Wales Day Four: The Long Awaited Anticlimax

Way back when, shortly after the Wales trip actually ended, I wrote about the first three days of said journey. Well, there were actually four days, and I’m only getting around to writing about day four now. Better late than never, eh?

So, if you’ll recall (which I don’t imagine you will because I scarcely do) we were at Baskerville Hall, setting of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, a book that I have never read but have seen the Wishbone episode of. Anyhow, I managed to wake up early enough on Sunday (for Sunday it was) to catch the tail end of breakfast. It was only after I sat down that I realized there is quite a good reason why I don’t normally eat breakfast. I’m never actually hungry at that hour of the morning. For that reason, I didn’t so much eat breakfast as stare wistfully at breakfast. Anyhow, it passed the time before we were to get back on the bus.

Our first destination for the day was Hay-on-Wye, which is well known for having the highest amount of bookstores per capita in the country (or something like that). As the horde got of the bus and headed in one direction to overcrowd tiny bookstores in packs, Dan and I headed in the other and found a nice little record store. I looked around a little and eventually snagged Everything Must Go by the Manic Street Preachers for £5, which is an absolute steal. This should sound familiar if you read my Song of the Day blog for “Australia”. After that, we continued down the road until we hit a horse auction where we stopped in out of sheer curiosity. Instantly it reminded me of a county fair. It was really quite charming, yet being possessed neither of sufficient money to buy a horse nor a need for a horse nor the capability of caring for a horse, we continued walking. Eventually, we found some paths that went by a river. After moseying around some, we ferreted out a beautiful little waterfall. Unfortunately, my camera was out of batteries and I neglected to rectify this problem the last time we were in contact with civilization (which is to say, when we were in Cardiff). Thus, I have no pictures of said waterfall. It’s just as well because Dan did take pictures of the waterfall and watching him do so I thought there was a legitimate chance he could fall into the water. In order to get an unobstructed view of the waterfall, Dan had to stand on the edge of a very bare and muddy ridge. It would have been easy for him to slip off and down into the water. I know that only one thought was running through my mind: “I can’t swim, so if he goes down, he’s a goner.” He got a beautiful picture, though. But you’ll have to take my word for it.

After the waterfall, we headed back to the centre of town so that we could grab something for lunch before it was time to once again board the bus. Having accomplished that, it was back on the bus for a ride to Tintern Abbey. Tintern Abbey is a massive and beautiful old abbey founded in 1131 AD. It survives only in fragments mainly because it was pillaged for its stone before any note was taken of the need to preserve such a historical site. It is especially famous because Turner painted it and Wordsworth composed poetry about it. We were left off to amble around for an hour or so, and that’s what we did. There’s not much to tell about it really. The reason you go to such a place is to see if for yourself up close and personal. It’s hard to convey a sense of it in words, and Wordsworth has already done it better than I ever could hope to. Again, I have no pictures of this due to my lack of battery life. Of course, since this is a famous site, a simple google image search will undoubtedly yield plenty of results if you feel the need for such a visual aid.

From there, it was time for a long bus ride back to Cardiff. Tintern Abbey is—if memory serves—quite far into the west of Wales and quite in the middle of nowhere. The most amusing thing about travelling to the Abbey was that we wound around some of the narrowest roads in Wales in our monster coach bus for a good 45-60 minutes only to arrive at the Abbey and see that it is located not far off a main road that has a Best Western, of all things, on it. I have no idea why we had to take the back way in but take it we did. Anyhow, being so far out of the way meant a long ride back to London. Also, London is quite like Chicago in that getting to London’s city limits is one thing, getting to specific spot in London is quite another. That is to say, when we got to London our journey was only ½ done because it still remained to get from outer London to Chelsea on a Sunday evening when everyone returning from holiday was flooding the highway. We arrived at about 7 or 7:30 back to the residence hall and most of the ride was simply spent sleeping/listening to music/hearing Josh, Greg, and Andy babble on about The Essence of War, which is the variant on the classic card game War, which they invented. To their credit, it is quite fun and dramatic although not nearly so strategic as they would like people to believe. Dan made the argument that eventually player skill would become irrelevant once an optimal playing strategy was discovered. Everyone would simply use that strategy and the game would then become essentially random. He was thinking way too far into things. Like War itself, The Essence of War is almost entirely random. I would explain the rules if it seemed worth my time or I could remember them. At any rate, it was something to do. After so many long bus rides, we were all going a little crazy. And that was Wales. I give Wales 9/10 and my heartiest recommendation.