Whew it’s been a minute – life has been hectic around here since we returned from the UK. I’ve been dreaming about Wales…I better fill you in.
To Wales
Rental car secured we navigated the insanity that is the London airport and headed for the hills – literally. We had planned a stop at Windsor Castle, but this being the day after the Queen’s funeral, it was not open nor would it be while we were still in the country. We’ll have to try again next time. So, we made a bee-line for Wales, instantly feeling the stress of the city melt away, which wasn’t even that bad, to begin with. We didn’t make any stops in England and stayed topped up on petrol thanks to our handy dandy hybrid car. I feel like I’m further investigating the hybrid option at home – it saved us a ton of money as fuel is sky high in Europe right now. We’ve been looking at electric but where we live wouldn’t support it very well. Hybrid may be the better option for us for now. Anyway…
– unreal coming from someone who drives a F150 at 15 MPG.
We didn’t make any touristy stops as we drove through the English countryside. I think we were just tired and wanted to get to our next hotel to make a plan for the next day. Jason had to teach a class this night, so we were worried about getting to the hotel in time for him to get all the workings of the internet figured out as it’s often quite spotty once you leave the city. This is the thing about mid-semester travels – the semester continues. So, Jason was Zoom teaching as well as attending a conference while we were in the UK and a slave to a good internet connection. Just another layer of adventure. I’m sure when I inquire about the internet quality when making reservations, the hotel managers think we’re ridiculous for not being able to unplug. We live life a little differently and need to be able to do our jobs from anywhere at any time. We travel with our own hotspot as well, just in case, but we mostly use Travel Wifi for our phones while away from other wifi connections. It’s much cheaper than an international phone plan.
Parkway Hotel & Spa
We made it to Parkway Hotel & Spa (no, I didn’t make it in time to go to the spa, sad) near
Cwmbran, Wales. We made a dash for the lounge for afternoon tea (obviously). Have I mentioned this is my favorite part of the UK? Haha. Tea turned into late lunch with tea when we decided we were hungry. Afterward, we wandered the grounds of the hotel for a tiny bit hoping to stretch our legs but the grounds were quite small, it maybe took 10 minutes. So, we unloaded the bags, made some tea, then made a mess of the room getting Jason ready for class, and I set up in the corner to be quiet for a bit. I made Reels for our Instagram accounts with headphones in while Jason animatedly taught his class. In the end, it was a fairly normal day for us, just in a different country. We went back down for dinner once his class was over and I had the most amazing honey cajon salmon salad of my life. I swear I’ll remember it forever. I can’t even tell you what Jason had (a club sandwich he says), I was THAT excited about this salad. Completely stuffed from eating twice within a few hours (I even said no to a brownie – it was serious), we called it a night.
In the morning, after a breakfast spread of the best Wales had to offer in carbs and protein, we hit the road again. The plan for today was to drive to the next hotel and go hiking in spots on the way. Again, we ended up going straight to the next hotel, but this time it was because it took two hours longer than we thought it would and we were so tired of being on the road. By the time we actually found the mountains we were ready to be done, so we settled for a few photos and staring at them. The thing we’re finding out about the UK is Google Maps is always about 2 hours short. More on that later.
Penmaenuchaf Hall Hotel
We pulled into Penmaenuchaf Hall Hotel along the Afon Mawddach estuary in the middle of Snowdonia National Park and were immediately blown away. You’ve heard us rave about Ardanaiseig Hotel in Scotland, well, we’ve found the Welsh equivalent. An uphill drive through thick woods with a sheer drop-off to one side lead us to a long lane lined with hydrangeas. My jaw literally dropped – I LOVE hydrangeas and it was completely stuffed with them!
Around the corner, the property opened up onto the gorgeous gardens and lawn and then, the Victorian mansion house. Holy smokes it’s perfect! All the things dreams are made of. We parked, got out, and just stared for a few minutes.
We were quite early for check-in, so we expected to have to entertain ourselves for a bit in the gardens, but we were soon whisked inside, and set up with a tea tray. Yessss. This gave us an opportunity to catch up on emails, take a couple of calls and drink entirely too much tea. We were soon taken up to our huge room and Jason went down to get our bags while I made this lovely video for you all before we destroyed the room. 😊 We had a great view of the kitchen garden where I collected ideas for my own garden.
Things deposited in and around the room, we now went for a walk about the grounds and put the drone up for a few shots above the trees to see where we really were. It was stunning, very overcast, but gorgeous. Below the hill lies an estuary that empties into Bae Ceredigion on the Irish Sea.
We wandered the gardens for hours taking photos and taking in the views. It was so relaxing. Then it was time to change and go down for dinner. Smart casual – no jeans – we love that places like this still dress for dinner. It just feels so fancy and otherworldly. The dining staff was phenomenal. I’ve mentioned before that the best way to knock my socks off in a restaurant is to ask about food allergies. These guys were top-notch. They did not let me touch a single dairy item and made it look like it was no problem for them at all, even though I know it was. We both had fish because that’s what you do when you’re close to the sea – always. So good. We bypassed everyone sitting in the lounge for drinks after dinner and headed up to our room. We were really tired and hoped to get a good start the next morning to ACTUALLY get some hiking in.
A Soggy Hike
Rain. No worries, we came prepared for this. After stuffing ourselves at breakfast we headed out for the day. We had about 2 hours before the rain was supposed to roll in, so we took advantage of it. I had tried to find us a trail that didn’t involve too much, if any, driving to save time and was successful. Just to double-check where we were headed, we checked with the hotel staff, and they had no idea what the trail was I had found on my All Trails app. Hahaha! So we took a chance. It left out of the wooded garden walk at the hotel and then down the hill to meet up with a flat trail along the estuary. We had to do some trail hunting in the woods, but we soon found our way down to the Bryn Abergwynant Circular Trail. It was a beautiful day and we met many cyclists on the trail. We came to a point where the trail split off from the flat and wound back inland and up the hill. We decided to put the drone up for a bit and flew it into the estuary before heading into the woods. I love having the drone, it gives you such a neat perspective on where you are, even if you’re not getting great footage due to the weather (which, for the record, is fully licensed in the UK). My cousin lives in Ireland, just on the other side of the Irish Sea where the estuary empties, so we gave them a wave while we were close by and could see them with the drone (ok not really, but it’s fun to imagine).
It was really starting to cloud up when we decided to head into the woods. We were hoping we wouldn’t get so wet with the trees as cover. Since we were down on the flat along the estuary, the trail immediately went UP. But, what goes up must come back down and soon enough we were back rejoining the flat part of the trail, in the pouring down rain on our way back to the hotel. This part turned out to be a bit of an adventure. We THOUGHT the road up to the hotel was just around the corner (rather than going back through the woods as we did on the way down), so we took off walking down the side of the road. It was not. I bet we walked about a mile before we finally found it, along a busy highway with multiple blind corners. Don’t tell our mothers. Once we finally found it, after much doubt that it existed, there was a very uphill hike through the gardens back to the hotel – we were sweating profusely; it was pouring down rain, we were pulling off layers, and were just soaked. It was amazing. Best day ever.
We made a trip up to our room to change and dry off after telling the staff we planned to come down for tea. Then the power went out – in the entire valley. We still wandered downstairs again to check on the possibility of our tea time and were pleased when they told us the power outage did not affect their hot water. Woo! We had hot tea in front of their first official rolling fire of the season, and it was perfect. The power came back on about an hour later and they brought us little sandwiches, scones, and cakes. Heaven.
The rain continued on, so we got a few work things done and then it was time for Jason’s class again. I spent this class time in the giant tub in our bathroom soaking off the final cold chills before we went down for a late dinner. Fish again, obviously. The staff took very good care of us, again. We talked to an older gentleman on his way out of the restaurant who was asking how it was possible that we were in the middle of Wales “with all us old retired folk” in the middle of the week in the Autumn. Careful planning and flexible work environments my friend. We’re thoughtfully building the life we want to live and trying to throw off the work restraints of previous generations. We don’t have it fully figured out yet, but it’s a work in progress. Tomorrow is not promised and we want to enjoy the time we have.
Back to London
We had to leave in the morning and I’m still sad about it. We truly enjoyed our time at Penmaenuchaf and definitely should have stayed longer. After breakfast and packing, we went for one more stroll through the gardens before heading back to London. The hotel had a wedding that day and the guests were starting to arrive and needed the parking space, so off we went. What should have been a four-hour drive turned into seven and a half hours. Lordy. We wound our way East out of Wales, which was perfectly pleasant and picturesque. As soon as we crossed into England the traffic was insane. We picked up the A5 outside of Shrewsbury and followed it to the M6 at Birmingham. Since we were only 20 minutes away from Oxford once we got through Birmingham, we decided to detour through the University town to see the historic campus and admire the buildings. I loved it! We didn’t have time to get out and explore, but we drove through some of the oldest parts – it’s so quaint. We’ll have to explore it further another time.
By the time we were back on the motorway and headed into London we had been in the car at least 6 hours and had an hour left to get to the airport. Finally, in the outskirts of London, we stopped at the airport Hilton to drop off our bags and then returned the car. We had to wait a while for the shuttle to take us back to the airport so we could walk back to the hotel. We were assured this was only a 10-minute walk, and it was in the end, but we had a heck of a time figuring out how to avoid all the traffic and get back to the hotel in one piece. We finally found someone to ask and lo and behold…there was a skywalk from the airport to the airport hotels and you didn’t have to navigate the sketchy underworld. Glory.
Finally back at the hotel, we grabbed dinner (next to an extremely animated bunch of media folks) and went to bed. Our flight left at 8 am but luckily we were staying at the airport and didn’t need to be there more than a couple of hours before, so we had time to get breakfast in the United lounge before heading to our gate. You can read about how we used the benefits from our United Mileage Plus Infinite card in this post – we used enough benefits to almost pay for our entire annual fee on just the return trip from London! Everything we use now until its renewal is free! We did check bags on this return flight so we didn’t have to haul everything through the airports. At this point, I’m less worried about losing our bags since we’re headed home. We just pack the essentials in our backpacks and call it good enough. Hopefully we’ll find our bags again on the other end. We boarded the first plane headed to Newark, then Chicago, and finally home to Springfield. Living in the middle of the country makes for a lot of layovers and a really long travel day any time we hop the pond.
This trip felt like a whirlwind, and honestly, we were so nervous to be in London during the Queen’s funeral. While it was an amazing time to see history in the making, we were afraid of the congestion, potential security risks, and lack of businesses being open. While some of that proved to be true, we can honestly say we felt very safe, people were very kind, the congestion felt like normal city congestion and while there were some things closed that we had hoped to experience, there were still plenty of others open. I believe we can say we accomplished our mission (attended a conference and did the research for future student trips) and even had a couple of days of downtime to just enjoy not being at home. We hope to be back soon to explore more of both countries in the future.
