Caty Turns 20 in Wales

My co-workers and I spent four hours talking about cultural differences between the US and the UK while also looking at funny websites. I also witnessed two of them, grown men, enthusiastically playing Cat's Cradle. Class was about immigration and we got a simple math worksheet to determine who did or did not have enough points to become a citizen. Ok, now that is out of the way, the fun stuff.

The weekend of July 3-5 was Arcadia's Adventure Weekend in Wales which I had been looking forward to ever since Arcadia sent us the activities list way back in May. My love for outdoor adventure is well-documented plus I really wanted to go to Wales plus it was the 4th/my birthday. Awesome. The 9 of us going from Palace Court set off together to Paddington Station which is about a 20-30 minute walk as it turns out. We were all in high spirits for our weekend away from London and academic paper stress.

We took a train to Swansea and then changed to a train to Haverfordwest, the nearest train station to Preseli Venture. It was uneventful, as most train travel is, except for the amusing Bunny Suicides that Stacy and Phil drew and shared with me. If you don't know about the Bunny Suicides, go look it up now, so funny. Preseli Venture, the name of the company who arranged the weekend and owned the lodge we would be staying at, sent people to meet us at Haverfordwest and take us in their van/jeep vehicles. I thought they were cool because they had such high ceilings that you could stand up inside the van and not hit your head. However, the ride was rather turny and twisty and 25 minutes long and I hadn't eaten in awhile. Not fun but I survived with minimal sickness.

Preseli Venture Lodge is an isolated area of the Pembrokeshire National Park with a small village a 20 minute walk up the hill and a few farms down the road. Absolutely gorgeous green hills, wildflowers, and a peek of the cliff and ocean beyond. The lodge is made up of two connected buildings. One is for the rooms and showers and the other is for the kitchen, bar, and lounge. The rooms were actually very nice with comfy beds and plenty of storage space. I shared a 6 person room with Clare, Molly, and Nori, and got my always beloved top bunk so that was fun. We threw our stuff down and went to dinner. Preseli provides all your meals while there and it is all home cooked by their chef Jackie. Our first dinner was vegetable lasagna and I was so hungry by that time that I just started eating without thinking about the vegetables. Shockingly, it was really good and I didn't even have to pick anything out of it despite the presence of my least favorite veggie, zucchini. I liked the lasagna more than the dessert of apple pie and ended up trading Phil my pie for his leftover zucchini. I know, take a moment to recover from the shock and feeling of the world turning upside down on itself.

We had free time after dinner so we all decided to walk 20 minutes down the hill to the local beach. We got a map from behind the bar and Helen, the bartender, explained the route to us. It seemed easy enough: walk down the hill, turn left, go through the gate right past the houses, and just follow the path through some woods, a meadow, and some more woods. No problem. Most people brought booze with them too so we were a merry party setting off. The farmhouses along the way were adorable and the walk was just very picturesque. We ran into no problems until after the meadow. There was a path leading up stairs and one leading through mud into a semi-swamp. Helen hadn't said anything about stairs but she had said there would be lots of mud and we should remove our shoes so we went the way of the semi-swamp. Soon we were all over our ankles in the most disgusting mud contracting who knows what diseases from the multitudes of insects. Eventually we came to where there was no way we could walk farther, it was genuinely swamp and was covered with water. Phil climbed up the hill next to us and then shouted down to us that the beach was straight ahead that way. We should have taken the stairs and thus avoided the whole muddy mess. FML.

Abermawr Beach is my perfect beach and we were there at the perfect time. The sun was setting making the clouds yellow and pink and purple. There was a cliff on the right side and on the left side and the beach was rocky instead of sandy. I fell in love immediately. Those of us brave (read: stupid) enough stripped to our bathing suits and ran into the water. Let me tell you, if I thought the Channel in Cornwall was cold, the Irish Sea in Wales is even more so. After dunking my whole body under, I came up screaming. Your skin goes numb eventually but for a few minutes there, it is intense. After wave jumping and allowing our bodies to get used to the water, some of us swam over to some rocks and went climbing. Not the best idea in bathing suits and bare feet especially since the rocks were covered in barnacles and thus very sharp. It was really fun though and I got to sing "Part of Your World" from a rock similar to the one in the movie where the ocean crashes up behind her. We left the rocks and Phil and I stayed in the water some more before going and sitting on the sand right at the water line and just staring around us in wonder. The sky looked like a gorgeous still painting because there was no wind. At last, Phil and I left the water, the last to do so, and then everyone on the shore informed me I was bleeding. It was true, somewhere along the way, barnacles had sliced open my leg and my calf was covered in blood. Nothing serious, I just let it bleed and figured the saltwater would have done it some good. We sat there until the sun was close to down and then made our way back in near darkness. Somewhat disconcerting but we made it back fairly easily and got to see a beautiful moon over the meadow. A shower and then it was bedtime since we would be rising early to start our activities.

Saturday morning they had bacon. Not bacon strips like in America, but more ham-like bacon. Still it was bacon and I was REALLY excited about that. Made the lackluster other offerings of toast, cereal, and fruit all that much better. My morning was dedicated to sea kayaking but first we had to go to the shed and suit up. Let me tell you, wetsuits are the worst possible things for your self-esteem. They are so hard to get on your body that you can actually injure yourself in the attempt. Not that I did that. No, that was that other girl. Yeah. Anyway, I had so many layers on. Bathing suit, fleece jacket, wet suit, waterproof jacket, life jacket, and kayak skirt. Yes, you read that right. You have to wear a skirt that hooks around the opening of your kayak so excess water doesn't get in. I felt mega attractive, let me tell you.

After our struggles outfitting ourselves, fitting our kayaks, and going over kayak basics, we drove off for Fishguard where we would be kayaking. Fishguard is a very pretty seaside village with a calm harbor that is ideal for beginner kayakers even if it was the setting for first Moby Dick movie and thus made me twitch a little. Once in the water, our instructors gave us more information about how to manage our kayak and then made us play kayak polo with a tennis ball so we could figure it all out. Needless to say, I was completely useless at both the kayaking and the polo playing. We then set off for the open ocean and I discovered I had the kayak magnetically attracted to the rocks. At least, that is what I am blaming it on. I lagged behind until we got safely away from the rocks and from there I could more or less keep up with the group. Our instructors shared fun facts with us as we paddled such as when the women of Fishguard saved Wales from the French in around 1797 by dressing in their absent military husbands uniforms and standing on the cliffs so the French though there were lots of soldiers and surrendered. They also pulled up crab traps and I got to hold a velvet crab. We also explored a cave before heading back to the harbor where we had to paddle against the wind which proved extremely difficult. I was so hot and tired by the time we got back to the ramp that I capsized on purpose (It is really easy to get out of a capsized kayak contrary to popular belief) just to cool off.

Thoroughly exhausted and soaked, the lunch of delicious gammon (basically vegetable with pork) soup and bread was much needed. I took a quick rinse in the shower just to get the salt off because our afternoon activity was going to be a hike so showering would have been useless. I forgot to mention that the weather in Wales is even more schizo than in Indiana. It will downpour for five minutes and then the sun will come out for an hour and then it will downpour again and so on and so forth. I didn't mind the rain when we were kayaking because I was wet already but hiking is a different story. There were two hikes: one 7 miles and one 3.5 miles from the halfway point of the other hike, Abercastle. It was pouring rain when the van stopped and the Preseli lady asked if anyone wanted to just do the Abercastle hike. No one wanted to be the weeny who voted for the short hike so we continued on. The Preseli lady dropped us off, basically said "Have fun but be back by 6 or else we call the coast guard.", and then we were left on our own to follow the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. It poured through the first 15-20 minutes of the hike and then was sunny and beautiful the rest of the time but we were already soaked so it didn't count for much. The scenery was without a doubt some of the best I have seen with cliff after cliff after cliff, the clear blue sea spreading out to the horizon, and all manner of flora growing on long grass reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie. Had the lower half of my body not protected by the waterproof not been so wet, it would have been more enjoyable.

Now it is time for my rant about sheep shit. The path led us through pastures, as in we were in among the animals. This also meant we were in among their excrement. It was everywhere. Big poop, little poop, dry poop, wet poop, completely unavoidable. I stopped admiring the scenery and instead had to constantly look at the ground to avoid the biggest piles of poop all the time knowing I was stepping in smaller ones which made me very grumpy. They should have had an advisory or something to warn about the sheep shit or found some way of cleaning it up. Who likes to walk through fecal matter? Who?! Of course, after Abercastle, the path went through no more pastures and so if I had walked the shorter hike then I could have avoided the sheep shit altogether. FML. It also turned out that 7 miles was a bit too much for me and sometime after Abercastle, my muscles started a mutiny and I had to push myself to keep moving. All in all, the hike was a fairly miserable experience despite the amazing surroundings. I felt fully justified in scarfing down an entire tube of Pringles after finally getting back to the lodge. A shower and dinner of curried chicken and rice restored my spirits but I was still exhausted. After a game of Balderdash and a Vodka Blue, I couldn't make it even to the bonfire and went to bed early to soothe my aching muscles. Not a very exciting 4th of July but I enjoyed myself, minus the sheep shit.


HAPPY 20TH BIRTHDAY TO ME! Really, it wasn't a very birthday birthday since my friends said Happy Birthday to me and that was about it. Still, it was one of my favorites because I got to go coasteering. Coasteering is a mix of rock climbing, swimming, and cliff jumping, so obviously designed to be one of my favorite activities ever. After breakfast (MORE BACON FOR MY BIRTHDAY!), we had to climb into wet suits again. This is when I was worried my birthday was going to go horribly wrong. I couldn't squeeze myself into my first suit despite incurring multiple friction burns in the attempt and they had to get me a second bigger one which I required aid to get into. At this point, everyone else was not only in their wetsuit, but had their padding shorts, lifejacket, helmet, and wet suit socks on as well. I was holding up the van. Because I was too fat. On my birthday. Woo.

It all got better from there though. Martin, our native Welshman guide, took us to an old abandoned quarry right on the coast so we had a protected lagoon to start off in. The water was a shock again but winter wetsuits are awesome and really did keep us mostly warm. We bobbed about in the water for a bit before Martin led us to a rock wall and we all climbed up onto the plateau. He had us practice proper jumping technique there because it was not but a foot or two up from the water. After that, we climbed up to a ledge of the old quarry building and jumped from there. I wanted to go higher (when don't I?) but Martin wouldn't let me. I seemed to amuse him in my enthusiasm for jumping from high places and climbing up rocks. He pointed to a section of the rock wall and said "If you want to climb up the hardest way, that is it." So I proceeded to climb up that way. Twice. The only girl to do so. Leaping off a cliff into the lagoon was incredibly fun and posing for my waterproof camera while doing so was an interesting challenge. All in all, an excellent birthday activity on its own. After we were all jumped out, Martin took us out onto some rocks into the open sea. The sea was pretty rough that day but that just made it more fun. He let us bob in this "jacuzzi" between two rocks as waves came in and out which inspired much screaming and giggling fun. The only part I didn't like was the seaweed that tangled around my legs and made me feel like the Kraken was coming for me.

We returned to the lodge for a baked potato loaded down with cheese and sweet corn for lunch before getting driven back to Haverfordwest. We then spent the next six hour on trains getting back to London. I got home and immediately called Mom and Jon before going to bed. End of birthday. So like I said, not very much like a birthday, but a fun day anyway despite the obnoxious hours of traveling. I love Wales and would love to go back at any time. Being 20 is also quite strange I must say. It has been one week now and I am still not used to the idea of no longer being an adolescent and that in 10 years I will probably be married and having babies. Woah. Too much for me. But for now, I am just chilling and waiting to turn 21 since we all know that is the way more important and cool birthday, at least in America.