Although we had not made any ‘written in stone’ plans before we arrived in the Derbyshire Peak District for our ten day visit, we had hoped to get to walk and climb at least one, if not more, of the local peaks on our doorstep and to explore some of the numerous footpaths in the area. Unfortunately, Shazza’s injury had prevented us from doing anything overly strenuous, so we just used the time we had to do what was acheivable for her, without making the injury any worse so that hopefully we would be able to get lots of other walks done during the rest of this trip. But we would certainly come back to this area again, if we get the opportunity at some point in the future, when Covid will also ‘hopefully’ be just a dim and distant bad memory, but for now our time here in the Peak District was over and we were ready to move on to the main event, our extended tour and exploration into Northern Wales.
However, we were not departing feeling disappointed in any way, things happen, it is what it is and we have still managed to get out and about. Although it is still early days on this first extended trip in the UK, we are enjoying being back, not just living, but actually travelling in the van again. But it does take a few days, once back ‘on the road’, to just settle back down into the vanlife routines and getting used again to being totally reliant on our on-board facilities, having to conserve our water usage, so that we didn’t have to keep filling the water tank every day, limiting the number of electrical appliances we can have on at any one time, the frustrations that can come when I want to upload photographs from my photo library on my iPad on to my Blog Media Library, or simply to research something on the Internet but having to deal with the varying degrees of strength of phone signal, or lack of it, the simple task of moving the van to empty the grey waste tank and of course getting used to once again having to pack everything up each time we needed to move the van to go out for the day or to go shopping. Having been static for some time and having had a connection to a domestic 240v electric supply, a water tap outside the van, our grey waste connected straight to a grey drain, access to a strong WiFi signal, free access to a washing machine and the bonus of having ‘Wuxly’ to run around in whilst we were at Shazza’s mums, having all of those things every single day for a couple of months had tended to make us conveniently forget what it would be like once we were back ‘on the road’ where we would not have these facilities immediately available.
We had been blessed with good weather for the majority of our stay, although it had changed over the last three days, for the worse, a big drop in the temperatures, both day and night, and the wind had really picked up strength and had brought a nasty cold bite with it, brrrr 🥶 not nice, not nice at all. One thing that does appear to remain consistent though, is the innacuarcy of the ‘Works of Fiction’, we tend to try and have a day, or part of a day, going out somewhere, followed by a rest day where we just potter so as not to put excessive strain on Shazza’s gradually improving groin strain. However, towards the latter end of this part of the trip, on what would have been one of our ‘lets go out and explore days’, those darned forecasters had said that it was going to be an afternoon, and evening, of heavy rain, so we just decided to have another day of pottering, if we had have chosen to have gone out and then got soaking wet we would have had an issue with trying to dry clothes in what is an already limited space. Although in the end it was quite a productive pottering day as Shazza managed to get all of the laundry done and, at £5 for the washer and £2 for a Dryer, we thought that it was quite cheap really, not quite as cheap as being totally ‘Free’ as it had been whilst we were at Shazza’s mums, but not bad for an ‘On the Road’ price. We were more than a little irritated though as it had remained dry all morning, all afternoon, and even into the early evening, the predicted heavy rainfall, failed to physically materialise until well into the night, so although not a completely wasted day, as at least we now had clean clothes, it was a missed opportunity for Shazza to give her groin strain a bit more therapy.
We had just one day remaining before we would point the ‘Little Fokker’ towards the Welsh border and so we decided to get the van sorted and take another trip to the large Supermarket in the nearby town, although just a ‘small’ re-stock on essential provisions on this particular visit and, even though we still had a good half a tank of Diesel, I decided to take the opportunity to fill it up anyway, well the price of fuel is always cheaper at the Supermarkets and it would mean that we would not have to stop to re-fuel on our journey the following day, after completing those minor tasks we drove to what had become our ‘Go To Place’ and thought that we would perhaps try a short walk around another part of the Nature Park, just to see how well the recovery on Shazza’s leg was actually progressing.
The ‘Works of Fiction’ had once again forecast some of the wet stuff yet again, but only for a very short period and more importantly not until late evening, whilst the outside air temperature was still a little chilly, on the edge of the strong wind that has become a particular feature over the last couple of days, the sky was bright and their were swathes of blue amongst the white clouds so, with the ‘Little Fokker’ re-fuelled and re-provisioned, we drove the short distance to the Reservoir and Nature Park, we were spoilt for choice for parking spaces but just went to the area that had become our ‘normal’ spot. No sooner had we parked up and turned the van back into ‘home mode’ than we heard the first pitter patters on the roof, it gradually got louder and louder and then, the rain turned into hailstone !! We just hunkered down inside, had lunch and just generally idled the afternoon away doing nothing very much, I guess we were lucky, it could have remained dry until after we had gone out for a walk and then the heavens could have dumped their painful watery and ice bombs upon us !! Perhaps it was just a case of the ‘Dark Forces’ reminding us that they were never too far away, for once we got back to our night stop and got settled, the rain stopped, the wind died down to a moderate breeze and the sun came out to play, the good old British weather, the inconsistency would be something that we would have to learn to live with again. Their would be no money going in to the swear box from either of us this time around either as we were in no hurry to depart in the morning so we agreed to get up when we woke up, no matter what time it was and then leave when we were ready, so no need to set the ‘you know what’ 😁
Wether it was our subconscious excitement that woke us both early I do not know, but once we were awake and had enjoyed our morning coffee that was it, there was no hanging about, Shazza sorted the inside of the van whilst I did the necessary on the outside and by 09:30am we were waving farewell to the Peak District in England and heading for Wales, to the small coastal town of ‘Harlech’ which lay on Tremadog Bay in the Snowdonia National Park. I knew that Harlech had a Castle, the building of which first commenced in 1283 by Edward I of England, who was eventually ousted by the last Welshman to bear the title of the ‘Prince of Wales’. Now I am not really too interested in who built these Castles, or how many armies had attacked them over the next hundred or thousands of years, or had destroyed them or how many times they had been rebuilt, because at the end of the day it no longer mattered, they were events that had occurred in the past and had no influence on what we were doing in the here and now, all I needed to know was can I go and have a look around it ? The answer to that, according to Google at least, is ‘Yes’, but it does come with a however, which is, we can visit but only if, due to Covid safety measures, we pre-book a time in advance to go and visit. We are only staying around Harlech for four days and it is also ‘May Day’ Bank Holiday Weekend which means that it may be pretty busy, so we will wait and see what the weather is like whilst we are there and then what availability they have for visitations. There is also supposed to be a very nice nine-mile stretch of beach and some good sand dunes so we quite fancy a stroll along that as well. As for exploring more of Snowdonia, well we will be leaving that for a little bit later in this trip as once we have finished exploring Harlech, we shall be heading across to the Isle of Anglesey and exploring that area for the majority of the month of May.
Now we could have taken the fastest route to our selected destination, via the M6 Motorway and then across and along part of the A55 Expressway, but that would have been a very boring journey, so we programmed ‘Snoopy’ to take us via the ‘Non-Motorway’ route which was pretty much cross-country, but hopefully it would be the more scenic option and we hoped to be able to find some places to pull in for photo opportunities, and of course a stop for lunch. The first part of the journey was straightforward, but rather uninspiring, first order of the day was for ‘Snoopy’ to navigate us around the busy towns of Stoke-on-Trent and Nantwich before crossing the border into Wales and then around the outskirts of Wrexham, fortunately, even though we were entering another Country we were not required to produce either our passports or ‘Negative’ PCR Tests at the Border 😂
The roads had been very busy, back to pre-Covid traffic numbers, but we were making good time, no major hold-ups encountered, other than a couple of minor roadworks, however, once we had by-passed Wrexham we started to head West towards Llangollen and then the Welsh Countryside came into it’s own, we had left behind the Derbyshire Peaks and now we were seeing real Mountains, rolling meadows, lush green valleys and sheep that were massive and were more the size of small ponies !! but, then I found myself doing an impression of a former American male tennis star, “You Cannot Be Serious Man, I Know It’s Called Snowdonia BUT ?’……… and the reason for this outburst ?
Now I know that you must get fed up of me continuously complaining about the ‘Works of Fiction’ and their really dismal weather predictions, but nowhere, and I mean nowhere, in their forecast did they mention rain, hailstone and snow. The better news is that it did not last for very long, the trio arrived, gave their impromptu performance, took a quick bow and then exited the stage, let’s hope they are not planning on a repeat performance anytime soon !!
Now if I do happen to have any Welsh readers, please do not take umbridge we me, as I know how proud you are of your own Country, but I have to say that we do find that parts of the Welsh landscape reminds us very much of some parts of Scotland, but I do really mean that in a complimentary way you understand. The only thing lacking, at least on the particular route that we were taking, was picnic stops to admire this scenery whilst eating our lunch, so we ended up parking just outside a small hamlet, but it served its purpose and we were soon back on the road without the accompanying sound of grumbling stomaches. We enjoyed the rest of the journey, up and down hills and around lots of twisting bends with differing views around almost every corner and then we saw the first road signs for Harlech and as we approached the town we got our first glimpse of the Castle, although to be honest it didn’t look all that spectacular from the outside and certainly different to the images I had seen on the Internet, but as we have come to learn, you should never judge a book by its cover, so we will reserve judgment until we have explored the internal side of those thick stone walls.
So, with a full tank of fresh water, fully provisioned cupboards and fridge, empty grey waste tank and toilet cassette, we could commence our brief exploration of this part of the Welsh coast, let’s just hope that the weather plays it’s part and behaves itself 🙄
Wherever you may be in the World right now, please continue to STAY SAFE
More Swerves In The Road 