Garnet's Life Adventures

Friday in Wales

So we packed 4 suitcases, 3 sleeping bags, 1 rucksac filled of wool blankets & pillows into the boot (trunk) settled into our seats, Heather took a test run of the gears, and we were off. Dom was our co-pilot & did a fantastic job, especially considering he doesn't have a license (sometimes people w/o licenses aren't as aware ya know what I mean.) Amanda & Dom had packed us snacks for our road trip: Tesco brand Cola, Capri Sun, salt & vinegar crisps, and cheese, tomato & spinach sandwiches so we didn't have to stop for lunch. Dom had brought 3 CDs (NIN, Tool and DMB) with him in case we couldn't find anything good to listen to on the radio. Traffic wasn't too bad and we were on motorways in the countryside pretty quickly!

We drove non-stop 5.5 hours to Porthmadog, Wales. Met up with the owner in the parking lot next to Tescos, followed him to the cottage & had a full tour of the place. There are 3 sleeping sections (girls room, boys room, teachers room) but seeing as we're not a school group & all over 18 we were allowed to stay in the same room. There was a total of 9 of us for the weekend so we stayed in the main cottage sleeping room that had 5 sets of bunk beds. There is no heat in these buildings so we liked the fact that the main room had a wood stove on the main floor & seeing as heat rises, we kept the door to the staircase open so we could get a little bit of heat in our bedrooms. The kitchen was a separate building with a huge industrial type hob & oven, two small fridges & freezers, 2 large wash basin sinks, and 3 rows of tables with benches, and 4 sky lights (so you see & hear the rain & hail while eating - lol). The bathroom was again a separate building with a drying room, 4 toilet stalls, 4 sinks, and the shower room with 3 shower heads.

Friday 5.40pm:

After our tour, we brought our stuff into the main room & called Amanda's car to tell them a few extra clues about the directions from notes that Dom had taken along the way. They agreed to call us later when they got close so we could meet them in the Tescos parking lot & lead them back. We then explored for a little bit outside of the cottage, discovered a little stream & some sheep just behind the building.
We then left to go food shopping for the weekend at Tescos. We bought 48 eggs, 48 slices of streaky bacon ("American bacon", the typical bacon over here is back bacon), 2 loaves of bread, 36 granola bars, 4 packages of spaghetti, canned tomatoes, mince (ground beef), spices, 6 avocados, 3 packages of grated cheese, 6 fresh tomatoes, 6 onions, 1 head of lettuce, 4 cartons of orange juice, 20 apples, gallon of milk, chocolate drink mix, 24 white flour tortillas, large French baguette, cheese cake, chocolate cake, 4 bags of plain Doritoes chips, 3 containers of hot salsa, bottle of olive oil, 6 two liter bottles of water, 4 limes, 1 container of hummous, and 24 tomato & herb tortillas, all for about £90. This might all seem like an excess of food, but understand we are a group of 9, all planning on hiking for 6 hours on Saturday.

That night, Heather, Dom, Susan & I made burritos withavocadoo & cheese quesadillas. As I told you earlier there was no heat in the buildings, when we had gone on our massive food shopping earlier we'd also stopped to pick up some wood at the one and only town garage (understand this town reminded me a lot of Schroon Lake, larger but offering about the same selections of stores.)

Friday 7.30pm:

Susan, Amanda & I went out fora littlee wander down the road & left Dom behind to build a fire. Here is the sky/sunset we saw on Friday night. What we had forgotten to do was to ask Dom if he knew how to make a fire . . .Wee returned to a still rather cold room that had a wood stove chock-a-block full of wood & a teeny-tiny little flame on the right hand side (primarily burning due to the fire started he'd used.)

Seeing as I've built more fires in my lifetime than your average American & have had to make campfires on rainy days, I figured I'd give a go at stoking the fire. What I then realized was when Dom went to buy the wood he had failed to check to see if the wood he was buying was dry, so we ended up with two bags of wet wood - not just damp, but really wet, with green moss growing nicely on them! Knowing I could make it burn, I took out all the logs that were not yet burning & added some kindling and attempted to find the driest piece of wood in the bag. Meanwhile . . . Dom, Susan & Heather had discovered a puzzle to keep themselves amused while I was trying to produce a little bit of heat. Luckily I was able to get the fire going, but the temp never got much above 60F (started out at about 55F).

posted by Sara @ 1:11 am