Deganwy Adventures

It's only a model

We left Paris and sadly Iron Maiden behind and headed for Wales. If my count is correct this is country 41 for both Sheri and me. She has Scotland over me and I have New Zealand over her. We had a wonderful place to stay in Deganwy which overlooked the Conwy river, across from which was Conwy and Conwy castle pictured above. They were not super creative with their naming.

Our location was perfect as it was a block away from a grocery store, there was a pub across the street that we ate at a few times, and restaurants, castles, and movie theatres all within walking distance, not to mention a bus stop less than a block away from our place to get us to places further away.

The Tide

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/cd8b9f_41e4c6bda6574dbc8910c686d7e23c3f/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

This was my first attempt at time lapse photography. I think it came out ok. You can watch the tide come in and the boats swing around and face the opposite direction in just two and a half minutes. You're welcome!

Watching the tide come in and out each day became a favorite pastime of ours which we enjoyed during our relaxing stay in Wales.

Food - The good, the bad (really bad) and the down right ugly!

British food has the reputation of being quite bad. I am here to tell you it is well deserved. I will start with the good however. It is good because it is not British food! We found a fantastic Indian restaurant (my favorite type of food). I have been to countless Indian restaurants in my life but this may be the best one yet. They had the most amazing chana masala I have ever had and each dish was simply a cut above.

For each high there must be a low and what a low it was. I ordered what was purported to be a hamburger. It was literally two patties of supposed beef cooked in the fires of Mordor and a bun. Nothing else. No toppings of any kind and no condiments either. I took a bite and it tasted like an iron girder. Wasting food is something I try to avoid at all costs but after two bites I realized I did not need to put myself through this misery. I closed the lid on my to go box and threw it in the trash. Since I don't think it could rightly be called food by anyone with character, I did not believe i wasted anything.

Dear god, we have arrived at ugly! I would regularly eat a premade meal for lunch and kept trying to find something new to try. I stumbled upon bangers and mash. There is a certain integrity of a food that looks the same before you eat it as it does upon its return to the outside world. While it looked horrendous it was somewhat edible.

Castles

Sheri loves castles and boy were we in the right part of the world. We toured 3 different castles throughout our time here. See below for a bit more on them. Walking the cold halls and thinking about what life must have been like 800 years ago makes me be grateful I live when I do.

Birthday Boy

I celebrated my 56th birthday! I am edging closer to 1 year of retirement and would highly recommend it. My birthday wish was for someone else to retire permanently, but it hasn't come true yet. We spent the day in Llandudno (best of luck pronouncing it) which is a resort town a few miles from our place. We wandered about the beach and had some ice cream. We watched insanely aggressive seagulls attack the tourists and steal food from children which resulted in the expected meltdowns. I laughed. I am not a good person.

The highlight of the day was doing an escape room. The goal was to defuse a bomb. If you could do it without setting off any of the booby (hee hee) traps you would be refunded your fee. No one has successfully accomplished this feat. The best anyone has done is set off the alarm 8 times (while the worst was 43 times). It took me less than 20 second to set off the alarm. By the time we had solved it we tripped the alarm 27 times. Not an outstanding showing but still lots of fun.

Gardens

We were tipped off to go to the Bodnant Gardens by our hostess at the Indian restaurant. It turned out to be a great suggestion. It was a huge amount of land all immaculately landscaped. We saw countless amazing species of flowers and various plants. There are many places where you can just sit and peacefully enjoy your surroundings. We subjected ourselves to more British "cuisine". Seriously, have these people ever heard of spices? This was truly a gorgeous spot and cannot recommend it enough.

Tours

James has a tour company that offers three different tours of Conwy. We would end up taking all of them as he was a wonderful story teller and a fantastic student of history. The first tour was of Conwy castle where we were regaled with horrific stories of torture, war and other misdeeds.

The most interesting story was of the time the castle was taken over. It was built by Edward the 1st to solidify his control over Wales which he had conquered. This is roughly in 1280. The castle could be effectively guarded by just 25 men. On Easter, all but two of the men went into town to attend church. Two men approached the castle and said they were carpenters there to make repairs. They were let in by the two remaining guards who were promptly killed. They then let in roughly 50 Welshmen and took over the castle. The leaders of this rebellion were two brothers that already had death sentences on their heads. The 50 men thought they were being noble and fighting for Wales' freedom. However the brothers had a different plans. They negotiated with the King that they would return the castle to him if they received pardons. The King agreed but wanted something more. The brothers accepted the terms and in the middle of the night they tied up and delivered 8 of their own men to the King. These men would be drawn and quartered and tortured in the most horrific ways. Honorable men are hard to find.

The next tour we took with James was the ghost tour. This was just a fun walk around the city where various supposed paranormal events have taken place. We heard of grave robbing and a little girl that haunted a hotel until her remains were returned to her home town. The 8 men referenced above unsurprisingly are said to haunt the castle. James' storytelling really draws you in and he made the stories come alive.

Finally we did the city tour. Here we got a general history of this very old town from its early days of a fishing village to later a site of the extraordinary castle.

As our time was running down, we booked an all day tour that would take us to 3 different castles, some places of interest and a national park. The castles follow a similar history of torture and general horror. One castle was the site where a man simply threw his brother in a pit and left him there for years so that he could not be a rival to his power. I sure hope Dave has no such quest for power.

The highlight of this tour was the Snowdonia National park. A truly magnificent place with mountains (ok somewhat large hills), lakes, rivers and green as far as you can see. At one of the lakes a large sword was found, and this is said to be Excalibur. Our guide simply said "That's the story, and since I am Welsh I believe it!"

Entertainment

We saw four movies!

1. Naked Gun - Wonderfully stupid and fun. Wish they would make more movies like this to just be for entertainment and provide the escape I so desperately need if I ever make the mistake of looking at the news from home.

2. Interstellar - The movie theatre was running a different Christopher Nolan movie every couple of days and this gave us a chance to pick off a few we had missed along the way. This one was a time bending brain hurting superb movie. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

3. Superman - Probably my least favorite of the 4 but was still good. Just fun mindless entertainment with some nice action sequences.

4. Oppenheimer - Without a doubt the best of the four. Despite being over 3 hours long I was engaged the whole time. I am not sure how historically accurate it was but it certainly conveyed a time of great urgency, fear and ultimately the beginning of the cold war and what in my mind will be the eventual final destruction of the human race. Good times!

Bird Sanctuary and other wildlife

About a mile and half away from us was the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) Conwy. We saw countless varieties of seabirds. They would move in and out with the tide looking for food. We wandered around the sanctuary for a few hours. The people that work there are truly dedicated to their mission.

Closer to home we would be greeted by robins, finches and sparrows. They would flit about and just seemed to be happy little creatures.

It's time to move on.

It is time to say goodbye to Wales. We are headed to the Cotswolds where we will embark on a long walk. Hopefully, with better results than the Stephen King story.