Adventureland

Sorry for the delay.  I wanted to make sure I portrayed my favorite weekend of the trip as accurately and cleverly as possible.  Here it goes…

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to go to Wales.  Not to see the castle of Cardiff or the beaches of Swansea, but to the small town of Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire.  To do what?  Coasteer.  Never heard of it?  Neither had I until my friend Christy retold her adventures from her trip last summer.  It’s a bit hard to explain, so here are a couple of references: Preseli Venture & Wikipedia

The trip nearly didn’t happen however.  With packed traveling schedules, a visit to England’s neighbor fell farther and farther down on the list of priorities.  With dwindling funds, the cost of train tickets and an expensive adventure resort scared us away.  And with our weekends in London limited, the 3-day commitment  seemed a bit much.  Fortunately, Emily and I found the perfect weekend to go, worked out the cheapest and fastest way to get there and made a deal with the lodge director to allow us to stay for just one night and one activity.  Thanks to Sophie at Preseli, we were able to head down to Wales Friday the 16th with plans of returning the 17th.  Yes, I said plans of returning.

The lodge was tucked away in the outskirts of Haverfordwest surrounded by the most beautiful green trees.  On the train ride there, I kept looking out the window to see all the different shades of green blurring together kind of like an Eric Carle illustration.  When we arrived at the train station, a van from Preseli was waiting to pick us up.  It was a rickety, curvy ride through the hills and fields of Wales.  In a way it reminded me of the drive to the lake at Table Rock.

It was the first time we had been outside of a city.  The air was still and silent except for maybe the mooing cows in the distance or a slight rustle of the leaves.  We took in deep breaths of fresh air for the first time all summer and enjoyed being the only people around.  It was a nice and welcomed change from London.  The lodge itself was quaint and eco-friendly.  The staff was so helpful, and we got home-cooked food for every meal.  I told Emily it was just how I imagined a summer camp would be.

During our wonderful meal of lasagna and salad (with apple pie for dessert!), we met a group of students from California.  We decided to journey to the nearest beach afterwards, grabbed the hand-drawn map from the woman behind the desk and set out.  The walk was beautiful.  The map led us along a trail through the woods.  We talked about how neat it was that they hadn’t commercialized the walk to the coast as our shoes got stuck in the mud, our hands pricked by thorny vines and our clothes stained by tree sap.  It was like my childhood explorations of the the woods and creeks behind my neighborhood at home.

We were rewarded, however, with one of the most amazing views.  Did I mention it was sunset?  Absolutely stunning.  We hung around the beach for a while taking in the view.  My sweatshirt accumulated about 10 beach rocks and my camera a few dozen photographs.  It was getting colder and darker so we bid adieu to the coast and headed back to the lodge a little muddier, a little smellier and ready for bed.

The next morning we woke up early by my standards to go on our coasteering adventure.  It’s at this point in the trip that my camera decided to stop working, so I don’t have any embarrassing pictures of me in a wetsuit.  But we did wear wetsuits.  We also had helmets, life jackets and special socks to keep us safe and warm.  There were two guides that showed us the ropes.  Oh, wait, there weren’t any ropes.  Just us, on the edge of a cliff with waves crashing below us.  Somehow, I managed to get to the front of the group behind one of the guides.  This meant I was the first one in the water.  With a little hesitation, I leaped in from about 3 feet above the water.  I think I went into slight shock, and apparently everyone could see it on my face because I heard the guide say, “see the look on her face?”  The water was so cold, but after a few minutes I caught my breath, the wetsuit kicked in and our adventure began.

We climbed and swam along the coast of the Irish Sea for a few hours.  Every so often there’d be a cliff to jump off of.  I had sworn that I would never jump off a cliff again, but this seemed safe, and Emily and I managed to jump off a 25 foot cliff by the end of the adventure.  We couldn’t stop smiling the whole time and kept saying, “I can’t believe we’re doing this!”

After about three hours, the coasteering trip was finished.  We walked back up to the top of the cliffs, changed out of our wetsuits and headed back to the lodge where hot soup and sandwiches were waiting for us.  It was bittersweet because we knew we’d be headed back to London as soon as we finished eating.  We wanted to stay longer, go on more adventures and get to know more people from the group.  But the taxi came, and we were headed back to the train station.  We reasoned that it was better to leave on a good note and boarded our train to Cardiff where we would catch our bus back home.

The adventure didn’t end here though.  Stay tuned for Part 2…

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