Bore da Cymru!

We left Shrewsbury and travelled to Aberystwyth by train and then on to Lampeter by bus. Tiff’s friends at the University reception desk had us each hooked up in our own little en suites on campus. Lampeter is a lovely little town about an hour away from Aberystwyth and the coast (unless you take the scenic 585 service which pretty much travels the Lampeter/Aber route via Inverness and Moscow). For the next few days we pretty much just took it easy – not that it was really an option in the little village – hiking around the hills, strolling through the sprawling city landscape, etc. It was nice to relax a bit after spending so much time worrying about catching the next train or bus to wherever.

One of the highlights was watching mom while we were riding the bus through the country. In (many) places the road narrows down to nothing more than the exact width of a vehicle, with large hedgerows and trees scraping the sides of the bus. One would wonder (not for the first time) what might happen if we are blazing along at the standard UK bus speed of 88.8 mph and meet an oncoming vehicle (most likely a tractor pulling a large trailer of sheep… there’s a pun in there somewhere). Well, we can tell you that this situation would then provoke a polite little standoff, where the driver of each vehicle is positive that the other is nearer the last turnout. The most exciting bit is when the road widens just enough (six and a half feet rather than the standard six) that both the driver of the bus and the driver of the oncoming 2005 Audi S8 think that there is room for both of them to pass side by side. This is the part when it’s best to see what kind of face mom is making (probably the same expression that people were giving the CADMAN). It gets really disconcerting when you see the bus driver shake his head and actually check his wing mirror to see if the Audi made it. Let the good times roll!
Wales was beautiful. The word is: Green.