I had such an urge to jump in and help them paint it correctly. I had to walk away at times and put my creative juices in my back pocket, sit on them, squash them around for a bit, and just plain demolish them. We took the completed blue cat masks to the counter where the lady proceeded to help them add glue and glitter. In the end, I have to admit, the masks turned out very cute. We bought 3 more plain ones that I am sure my kids will never lay one ounce of paint onto them. Instead, I will have a blast painting them the way I wanted to paint the others. (Bad mommy, bad mommy, bad mommy!)

We arrived back at our hotel in time to take a quick break before heading to dinner again. Once again, I was truly impressed with the meal. Ken and I both had the Welsh Black fillet with red wine sauce, black pepper, grilled onions, and garlic butter. MMMMMM….!! I tried my hardest but simply could not resist the apple, walnut, caramel cake. It was too good the first time and the very thought of living my life without ever eating it again was to much to bear. (Yes, it was THAT good!!) Jill ended up not letting us pay for dinner and gave it to us all on the house. How nice was that?!

We spent some time with Jill and her kids again where the kids started getting very wild. With no naps and up early, this was a dangerous situation. We all said our good-byes and left. It was fantastic to meet her and her family. I wish I could have stayed there for longer (and so did the girls) but alas, we had a vacation to get back to.

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We are officially leaving Wales today. Carissa is crying her eyes out because she wanted to play with the kids again. She just does not get the concept of a vacation yet. She is somehow under the impression that a vacation is a relaxing fun experience where you can sit back and do the things you want to do as a kid. Oh where, oh where did she ever get that impression? Certainly not from her parents! To Ken and I, vacations are go, see, and drive everywhere!

The town of Conwy (funny that welsh spelling eh?) was recommended to us and since we were driving right by it on our travels to York, we decided to pop into it for a quick stop. The castle was extremely impressive and the bridge leading to it was an equally majestic sight. We did not go into the castle, we just were not interested. I guess we visited one too many of them in Germany.

Instead we walked the city and purchased a map that told of tales of the past. Seems this was a town filled with ghosts and their legends have stayed behind just as their presence have. We read of ghost sightings, stories, and even of the tales behind how odd tombstones came to be. The church yard and cemetery were straight out of a ghost story. The church was very old and run down and the graveyard that circled the church even creeped me out. The tombstones were tilted and falling down. Several of the graves were built above ground and you could see where bricks had replaced fallen ones. Ivy grew over them and made its way into the cracks opening the tops like they were helping the ghosts to escape. We even saw the oldest house in Conwy which was built around 1300. It was a fantastic and odd town.

There is not much to tell of the rest of the day. It consisted of us driving out of Wales and back into Britain to the other side. York was a lot further away than I had first thought and we ended up with several breaks. One of those breaks was a big shopping district. Ken had been looking in ads all week for computer stores and feeling a bit restless. When we spotted the large center, he was sure he would find a computer store and had to stop. I chose to spend my time out of the car in a drug store purchasing my much loved and missed Mabeline make-up.

Back on the road again to finish up the journey did not produce anything to write home about. We found dinner and the hotel with relative ease that surprised Ken and I. The hard part was trying to figure out how we were going to fit 3 days worth of sightseeing into one short afternoon!!

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