Girls Weekend in Wales

Friday at 12 we braved the public rail system (rife with bomb scares of late) and met up with the 20 other women who we would be spending the weekend with. We were on the train for about 6 hours travelling through stunning scenery, grazing and drinking wine while nattering away together. We arrived got ourselves settled in our teeny dorm, before my 3 ring ins: sister in law Sharon; Italian friend Elena; and paddling mate Michelle all went for a walk on the beach. At one end of the beach was lots of boulders, and with all my pent up energy I was rock jogging - I love doing that and by then end I was sweating like I'd just done an outdoor step class. So, ran into the freezing Tremadog Bay in the Irish Sea. Woohoo, was that every invigorating!! After that we climbed up to the road and hitched a ride to the nearest pub. Then walked back to the Mountain Centre, what a great intro to our weekend!

Next morning we went for a 3 hour walk up to a bluff with brilliant views over the bay. We walked past a beautiful remote cottage, empty because apparently haunted. Past an ancient burial chamber, through mossy forests, and along babbling brooks, finishing up with a walk along the beach - it was beautiful and Sunny too!

After lunch I went Gorge Scrambling. Since there has been so much rain the river is very swollen, so we started by jumping into a pond about 15ft round and with a 13ft high water fall raging into it. Our challenge was to pull ourselves along a rope and then push ourselves behind the wall of water to sit on a little ledge and be deafened by the sound, try to catch our breath in the freezing mist before launching back through the waterfall into the pool and get out before tumbling down the rapids - it certainly got the adrenalin going - yay! We traversed along the slippery edge, swam through more pools and finally jumped into the bottom of a 30ft waterfall, sinking into the aerated water and then popping up further down. What a fun and exhausting day.
After dinner we all went to the beach, lit a ripper of a fire and then proceeded to act like 10 year girls. We perfected a 4 storey human pyramid, we had 3 legged and wheel barrow races and a load of other silly fun games. While consuming our fair share of the fruit of the vine. It was a spectacular sunset before at about 1am we stumbled back through the fields full of cow pats and 2ft deep puddles with no moon - HILARIOUS - Well, everything was by that point. We added sore stomach muscles to our growing list of sore muscles.

Next morning we were off to a beautiful place for rock climbing, we had views up the coast and then back along the river. We climbed a rock (apparently graded as difficult) and abseiled before returning for a lovely Sunday lamb roast and then getting on the train for a slightly more subdued journey home.

Can't wait till next year!

Craving the Outdoors

It has rained for all of May and all of June. So it hasn't felt like summer yet, even though it is warm, we aren't living outdoors. The weekend before last we were in London and Saturday morning the kids were at friends for the day, Jeff was working and I was craving a walk along a beach. So, Nancy & I drove 1.5hrs to Christchurch, a beautiful little village on the sea. We lunched in a boat house before going for a long walk with the dog. It was the first time either of us had donned wellies for the beach, it was raining and windy and we trapsed along the beach, smelling the salt, feeling the wet and the wind. It was brilliant! Around the corner of the headland is a spit and on it are about 80 cute little beach huts all painted lovely colours. We felt great after being filled up on the nature.