WALES

I don't really remember what I did in the week leading up to Wales. I know I had class, and I went to the Imperial War Museum (conclusion: war always sucks), and went to my internship and did lots of small tasks like printing certificates and scanning pictures (including the picture of the book "Fat Bag the Demon Vacuum Cleaner," invented by a primary school student).

After a long but entertaining train ride and delayed bus ride (and a lot of the Earlham group trying to read signs in Welsh phonetically and completely butchering everything), we arrived at the Preseli Venture Eco Lodge at about midnight on Friday. They gave us cheese sandwiches, and then we went to bed.
Saturday morning we woke up and had breakfast, then went to our different activities. Some people took a walk, some went sea kayaking, but the coolest people went coasteering--a mixture of swimming, rock climbing and cliff jumping. Once we got on our wetsuits, wetsuit gloves and socks, helmets and flotation aids, we took a short bus ride down the the coast, walked down the to the water, and suddenly felt very cold. After "swimming" for a while (swimming was tough because the flotation aids were ridiculously strong--it was hard to get vertical after you'd been horizontal), it warmed up though. We swam for a while, and scrambled around on some rocks, then started practicing jumps from a low rock. There we could do belly flops or cannon balls, but as we continued swimming/scrambling/climbing and got to higher and higher jumps, we had to land a certain way in the water so it wouldn't be too painful. The highest jump we did was about 25 feet, which may not sound incredibly high, but it was terrifying the first time. I may or may not have screamed throughout the whole fall and then forgotten to close my mouth. After that one, though, it became more and more fun. The scenery around us was breathtaking, too, and the water was startlingly blue and clear. We saw some fish and other cool sea life, but sadly no seals. We swam back through a "wormhole" into a cave with shockingly blue water and emerged onto a beach with a waterfall surrounded by flowers. I was kind of wondering where the mermaids were at this point.
After having lunch we went on a 4 mile cliff hike, that included two or three beaches. Again, I cannot do the place justice with description, and the pictures I'll post definitely can't do it justice either. The weather was also insanely perfect--between 65 and 70 degrees and sunny. During the cliff I discovered waterfalls, caves, and even semi-wild Welsh horses. It was very close to a perfect day. The air always smelled like coconut too, thanks to a specific type of yellow bush that lined the cliff path.

Sunday we went on another hike, and this time we got to see the areas we were coasteering, and I snagged some pictures of another group. That day we also walked through the forest, where we discovered an adorable swing and some really interesting wooden sculptures of thinks like snakes, dragons, roosters, etc. We also encountered some vicious geese that you had to pass every time you walked back to the eco lodge. They attacked the wheels of the mini bus when we came back from coasteering, because they are very intelligent. When you weren't on the cliff paths, the whole area smelled like a farm because there were so many cows and sheep everywhere, and I love that smell. The roads were lined with flowers and there were adorable streams everywhere.
We left after lunch on Sunday, and had about a 4-hour train ride where I ended up standing, sitting on a table, sitting on the floor, or sitting on a suitcase because they overbooked the train to help out people who couldn't fly because of the ash cloud from Iceland.


The weekend almost feels like a dream, and it's definitely one of my best memories from the trip.

Click here the rest of my pictures. The first ones (with the white cliffs) are from Dover, and I think I labeled the beginning of the Wales pictures.

I have one final and one final paper to do, three days at my internship, and then my program is basically over. Where did it go??????