Wales

On Friday we were up at 6am and I went “to work” with Niki. His boss had arranged it so that Niki had a few deliveries to make all in the direction of Wales, meaning I got to briefly see beautiful Oxford and a handful of other small English towns including a fandangle property belonging to some Duke or another. We are really lucky with Niki’s work as we are able to use the work van and petrol, free of charge!! We arrived in Wales by 2.30pm which gave us extra time to see a bit more of Wales than we had originally anticipated. We made a stop in Chepstow to see the Chepstow castle and a bit further up, the ruins of the 13th century Tintern Abbey. The abbey remains remarkably complete for it’s age, and is now basically a large brick “shell” of a church and is rather eerie yet lovely.

From there we continued on to our accommodation at Newport where Gina & Ben arrived around the same time. That evening we took a train (15 mins) into Cardiff and had a good catch-up over a pub meal. Saturday morning we made our way back into Cardiff for a cooked breky before heading to Cardiff Castle for a couple of hours. I’m not really into castles or history, or anything intelligent really and hardly ever bother paying an entry price but I’m glad I did for this one. We got an audio guide and also a guided tour of some of the rooms of the castle (unfortunately no photos allowed) but they were spectacular, all the artwork, wood carving and detail is amazing.

Early afternoon we decided it was time to head to a pub, the streets were all filling up by then with lots of rugby colours and flags on display. We found a random pub and managed to squish inside, I had a strawberry cider (never seen that before) which was delish. A group of men started singing welsh songs which was really neat…we were to hear a lot more of that later during the course of the game. We decided to keep moving and try a few different pubs, stopping for a hot Cornish pastie in between as it was freezing outside.

We made our way to the Millenium stadium at 4pm as the boys didn’t want to miss a thing (kick-off wasn’t til 5:15pm!). The stadium is right in the centre of town which is very handy. It was cool seeing it so empty and then 10 mins before kick-off it was chocker. It was a pretty poor first half with no tries being scored and Wales managed to be beating us by 3 points at half-time (9-6)! To be honest, I don’t mind watching sport as long as we’re winning - not because I really care who wins, I just don’t like dealing with the sport-result-induced mood-swings of a kiwi bloke!!! But Niki didn’t seem phased at all at this point, and in fact was still on a major high after hearing the league result that morning!

The second half was more exciting and I found myself screaming at the players…no particular words, just screaming (and squealing too apparently)! The final score was 9-29 to us.

The streets were blocked off to cars and there were people everywhere, including many young ladies wearing far far too little for the temperature. I'm all for a skimpy outfit but I was seriously shivering and I was wearing long pants, big jacket and all the trimmings. hehe obviously I hadn't had enough vodka.

We were lucky to find a table (albeit outside) at an Italian restaurant where we had a lovely drawn out dinner - which Gina & Ben sneakily paid for (grrrr). Later we headed to a pub for a drink where the boys watched the replay of the league but by 11ish we were all shattered so home time it was!

Sunday morning we had breakfast together at the hotel and then went our separate ways, and sadly we won’t see each other for another year at least! Niki and I headed to Barri Island which I’m sure was once a cute seaside village but is now unfortunately overtaken by the british staple of awful tacky theme park rides, casinos and gaming arcades. It was extremely windy and cold so we only explored for 15 mins before hurrying back to the van! We arrived home at around 6pm, with my time as a passenger being occupied by speaking to drunken Toni & Louisa lining up for the walkie post churching.