Rotterdam (or Anywhere)

In May we spent two weeks in North Wales. Paul’s mum is from there, so it’s not a new area for us – it was my third visit there, but I never get bored of this area. Just before the long journey from London to Wales, I picked up my new camera – a Canon EOS 6D, I’ve finally taken the step to full-frame 🙂

One of our first trips was to Porthmadog by train. From there it’s a short distance to Borth-y-Gest, a very pretty village around a bay that falls completely dry at low tide. Time to test my camera 🙂

Later that day we went for our usual walk on the beach at Llandanwg. Heavy showers had been passing all day, and the skies were very threatening while we were on the beach…

In the end we had to run for cover, and we found shelter underneath the entrance to the small church of St Tanwg. This very old church used to be in the fields, but is now surrounded by dunes. For some time it was even buried in sand, and only dug out once a year for mass. At the moment it’s in more regular use, but a lot of the gravestones are buried in the dunes. A fascinating place! And it was even more special when the rain shower passed, and a bright double rainbow spanned over the church – beautiful 🙂

We continued our walk on the beach, with beautiful clouds…

Around sunset the light was very yellow and we walked back over the tidal flats next to the river, together with a lot of sheep and their lambs 🙂

Another beach that we like to visit is the huge beach near Harlech. You can walk there from Llandanwg, but this time we drove to the parking lot at the golf course, as we wanted to reach the far end – about 5 km one way. Paul took his kite, and took aerial photos of the beach.

A pretty cumulonimbus on the horizon, making a meteorologist very happy 😉

The beach at the far end is HUGE!

We walked back at sunset, with the clouds colouring pink and flocks of birds flying around us – so beautiful.

We didn’t meet anyone else during our walk, except for this one guy when we were almost back.

Here are some photos that Paul took with his kite:

The next day we decided to go for a long walk: the northern section of the Ardudwy Way. We did it in the opposite direction as described on the website, as it meant we could take a train to Llandecwyn in the morning, and walk back to Llandanwg. The weather wasn’t perfect, it was overcast with a few drops of rain, and quite cold – but we still enjoyed the hike. Near the start of the hike we found this really cute little lamb…

The church of Llandecwyn has a spectacular view!

We passed through a mossy forest, and came across this lonely farmhouse high in the hills.

After that we left all houses and roads behind, though we did follow a Bronze Age trackway (3000-4000 years old) through the hills. The highlight of the trip was Bryn Cader Faner, a Bronze Age burial site or cairn circle. Quite impressive!

Paul flew his kite for a while, but the cairn circle just looks like a pile of rocks from above 😉 We continued our way back to Llandanwg, it took us about 7 hours to walk the 20 km – a long day!

I had sore muscles after our hike, but I couldn’t stay inside when this double rainbow appeared over the Moelfre in the evening… followed by an amazing sunset 🙂

The next day we took it easy and we went on a day trip to Aberystwyth (by car). We hadn’t been there before, but it’s a very pretty and pleasant town. Full of students, which is quite a change from other parts of North Wales where the population consists of lots of pensioners 😉

Our real destination for the day was the submerged forest at the beach near Borth. This “forest” (collection of tree trunks) is between 4500 and 6000 years old, and only visible at low tide. There doesn’t seem to be a clear reason why this forest became submerged, but there isn’t much information available. It’s not indicated on any maps, and only mentioned in one sentence at Ynyslas Nature Reserve (though the information centre there was closed by the time we arrived, perhaps they had more information inside). Anyway, well worth a visit!

The tree trunks were beautiful, and you could see all the tree rings on them. They still feel like wood, it’s hard to believe they are thousands of years old!

Paul had his kite with him again, and he took some photos of the forest from above….

When our muscles had rested long enough, we decided to climb Rhinog Fawr, the highest of the two neighbouring Rhinog peaks. We parked at a farm next to where the so-called Roman Steps start. I have seen this name on a map for many years now, and it always intrigued me. Why were the Romans building steps in the mountains? It was almost disappointing to learn the truth: the path has nothing to do with the Romans, it was a medieval pack-horse trail. You can follow it all the way to the pass where we turned off to climb to the top of Rhinog Fawr. Impressive! We got a bit lost here, when you get closer to the top there are many paths to follow.

The weather was cloudy and we got a few drops of rain while on top. Luckily someone had built a shelter so we could enjoy our lunch out of the wind!

A cute little bridge on our way back to the car. The last part of the path goes through a mossy forest.

As usual, the weather cleared up in the evening and we enjoyed another fantastic sunset from the beach…

The next day we decided to walk the southern section of Ardudwy Way. Paul’s parents decided to join for the first part of the hike, as the weather was very nice. We started from Barmouth, with great views from the broom-covered hills to the coast.

We passed lots of ruined farmhouses, and a couple of lived-in ones 🙂

The sunshine disappeared which made it a lot chillier, but the views were still great

Paul’s parents were curious to see Cerrig Arthur, a small stone circle that is quite well known around Barmouth. We almost didn’t find it though, as it’s just 3 rocks in the middle of a field… a bit of a anticlimax really, especially when we also found that we had a long climb ahead of us and our views were taken away by fog and light rain rolling in. By this time it was also too late for Paul’s parents to turn around as they had planned, so we decided to all walk to Tal Y Bont where we had left one car in the parking lot.

The last part of the hike is really pretty, it follows a river surrounded by a mossy forest. The forest was full of bluebells and other flowers, very pretty!

We made it back to the car just before it got dark. It all worked out nicely, as we were able to order pizza’s in Tal Y Bont, drive back to Barmouth to pick up the other car, and pick up the pizza’s on our way home 🙂

Our holiday in Wales was coming to an end, and one place I was still keen to visit was Ynys Llanddwyn. This is a tidal island (only becoming an island at the highest of tides) on the coast of Anglesey. I had seen lots of beautiful photos taken here, and I was very excited about visiting 🙂 We parked at Newborough Forest, and walked along the beach to Ynys Llanddwyn…

It was a beautiful day: warm and sunny! The island was covered in lots and lots of flowers… and there were birds everywhere.

I took a lot of photos and I really enjoyed our visit. There are two towers here, one is an old beacon called Twr Back, and the other a lighthouse called Twr Mawr. There are also some lighthouse cottages, a cross, a Celtic cross, the ruin of a church… plenty of things to see!

And there were horses!

Such a beautiful place…

A few days later our holiday was coming to an end… On the last day, the weather was perfect and we went for one last walk to Harlech beach – I think you can understand it was hard to leave views like this… what a perfect little holiday 🙂

We spent last week in Wales, and were lucky enough to have sunny (but cold) weather every day. We arrived on Monday evening, and at night we went for a walk. It was a clear night and all the stars were out, we could even see the Milky Way! 

We decided to try taking a star trail image. We left the camera open for about 20 minutes, and below you can see how much the stars “move” (or rather how much the Earth rotates) in that much time. Each line is one single star! The problem with taking such long exposures is that you quickly get light pollution overexposing your image, even when there hardly are any lights. The wriggly line in the photo (near the bottom) is me walking around while using the flashlight on my phone 🙂 you can even see where I switched it off and instead you can see the faint green glow of the screen!

The next day was very sunny, and we decided to walk from Llandanwg to Harlech along the beach. We found something very interesting on the beach, see the photos below! These were big structures made out of sand (the second image is a close-up and shows the structure very well) with lots and lots of tunnels… in each of them lives a worm! I was very fascinated by this, and have tried to find out more. After a long search I found out they are called honeycomb worms and I found this BBC article about them – apparently they have only recently come back to the coast of North Wales, after being absent for 60 years!

We continued our walk towards Harlech, below you can see Harlech castle and the dunes. It was beautiful just after sunset, with the mountains only just visible in the mist. 

The next day we decided to visit Cregennan Lakes, near Barmouth. The drive there was beautiful, with some areas completely white because of frost. There were quite a lot of people at the lakes. We walked around the partly frozen lake for a bit and then decided to go up Bryn Brith, the mountain (well, only 383 m) you can see in both photos below. 

The views from there were really good though! In the photos below you can see Barmouth (with the railway bridge) on the left, and on the right the whole panorama from the top of the mountain.

We walked along the ridge for a while before coming back down to the lakes…

By that time it was past sunset, and the last evening colours were beautifully reflected in the lake. It had also calmed down so the lake was like a mirror.

The next day was New Year’s Day and we went to visit Portmeirion. This is quite a special place! It’s built in Italian style, between 1925 and 1975, designed by Clough Williams-Ellis. He also used parts of buildings that were being demolished elsewhere, so some buildings are a lot older, like the building in the foreground of the second photo below. You have to pay an entrance fee to enter the village (£7), but we had free tickets :). The village is very beautiful, with many colourful buildings:

It’s located on the estuary of the river Dwyryd. The tidal differences are very large there (this is in the same location as the island we walked to at low tide last time we were in Wales!). There is a nice path that follows the coast. We also found a few “wishing trees”, tree trunks with coins hammered into them for good luck. Strange sight!

There were lots of robins around, some of them were not shy at all! I played around with my new lens and got some nice photos. I also entertained some other visitors by trying to do a 360 degree turn while squatted – I think the robin was hopping around me in a circle on purpose!

Paul was having fun in a small lighthouse… the other two photos are taken at low tide out on the estuary at sunset – beautiful!

Portmeirion looked beautiful in the evening light too, especially with all the Christmas lights turned on. All the buildings in the town are either shops/cafes or holiday accommodation – must be quite a nice place to stay! I thought it would have a very artificial feel, but it didn’t really – maybe because it was New Year’s Day, with not many visitors and all the shops cl
osed.

On Friday, our last day in Wales, we went for a long walk, from Mochras (“Shell Island”) to Barmouth, along the beach. The day started cloudy, but it soon cleared up. It was a beautiful walk, especially since there were many parts of the beach with a thin layer of water on it, reflecting the sky!

We drove back to London that evening. We haven’t been up to much here, just relaxing and enjoying our last days in England. Only two more days left before we fly back to Tromsø. Strange to think I am actually “really” leaving England this time… but excited about starting a new life there!

Helloooo,

I’ve just come back from a very wonderful week in Wales… A week of sunny weather, red noses, beaches, mountains, bridges and chocolate eggs 🙂

Paul’s parents have a house in North Wales, very near the coast. It’s actually located in the Snowdonia National Park. We drove there on Tuesday evening, it takes about 6 hours!

The next morning we went for a nice walk on the beach near the house, it’s very pretty. There were some swans there, sunbathing I guess 😉 The panorama photo I took doesn’t want to become straight so I just left it like this.

Later in the afternoon we went to Harlech Beach, a huge beach! We played with Paul’s boomerang, or actually, he played with it, I took photos of him (trying to!) catch it. We walked back through Harlech. The photo of the road is the first Welsh word I learnt… You can see it everywhere! Just like on my trip to/from Antarctica the Spanish word that stayed with me is “salida” (exit). Spent too much time in airports, hehe.

Another thing about Wales: they have LOTS of sheep… And we were there at the right time, little lambs everywhere… so cute!! Here is a photo of family Sheep and a sign about lambing time, in English and Welsh. Welsh is really complicated! It’s spoken quite a lot, but to me it always sounded East European in a way. They are very proud of their language and I saw many road signs where someone had tried to erase the English translation.

One day we went for a nice walk from Barmouth. There is a rail bridge that you can cross on foot for 70p 🙂 The bridge is beautiful and the views from the bridge are even better! We walked up to a quarry where they used to mine copper (if I’m correct). Now it’s just a pretty blue lake surrounded by high rock walls. The sport of the local youth is to jump down into the (very deep) lake. Ahh I would be so scared, you have to jump forward quite a bit to reach the water. It was fun watching them though! Here are the bridge photos…

The next day we went to Portmadog with Paul’s parents. We parked the car outside the little town and walked over the rail bridge. Another bridge with nice views 🙂 We also visited a cute little place in a bay that dries out at low tide (the tide differences are very big around there). See the panorama photo. The two first photos are taken from the bridge, one in the afternoon and one in the evening at sunset.

The next day we decided to climb a mountain nearby. This was quite an adventure as there was no path, lots of bogs (I stepped into a deep one, fortunately when we were almost back at the car!), lots of prickly bushes… But we made it to the top, the view was great!

At the top, there was one of those things that they used to measure distances, and we wanted to take a photo of us on it. In the first photo, the camera went off too early, hehe.

Here is another photo taken at the top, and one of the mossy stream we saw on the way back.

The next day Paul went sailing with his dad, and I followed them from the shore and took some photos. There was a cute little dog trying to come on the boat with them 🙂

Later that day we went for a walk. We crossed the bay at low tide to get to a small island in the bay. We did have to take our shoes off and wade through a gully, but it was a very nice walk!

JUMP!

It was such an amazing week, we stayed longer than we planned to. We had a nice time with his parents as well. It started raining on Monday and when it was still cloudy on Tuesday, we decided to go back to Norwich. Of course the sunny weather came back on Wednesday, but well.

On the way back we stopped at a parking place next to the road and climbed up this mountain, the view was really great:

We drove back to Norwich last night. Paul was bored while I was driving, so he took some pictures of me…

That’s all… what a great Easter break! I’m looking forward to going back to Wales one day.