london journals :: november 2005
After my year in Australia, I lived in London for two and a half years, but always with the intention of moving back to Sydney eventually. But I carried on writing my journals in London... mostly because I just liked writing them, and my friends in other parts of the world (and some in the UK) still liked to read them. Here they are! You can keep up to date with what I'm up to now in my new Sydney journals, far out!
Tuesday, November 15 2005, 18:20
Eight go wet and wild in Wales
At 4pm on Thursday, eight of us set off for a wet weekend in the wilds of Wales; John, Pete, Chris, and I in one car, and Matt, Matthew, and Warren in a second, and Tash by train from Leicester. It took us about four hours to finally reach Shrewsbury, our overnight stop, where we stayed in The Lion Inn – a large, old fashioned hotel in the town’s beautiful old centre. After a refreshing pub dinner, we headed to bed for an early night.
After a rather dull breakfast at Delice de France in Shrewsbury’s town centre, we got underway again, this time for Portmeirion, on the west coast. As soon as we crossed into Wales, it started raining, and it rained solidly until we got to Portmeirion. As the roads took us through more mountainous landscape, we saw poor little sheep sheltering from the wind and rain behind drystone walls - we even drenched a few as we passed! We paid £6 each to enter a tiny Italianate village built by one man with a vision – what you might call a monomania – to splash bright colours over as many faux Renaissance buildings in as many garish combinations as possible. We wandered around this eyesore for an hour or so until we left to get a Cornish pasty lunch in nearby Porthmadog (or Porthma Dog, as the others would have it ;) and buy some groceries for the next few days.
For the next few hours we drove through Snowdonia as the strong winds threw sheets of rain against the mountains and us, and our view of the dramatic scenes around us was obscured by the tiny streams running over the car windows. We steadily climbed along the slopes of Yr Wyddfa, Mount Snowdon, to our cottage in Dinorwig, one of the small villages that cling to the sides of the mountain. We stopped a couple of times to take pictures of the waters rushing down from the brooding mountain – although both times we got very cold very quickly. At last we made it to our large and homey cottage and shut the cold out. Chris and Matt started on dinner while John and Matthew got started on filling the lounge with smoke from the log fire. Several bottles of wine and a game of Articulate later, we were all ready for another early night, around 11pm.
Tuesday, November 15 2005, 18:21
Photography tour of Gwynedd
We piled into the cars at 11am on Saturday weighed down by a full cooked breakfast, and made our way over the Britannia Bridge to Anglesey to go and visit Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch (yeah, baby!), the shameless tourist trap that's famous for nothing other than some guy concocting a ridiculous extension to the town's original name, Llanfairpwllgwyngyll – the church of St Mary by the hollow of white hazel trees. Now the place is also “quite close to the swift whirlpool and the church of Tysilio by the red cave”. Catchy!
We stopped to snap the railway station sign (all eight of us with our ten cameras!), and found ourselves drawn to a monstrous souvenirs emporium – a veritable wonderland for the coachloads of pensioners who found themselves suddenly at a loose end once they'd seen the station. After 15 minutes of admiring the various bits of Cymru-themed tat, we got back into the cars and drove up the coast of the island to Beaumaris, where the largest of Edward I's 13th Century castles stands. We spent a couple of happy hours wandering around the castle, which is the most intact of all the castles I've visited; replete with passages and corridors, little rooms and large chambers, and staircases that take you to the tops of the towers, it's a perfect place for hide and seek! Sadly we didn't have time...
We strolled down to the waterside to admire the view back over the Menai Strait to the mainland, before driving back over to Caernarfon to check out the castle there. We enjoyed a late lunch in a quiet café before discovering that the castle had just closed to visitors. Hmph. We had to content ourselves with admiring the walls daubed gold by the setting sun.
Our evening was another quiet one indoors, screaming at each other and scrawling unlikely doodles in a hotly fought game of Pictionary.
Tuesday, November 15 2005, 18:24
Photography tour? I meant castle tour of Gwynedd...
Sunday was the last day for the half of us who had jobs to go to on Monday, so we decided to visit Llandudno, Wales' largest seaside resort, and famed for its beaches. We didn't actually get that far though; we stopped to admire the view of Conwy Castle at Deganwy, and when we discovered we couldn't see it, we decided to drive back to Conwy to have a proper look.
Conwy may not be the largest of Edward I's castles, but it's the most imposing. It seems to grow out of the sheer rock it's built upon, and with eight tall intact towers with smaller turrets rising above them, you can see how it would have been an intimidating presence in the Conwy Valley. Conwy is in even better shape than Beaumaris, with stairs to every tower, and passages between rooms, and halls and fireplaces still visible everywhere, it's great to wander round and imagine it as it might have been. 
After we'd spent a good hour and a half there, Pete, Chris, Tash, and John set off for London, while the rest of us found a little café for a bite to eat before heading back to the cottage.
It seemed like a good idea to take some sunset photos from the fields behind the house, but Matthew quickly got wet feet in the marshy grass, and Matt probably stepped in a pile of sheepshit, although it was so dark, it was hard to tell. Eventually we gave up on the photography and went back inside for dinner, and another evening of games.
Our last morning was a bit of a rush to get packed up and showered before the guys putting in a spa bath turned the water off, but by 10am we were out, and two hours later we were back in the flatter lands of Shropshire, where bits of Matt's exhaust started dropping off. So by sheer chance, we stopped in Shrewsbury again for lunch and repairs, and the rest of our journey passed uneventfully until we got caught in London's rush hour traffic, and the quiet, peaceful, brooding mountains of Snowdonia were replaced by bumper-to-bumper motorists staring boredly at a gridlocked roundabout.
Isn't it great to be home? ;)
Friday, December 2 2005, 10:01
Camel jockeys
Shortly after we got back from Wales, John and I were off on our holidays again, but this time to Tunisia. If you're not sure where that is, it's about halfway across North Africa. We were both really in the mood for a nice beach holiday, with many hours spent lying by the pool/sea with all-inclusive drinks close to hand, soaking up some rays. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't all it could have been, and we chalked up about two hours of sunbathing in total. We spent the rest of our time exploring Tunisia.
John's been to Morocco before, but the trip sounds like something of a nightmare - he and his friend Matt were hassled mercilessly by the locals, they got mugged three times, Matt got dysentery and John got food poisoning. As a result, he was reluctant to go anywhere independently, so although we braved the medinas of Hammamet and Nabeul on our own (but didn't escape without buying stuff), everywhere else was part of an excursion. Our travels took us to Tunis, the ancient Roman ruins at Carthage, Sidi Bou Said, down to the troglodyte caves of Matmata (Star Wars country), on a short camel ride into the Sahara, up into the mountains near Algeria and English Patient country, to the fourth holiest city in Islam, and back to Hammamet, our tacky tourist zone. Obviously, I wouldn't be me if I didn't want to share it all with you in exquisite verbal and photographic detail, but I do have loads of photos to sort out before that happens, so you'll have to watch this space.
Since getting back, I've managed to find myself a new job, and a very nice job it is too. It's immensely satisfying to get more out of my licence fee than the opportunity to watch Terry Wogan and endless episodes of Eastenders and Ready, Steady, Cook! That's right, I'm now working for the BBC! This is only my third day, but I really enjoying it so far, and the guys here have made me feel very welcome (and drunk). Great! :)
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