dearest wales in the world
0 Comments Published by ginny on Wednesday, January 23, 2002 at 11:23 PM.
6:23 p.m. 09 October 2002
Ouch. My back hurts. Last night I was all “Oh, I don’t ache at all from the horseback riding,” but this morning is a different story.
So we’re back from Wales! The trip was somewhat different than anticipated – only about four hours of horseback riding, total, for one thing – but I’m still glad we went.
Day one was the visiting-places-on-the-bus day. I’d actually been to about two-thirds of them already, but that’s okay. Wales is still pretty anyway.
We went first to Chepstow and Chepstow castle, which, while pretty was rather like most castles – i.e., ruinous, picturesque and possibly, while gazing up at one of the ruined towers from inside it, looking at the creeping ivy and smelling the cold stone and shadowy light, sublime. There we also used the bathroom. This was, since we were on a “luxury coach” (which apparently means very small seats and not a particularly comfortable ride), an important part of the experience. Mia and I did not succeed in finding food.
Next stop was Tinturn Abbey. Mia and I discussed the Wordsworth explosion that seems to be happening all over Britain at the moment. Have you noticed it? Why is this? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with Wordsworth, certainly, but why are we, for instance, celebrating the 200th anniversary of his marriage with great abandon? (As much as any celebration of a 200 year old poet has abandon.) I mean, why Wordsworth and not Byron? Or Pope? And why such detailed anniversaries – his marriage, his composition of certain poems, etc.? It’s a slightly baffling movement, to me. Does this signal, at long last, a resurgence of Romanticism?
Since I’d been to Tinturn Abbey with my cousin et. al, and since I wanted to get something to eat, I didn’t end up going in this time. We didn’t have very much time there. But I did go in the gift shop, and purchased – ready yourselves – an Authentic Roman Snake Ring in 100% Quality Pewter!!!!! It’s on my finger right now. I know you’re all jealous. I also got a cool wooden dagger which I then kept in my backpack and referred to as “Sting.” It is wrapped in green yarn, which makes it even cooler. Carrie and I both agreed on the coolness of these purchases. She got a cranberry drink which turned out to be less cool than anticipated.
From Wordsworth-land we moved on to, for some reason, Monmouth. Monmouth is quite a nice town, and a major center in that part of Wales, but it must be admitted that its tourism possibilities are, shall we say, low. There is a museum, a statue of Henry V over the town hall (reproduction) and . . .um. . .some shoe shops. Nonetheless we had an hour there.
I did enjoy thinking about the fact that prince Hal (before, of course, he was prince, and when he was just Bolingbroke’s son) was born there, and triumphing somewhat in having deduced that from the fact that Hotspur refers to him as “Harry Monmouth” in Henry IV part I. Also, presumably, Geoffrey of Monmouth is from there, but we saw no statues of him.
But really what there was to do in Monmouth, at least from my perspective, was go to charity shops and look for trousers, which I did. I found one pair that fit, but was not at all stylish, so I didn’t buy them. This later turned out to be a mistake. I will preface the reason why by noting that the dryer here, being a SatanDryer™, has apparently shrunk all of my clothes. I am steadfastly standing by this explanation for why suddenly none of my trousers fit at all. Also none of my underwear, oddly enough. I mean, can I possibly have gained an entire size in just a month? They fit three weeks ago!
Anyway, I didn’t buy anything. And we moved on to Hay-on-Wye, distinguished by having the most used bookshops of any town in Britain – 35. Mia and I had been there two years ago, and I like it. Principally because not only did I buy an actual Victorian bodice there (at least, I maintain it’s authentic. I won’t hear otherwise. It doesn’t fit me or anything. It’s just costume-love.) but I also obtained the absolute best book in the world: Girl from Havana. It’s a 60s pulp/softcore/spy novel who’s teaser line is “The sultry Latin sex-bomb held the secret to a nightmare plot!!” (Exclamation marks included). It’s difficult to describe how bad/wonderful Girl from Havana is, but I will try by telling you that the hero (Thad, whose “spy disguise” is plaid pants, a checked shirt, and a bushy red beard) at one point describes the culmination of a sex scene thus: “then I realized what was turning her on. . . .it was my beard!!!”
So I was hoping to acquire another Girl from Havana, if nothing else, when we went this time. It only cost me 30 pence two years ago, and it was a great investment. I didn’t, sadly, find anything quite like it (is there anything quite like it?). But I did get two new Diana Wynne Jonses (Black Maria and Cart and Cwidder) and a 60s pulp action novel called “Acid Rock.” It includes a band called “Dead Meat and the Maggots,” and appears to have completely made up its slang. I think the detectives/assassins are also aliens/robots. But it’s hard to tell. It’s also highly multicultural: the detectives are “oriental.” And robots.
We tried to eat at a real restaurant (or rather, pub) in Hay on Wye, but there wasn’t time, so we had fish and chips. Mine had bones. I hate fish bones. But the chips were okay. And Mia was happy because she’d been craving some fish-chips action. Sarah also told an extremely funny Scottish joke.
(It only works if you say it in a Scottish accent. So read in a Scottish accent in your head. Or, heck, out loud.)
Whae d’ye call something wi’ four legs, udders, an’ a machine gun?
A military coo!
He he.
After Hay-on-Wye we proceeded to the “hostel.” “Hostel” is in quotation marks because it was more like “camp.” I.e., not tents, but definitely the kind of bunks – and, importantly, the kind of way-the-fuck-out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere that you stay in at summer camp.
Actually, I rather liked it, and I liked the woman who ran it very much. (Efficient, hardy, twinkly, slightly awkward, cute, ponytail, Welsh. Good combination.) But it was – um – unexpected. See, we get on the bus. (By this time we are pretty tired of our “luxury coach,” which is not. And we stop at this pub and Simon, our guide, says “this is the drop-off point.”
Drop-off point. Not “hostel.” Not “driveway.”
So Carrie, Mia and I start following the rest of the 52-person group, which is heading down this gravel/dirt road. It’s night, by the way. Almost full dark. (If it had been completely dark, we would have been in trouble.) This is, after all, the middle of a national park in the middle of Wales. Not very many people. Not city lights.
So we walk. And we walk. And we walk. And after, say, 10 minutes, we begin saying “does anyone up there know where we’re going?” and looking somewhat anxiously around. Because, you see, we appear to be walking up a dirt road to nowhere, with what faint faint light there is rapidly disappearing, and we haven’t seen any signs of a hostel yet.
Basically, we walked for about half an hour that way. Actually, it was cool. It was, you see, exactly like in The Fellowship of the Ring because we had to travel at night and we were trying to find the prancing pony and I had Sting right there in my backpack. So we talked about that and laughed nervously and kept an eye out for black riders and barrow wights. (I’m sure the sorority-type girls in front of us decided at that moment that we were obviously so cool we had to be their best friends forever. That’s why none of them talked to us. Ever.)
I got to be Sam and Pippen. Mia was Frodo and Merry. Carrie was Aragorn, but of course we didn’t know Aragorn was there yet.
Eventually, we got there, and there we found true soul mates – i.e., Megan, who is mondo-cool and wears Nirvana shirts and has seen Lord of the Rings 17 times…in five different languages, and has met Richard O’Brien and knows martial arts – and Arcadia, who likes everything I like, including Diana Wynne Jones and Tom Stoppard and cetera. I really, really like both of them.
And we talked for a long time and then we went to bed. And despite all appearances of the room, there was no scorpion in my sleeping bag, and a spider did not fall on my face during the night.
(Some of the aforementioned Uva-running-shorts-type girls actually walked back up the road, in what was now pitch darkness, to the pub where we were dropped off, because it was the only nightlife available. They missed out, man. We told stories about meeting Richard O’Brien.)
So in the morning, we got up and had a very nice breakfast, and went to horseback riding!
The farm is called Newcourt Farm, or maybe Mills Brothers farm, but anyway, I liked it. The other times (twice) I’ve been on this sort of excursion they were, to say the least, brusque. That is, they hated us. These people were nice. They did make us wear laser-tag-style vests (“They want to go solo,” Carrie whispered) and helmets, but that was for our own safety. They didn’t mind at all those people who were inexperienced. They just blithely dealt with our stupidity. As one might a horse-riding infant
I got to ride a small, lovely, black and white horse (what do you call that, in horse terms?) called Pinto. She’s the sweetest thing in the world. Also the sweetest thing in the world was Ian, who is one of the people who works there, and one of the two who took our portion of the group out. I love him. I rode near him most of the four hours we were out, and he’s so sweet and shy and small.
Pinto was one of his favorite horses. When we were adjusting the saddles and everything, he was quietly, shyly, sweetly helping the girl next to me and Pinto rubbed her head up against him. “She likes you,” the girl said in her Wisconsin accent. “Actually, I quite like her,” he said with his shy smile. And later when he softly asked me how I was liking Pinto and I said “Oh, she’s lovely,” he said “She is, isn’t she? I won’t have nothing bad said about her. I won’t.” You can see why I love him with all my heart. Carrie says he looks like George W. Bush, but he looks much more loveable than that. Maybe he is W’s good twin.
We rode for three hours and stopped for lunch at a pub. (where they had nothing, and ran out of that.) And then rode for another hour. It was very nice, and I didn’t fall off. (Pinto really is an amazingly nice horse.) And the scenery was lovely. I’m glad we did it.
Oh, but the thing I forgot to put in sequence, and which was not so lovely was this. Remember how I didn’t buy the non-pretty jeans at the charity shop in Monmouth? Yeah, I should have. Because remember how my own trousers have shrunk in the SatanDryer™? So when I got on the horse, guess what. They gave up. By which I mean, they ripped. Big time. Luckily I was able to conceal it the whole time by tying my jacket artfully, but I had to wear my coat the whole way home and I was miserable. And now I have no trousers that fit at all. Ugh. I hate being fat, even if it is the dryer’s fault.
The way home was not so pleasant – the bus got really oppressive. But Mia and I talked, and Arcadia apparently has read like every book Carrie and Sarah talked about, and I got to listen to Megan talk and think about how much I like her. And we stopped for dinner in Oxford and had a very good (but huge) meal.
And then we went home. And that was Wales. Key points summary:
+ I have a dagger.
+ and a roman snake ring
+ lotr is cool
+ so is Rocky Horror
+ and Ian is the dearest, Welshest boy in the world, I assure you.
Ouch. My back hurts. Last night I was all “Oh, I don’t ache at all from the horseback riding,” but this morning is a different story.
So we’re back from Wales! The trip was somewhat different than anticipated – only about four hours of horseback riding, total, for one thing – but I’m still glad we went.
Day one was the visiting-places-on-the-bus day. I’d actually been to about two-thirds of them already, but that’s okay. Wales is still pretty anyway.
We went first to Chepstow and Chepstow castle, which, while pretty was rather like most castles – i.e., ruinous, picturesque and possibly, while gazing up at one of the ruined towers from inside it, looking at the creeping ivy and smelling the cold stone and shadowy light, sublime. There we also used the bathroom. This was, since we were on a “luxury coach” (which apparently means very small seats and not a particularly comfortable ride), an important part of the experience. Mia and I did not succeed in finding food.
Next stop was Tinturn Abbey. Mia and I discussed the Wordsworth explosion that seems to be happening all over Britain at the moment. Have you noticed it? Why is this? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with Wordsworth, certainly, but why are we, for instance, celebrating the 200th anniversary of his marriage with great abandon? (As much as any celebration of a 200 year old poet has abandon.) I mean, why Wordsworth and not Byron? Or Pope? And why such detailed anniversaries – his marriage, his composition of certain poems, etc.? It’s a slightly baffling movement, to me. Does this signal, at long last, a resurgence of Romanticism?
Since I’d been to Tinturn Abbey with my cousin et. al, and since I wanted to get something to eat, I didn’t end up going in this time. We didn’t have very much time there. But I did go in the gift shop, and purchased – ready yourselves – an Authentic Roman Snake Ring in 100% Quality Pewter!!!!! It’s on my finger right now. I know you’re all jealous. I also got a cool wooden dagger which I then kept in my backpack and referred to as “Sting.” It is wrapped in green yarn, which makes it even cooler. Carrie and I both agreed on the coolness of these purchases. She got a cranberry drink which turned out to be less cool than anticipated.
From Wordsworth-land we moved on to, for some reason, Monmouth. Monmouth is quite a nice town, and a major center in that part of Wales, but it must be admitted that its tourism possibilities are, shall we say, low. There is a museum, a statue of Henry V over the town hall (reproduction) and . . .um. . .some shoe shops. Nonetheless we had an hour there.
I did enjoy thinking about the fact that prince Hal (before, of course, he was prince, and when he was just Bolingbroke’s son) was born there, and triumphing somewhat in having deduced that from the fact that Hotspur refers to him as “Harry Monmouth” in Henry IV part I. Also, presumably, Geoffrey of Monmouth is from there, but we saw no statues of him.
But really what there was to do in Monmouth, at least from my perspective, was go to charity shops and look for trousers, which I did. I found one pair that fit, but was not at all stylish, so I didn’t buy them. This later turned out to be a mistake. I will preface the reason why by noting that the dryer here, being a SatanDryer™, has apparently shrunk all of my clothes. I am steadfastly standing by this explanation for why suddenly none of my trousers fit at all. Also none of my underwear, oddly enough. I mean, can I possibly have gained an entire size in just a month? They fit three weeks ago!
Anyway, I didn’t buy anything. And we moved on to Hay-on-Wye, distinguished by having the most used bookshops of any town in Britain – 35. Mia and I had been there two years ago, and I like it. Principally because not only did I buy an actual Victorian bodice there (at least, I maintain it’s authentic. I won’t hear otherwise. It doesn’t fit me or anything. It’s just costume-love.) but I also obtained the absolute best book in the world: Girl from Havana. It’s a 60s pulp/softcore/spy novel who’s teaser line is “The sultry Latin sex-bomb held the secret to a nightmare plot!!” (Exclamation marks included). It’s difficult to describe how bad/wonderful Girl from Havana is, but I will try by telling you that the hero (Thad, whose “spy disguise” is plaid pants, a checked shirt, and a bushy red beard) at one point describes the culmination of a sex scene thus: “then I realized what was turning her on. . . .it was my beard!!!”
So I was hoping to acquire another Girl from Havana, if nothing else, when we went this time. It only cost me 30 pence two years ago, and it was a great investment. I didn’t, sadly, find anything quite like it (is there anything quite like it?). But I did get two new Diana Wynne Jonses (Black Maria and Cart and Cwidder) and a 60s pulp action novel called “Acid Rock.” It includes a band called “Dead Meat and the Maggots,” and appears to have completely made up its slang. I think the detectives/assassins are also aliens/robots. But it’s hard to tell. It’s also highly multicultural: the detectives are “oriental.” And robots.
We tried to eat at a real restaurant (or rather, pub) in Hay on Wye, but there wasn’t time, so we had fish and chips. Mine had bones. I hate fish bones. But the chips were okay. And Mia was happy because she’d been craving some fish-chips action. Sarah also told an extremely funny Scottish joke.
(It only works if you say it in a Scottish accent. So read in a Scottish accent in your head. Or, heck, out loud.)
Whae d’ye call something wi’ four legs, udders, an’ a machine gun?
A military coo!
He he.
After Hay-on-Wye we proceeded to the “hostel.” “Hostel” is in quotation marks because it was more like “camp.” I.e., not tents, but definitely the kind of bunks – and, importantly, the kind of way-the-fuck-out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere that you stay in at summer camp.
Actually, I rather liked it, and I liked the woman who ran it very much. (Efficient, hardy, twinkly, slightly awkward, cute, ponytail, Welsh. Good combination.) But it was – um – unexpected. See, we get on the bus. (By this time we are pretty tired of our “luxury coach,” which is not. And we stop at this pub and Simon, our guide, says “this is the drop-off point.”
Drop-off point. Not “hostel.” Not “driveway.”
So Carrie, Mia and I start following the rest of the 52-person group, which is heading down this gravel/dirt road. It’s night, by the way. Almost full dark. (If it had been completely dark, we would have been in trouble.) This is, after all, the middle of a national park in the middle of Wales. Not very many people. Not city lights.
So we walk. And we walk. And we walk. And after, say, 10 minutes, we begin saying “does anyone up there know where we’re going?” and looking somewhat anxiously around. Because, you see, we appear to be walking up a dirt road to nowhere, with what faint faint light there is rapidly disappearing, and we haven’t seen any signs of a hostel yet.
Basically, we walked for about half an hour that way. Actually, it was cool. It was, you see, exactly like in The Fellowship of the Ring because we had to travel at night and we were trying to find the prancing pony and I had Sting right there in my backpack. So we talked about that and laughed nervously and kept an eye out for black riders and barrow wights. (I’m sure the sorority-type girls in front of us decided at that moment that we were obviously so cool we had to be their best friends forever. That’s why none of them talked to us. Ever.)
I got to be Sam and Pippen. Mia was Frodo and Merry. Carrie was Aragorn, but of course we didn’t know Aragorn was there yet.
Eventually, we got there, and there we found true soul mates – i.e., Megan, who is mondo-cool and wears Nirvana shirts and has seen Lord of the Rings 17 times…in five different languages, and has met Richard O’Brien and knows martial arts – and Arcadia, who likes everything I like, including Diana Wynne Jones and Tom Stoppard and cetera. I really, really like both of them.
And we talked for a long time and then we went to bed. And despite all appearances of the room, there was no scorpion in my sleeping bag, and a spider did not fall on my face during the night.
(Some of the aforementioned Uva-running-shorts-type girls actually walked back up the road, in what was now pitch darkness, to the pub where we were dropped off, because it was the only nightlife available. They missed out, man. We told stories about meeting Richard O’Brien.)
So in the morning, we got up and had a very nice breakfast, and went to horseback riding!
The farm is called Newcourt Farm, or maybe Mills Brothers farm, but anyway, I liked it. The other times (twice) I’ve been on this sort of excursion they were, to say the least, brusque. That is, they hated us. These people were nice. They did make us wear laser-tag-style vests (“They want to go solo,” Carrie whispered) and helmets, but that was for our own safety. They didn’t mind at all those people who were inexperienced. They just blithely dealt with our stupidity. As one might a horse-riding infant
I got to ride a small, lovely, black and white horse (what do you call that, in horse terms?) called Pinto. She’s the sweetest thing in the world. Also the sweetest thing in the world was Ian, who is one of the people who works there, and one of the two who took our portion of the group out. I love him. I rode near him most of the four hours we were out, and he’s so sweet and shy and small.
Pinto was one of his favorite horses. When we were adjusting the saddles and everything, he was quietly, shyly, sweetly helping the girl next to me and Pinto rubbed her head up against him. “She likes you,” the girl said in her Wisconsin accent. “Actually, I quite like her,” he said with his shy smile. And later when he softly asked me how I was liking Pinto and I said “Oh, she’s lovely,” he said “She is, isn’t she? I won’t have nothing bad said about her. I won’t.” You can see why I love him with all my heart. Carrie says he looks like George W. Bush, but he looks much more loveable than that. Maybe he is W’s good twin.
We rode for three hours and stopped for lunch at a pub. (where they had nothing, and ran out of that.) And then rode for another hour. It was very nice, and I didn’t fall off. (Pinto really is an amazingly nice horse.) And the scenery was lovely. I’m glad we did it.
Oh, but the thing I forgot to put in sequence, and which was not so lovely was this. Remember how I didn’t buy the non-pretty jeans at the charity shop in Monmouth? Yeah, I should have. Because remember how my own trousers have shrunk in the SatanDryer™? So when I got on the horse, guess what. They gave up. By which I mean, they ripped. Big time. Luckily I was able to conceal it the whole time by tying my jacket artfully, but I had to wear my coat the whole way home and I was miserable. And now I have no trousers that fit at all. Ugh. I hate being fat, even if it is the dryer’s fault.
The way home was not so pleasant – the bus got really oppressive. But Mia and I talked, and Arcadia apparently has read like every book Carrie and Sarah talked about, and I got to listen to Megan talk and think about how much I like her. And we stopped for dinner in Oxford and had a very good (but huge) meal.
And then we went home. And that was Wales. Key points summary:
+ I have a dagger.
+ and a roman snake ring
+ lotr is cool
+ so is Rocky Horror
+ and Ian is the dearest, Welshest boy in the world, I assure you.
Labels: being dumb, England, friends, space, trips
0 Responses to “dearest wales in the world”
Post a Comment