HILLS, STEAM, BOOKS, NAMES

Greetings friends,
We are back again. Sorry for our extended absence from the virtual world, we still have not been able to fix up our Internet at home so all of this is being done at school and Internet cafés, a tricky business. At any rate, while our virtual existence has been non-existent our real lives have powered on with a fantastic seven-day road trip to Wales. We have written the blog in two parts for technical reasons more than anything. Originally we had started writing it in chronological order but then we realised that you probably don’t care what order things occurred in…. so, in no particular order. This is the STEAM, BOOKS, HILLS and NAMES blog – Wales part 1.

STEAM
Steam. The thing that powered our narrow gauge train through the Wales countryside. We caught a steam train from ‘Porthmadog’ on the west coast of north Wales into the centre ‘Blaenau Ffestiniog’ (You have got to love that name.)
Northern Wales is beautiful and in particular the Snowdonia area where the train went. It was a 90-minute journey each way through the Wales countryside. The track is delicately placed on the edge of the mountains with the valley views sweeping down.
BLOWING OFF SOME STEAM


THE VALLEY VIEWS


RACHAEL AND THOMAS THE TANK ENGINE


Blaenau Ffestiniog is an interesting place. The main reason for the train originally was to haul slate (which was and still is used for roofing here), from the mountains to the sea where it could be shipped. The use of slate has died right back because for every 1 tonne of slate cut successfully 9 tonnes goes to waste. Nothing grows on the old slate so entire hillsides around this little town are completely bare. It’s very eerie, like the end of the world, or an Italian’s backyard (concrete everywhere).

THE STATION

BARREN HILLSIDES



BOOKS
For those of you who travel (or have been to our little flat and seen our bookshelves filled to the brim) you know that the last thing required is to go off buying books that are too bulky and heavy for travel. We have managed to get for ourselves a semi filled bookshelf here already because we made the terrible mistake of going to Hay-on-Wye (which for book lovers is heaven). There really isn’t much there except books. It’s a little England-Wales border town, population 1500, books approx 500,000. There are 45 second-hand bookstores and although we didn’t get to each one we did manage to get to a few. My favourite one is below. Honesty bookshop, open 24 hours, all paperbacks 30 pence (75 cents) We did manage to find two good books here despite what you might think of the quality of an honesty bookshop. It was located in the castle.
HONESTY – THE BEST POLICY!


NAMES
What is in a name? Well for this town on the Isle of Anglesey, it’s their only tourist attraction. We went there for no other reason than the name. We have no idea how to pronounce it but apparently it means…”St Mary’s church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool of Llantysilio of the red cave.” We do have a Welsh pronunciation hint though. Apparently two L’s in a row makes a “KL” sound. We found that vowels seem to be optional in most words as well. Interestingly, all through Wales every sign is written in both English and Welsh (The Welsh is always on top) so we know for instance that “Araf” means “Slow” because of all the road signs.

THE REALLY LONG NAME RAILWAY STATION


BEN IS CRUSHED UNDER THE WEIGHT OF PRONUNCIATION


AN ENGLISH/WELSH PUB SIGN


HILLS
Neolithic. I’m guessing Neo means New? New Lithic, where Lithic is really really old?? Anyhow we went to a Late Neolithic burial site – 2000BC. It was stuck in the middle of a paddock in the middle of nowhere. Apparently the capstone on this thing weighs over 10 tonnes. “Bryn Celli Ddu” is what they call it (don’t ask me what sound two D’s in a row make??) They had a gate on it so you couldn’t go inside, but someone had broken the lock so I went in. In hindsight it may not have been wise to trust a 4000-year old building carrying that much weight built by the New Lithics who were always late but anyway…here is the photo’s.
CLEVERLY DISGUISED AS A HILL – THE BURIAL SITE.


I WONDER IF THE RETAINING WALL I PUT UP AT MY HOUSE WILL LAST THIS LONG? (No comments Dad!)


Anyway, that’s all of part one. Part two will be coming very shortly (in the next three days), its entitled EGGS, CANAL, ROCKS, and SNOW. If you have sent us an email recently we will try to get back to you ASAP, sorry for the delay. For the family; we managed to catch up with Rachael’s cousin Tim on the weekend and had some dinner. He is going great and we will post a couple of photos of us together in the next couple of days as well. We love and miss you all. It’s back to work tomorrow, so no more road trip for at least another 5 weeks but we will do something interesting on the weekend and Blog it. Send us an email or leave a comment soon so we know that you’re all OK.

Love
Ben and Rach