We have snuck in a few little trips however, over Easter we visited Grimsby in Northern England and stayed with our flatmate Paul’s family. It was good to get an insight into smaller town England, mostly we ascertained that they love a good drink and are fond of the full tracksuit look (or chav-sedoes as Chris likes to call them). Aside from this we also saw some other interesting sites:
The Humber Bridge which was once the longest single suspension bridge in England – cooler than it sounds people!
Cleethorpes seaside town, rode on the smallest steam railway train (granted this one was really meant for the kids so we felt a little stupid), ate fish and chips in the park (closest thing to NZ fish and chips I have had for awhile!) and played the cheesy arcade games which are a major feature of any English seaside town.
The fishing heritage museum where we had a tour of the "Ross Tiger", a restored working trawler. It was fully old school, none of that fancy stuff that the trawler men have these days, the crew on these bad boys had to haul the nets in by hand - I came away knowing that working on a trawler would be my worst possible job of all time.
Then a couple of weekends ago we went on a road trip to Wales with Andrea and Darren – destination the Brecon Beacon National Park. It is fair to say we picked the weekend well as the weather was brilliant, which was fortunate considering one of the things we planned to do was climb Southern Wales highest peak – Pen Y Fan. At 886 meters it can’t be classed as a mountain, but my legs will tell you a different story. Perhaps because it was “someones” bright idea to do 3 of the 4 Breacon Beacons peaks instead of just the Pen Y Fan summit. In my defence we had to pass Corn Du at 873m on the way to Pen Y Fan and Cribyn didn’t look that far away. Little did I know you had to drop all the way back down a valley then back up the steep summit to get there. No wonder my hamstring muscles hated me the day after.
There is nothing better of course than completing a big walk and rewarding yourself with a cold beverage in the sun along with hot chips, which is exactly what we did. Not satisfying our appetites it was a quick change at the B&B and we were off out in search of a tasty Welsh pub dinner. Our hopes were high for getting a good feed for less than London prices – these hopes were quickly dashed (how can you overcook a pie and undercook chips and try to charge £10 for the honour?) and as a consequence we have labelled Andrea and Darren “Wales Most Wanted”. Long story short, it was amazing how quickly fatigued legs can move when escaping an establishment when the entire bill was not paid for.
The night continued despite the fugitive status, pool was played, and the score was 2-1 in favour of the team sporting the crippled pool master...sorry Darren, I had to mention it...
Not having punished our legs enough the next day we went for another walk to the Sgwd yr Eira falls near Pontneddfechan (and you thought NZ’s longest place name in the world “Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu” was hard to pronounce). It was a much gentler walk however and after a mare 45 mins along a meandering river we arrived at some pretty nice falls.
Back to London again and we are definitely on the countdown to leaving. We have a little trip to Greece planned early May to mark the end of our weekend jaunts to Europe, can’t wait as I could get used to this sun thing...just as long at the Iceland volcano doesn't decide to erupt again and spoil our plans!
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