Wales and the Journey Home

I found the lost notebook from my Wales trip. It is fun to look back at the little notes I scrawled and remember the vacation again. I don’t know that I can be bothered to turn these notes into an essay, so I think I will just throw them out here for you to read.

On this flight I am playing a role I don’t like, The Guy With The Cold Who Is Coughing and Sneezing and Blowing His Nose and Surely Going to Get Us All Sick, I Hate Him, I Hate Him, I Hate Him. Little do the poor fools know that I also have strep throat. Take that!

Actually, I have been taking MASSIVE doses of antibiotics and I am doctor-certified non-contagious. In fact, these people should be thanking me instead of giving me wary looks. I am probably spewing antibiotics with every sneeze. I am inoculating this whole plane!

You are all welcome. Now quit looking at me.

red tree in green fieldWe are supposed to be hiking Offa’s Dyke, an ancient earthwork that roughly separated England from Wales.

“As originally constructed, it must have been about 27 metres wide and 8 metres from the ditch bottom to the bank top.”

I have yet to see anything resembling an ancient earthwork. Maybe it is invisible!? Now that IS spectacular. Those clever English!

And a little later…

Ancient RampartsWe just hiked up an enormous hill. The grass green beyond compare and the ground is vaguely sponge-like. I am sitting down in the hollow between what is left of the ramparts of a Roman hilltop fort. The cold wind and freezing drizzle are just above me, but down in this small hollow there is no wind at all and I am warm and dry.

After dinner at a pub…

That pub food was not good, even the vinegar was bland! That can be no easy feat. Clearly the Welsh have technology we do not.

And a letter I wrote to Adrienne, but never sent.

Lazy shot taken from my bedAdrienne,

I wish you could see this house! It is beautiful. It is only one-hundred years old (The other homes think of it as a snot-nosed punk). It is much more frou-frou than I would like, but I love it. I guess it doesn’t hurt that it is set in one of the most beautiful towns I have ever seen.

We ate dinner at a restaurant perched over the wide flat river that cuts through the town and walked around a bit while daydreamed about buying a house here and moving us in.

I was just downstairs in the sitting room, feet propped up in front of the fire while I read. I decided I would like some time by myself and came up to my room. I am now sitting on my bed listening to the little electric pitcher boil water for my hot chocolate.

I will set my drink down on a little silver coaster on the ancient side table so that I can sit in bed reading, sipping cocoa, and glancing out the window at the oak tree branches swaying in the breeze.

I flew into Boston Logan airport on the way home. It took me a minute to decipher the announcement about my departure, since it sounded like “de PAT chah” (The letters PAT were sucked right up the announcer’s nose and never seen again).

Also, either the souvenir to have is a Harvard T-shirt, or I just witnessed the entire university being evacuated.

Delta now euphemistically“..offers you the opportunity to purchase from [their] new in-flight menu.”

Translated, “We can’t figure out how to make money as an airline. Even though you are on a six hour flight we can only budget enough to offer you a coke and one package of peanuts. But feel free to spend $19 on a club sandwich, we are going bankrupt soon.”

Bonus Photos

Monastery

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Canal running through the edge of town


hiking along the face of the cliff

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8 responses for Wales and the Journey Home

  1. Jed Wood says:

    Incredible. At least now we know where they’ll film The Hobbit, should New Zealand suddenly disappear into the ocean.

  2. old prof says:

    Oh wow! (He said for lack of anything else to say and unable to think of any amplifier that would do this justice) Just great! It’s almost like I was there. Great notes. GREAT photos. Love the canal especially, and dont think you need to think about amplifying the notes. You captured the mileu. On the other hand, it would be very good (didn’t want to say great again) if you did do some more with this.

    And now I’m going back and looking at the canal again. In fact I may go buy some go photographic paper and print it. Nothing shabby about the castle or the clifs and fields either.

    (Less is more but more would be better too)

    Now I’m going to be checking here three times a day to see if you add anything. You have the touch.

  3. rob says:

    Thank you for adding to the spirit by using the uppity british spelling of meter.

  4. john says:

    let’s buy canal houses and start a design agency there

  5. dave says:

    I think that these pictures should be watched with the badger song in the background. http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com. Beware though the song will be stuck in your head forever and ever.

  6. Marci says:

    These are beautiful, HOWEVER, what I really want to see is a picture of that cute round belly you snuggle up to every night. Please post (or email me) a picture of Adrienne and her tummy before it’s too late. If you don’t and she has that baby before I see a picture, I will make you get her pregnant again! So let me see a picture. Thank you.

  7. jenny says:

    I would liked to die in one of those green fields. Chris and Maria: if I don’t, just embalm me & place me in the center of the field, just as you would a large lawn ornament.

    Why do I always end up in England with people who want to take naps rather than walks. People whose response to old homes and ruins is, “So is this something famous, or can we go now?”

    By the way, have you read “Eats, Shoots & Leaves”? You’d like it. But I’ve found that I use too many Oxford commas.

  8. jenny says:

    …and far too few question marks, apparently.