A brief sortie to North Wales

 Following the Great Keswick Debacle, when our volunteering at the Keswick café was sabotaged by our assorted indispositions, we had airline tickets to use up. Yes, we had not taken travel insurance, so we paid even more money to change our tickets to fly for a short visit to North Wales. This time we were able to go.

We passed extremely slowly through a very crowded Bordeaux airport but in good time to get our plane. All seats in the terminal were taken so we leaned against whatever we could find while waiting to board. Hey, bags need seats, too! though sometimes pointing out to Pat, "No, that's a bag seat", makes the bag find a new refuge on the lap of the person sitting next to it... Once on the plane we quickly found our allocated seats - right at the back on the left hand side - stowed our bags and the flight was smooth and uneventful. 

We had 30 minutes in Manchester to disembark, get through immigration, hustle off to the station and board our train for Shotton. I had not bought tickets because I thought we might miss the thing, but in the event we were on the platform in good time, bought our tickets and were whisked off to Shotton by Trafnidiaeth Cymru, or Transport for Wales. It's fun to hear announcements in yr hen iaith, especially since our visit coincided with Eisteddfod week in a town I know very well, Pontypridd.

Incidentally the bard who won the crown was local, I can't wait to read his collection of poems, Atgof (memory), the prose medal was withheld, no novel being judged worthy of the prize this year, but the chair went to a fine young poet from Dyffryn Nantlle. 

We were mat at the station by our hosts who had worked out for themselves which train we were likely to catch - just as well we didn't miss it - and so began our week of hugs, meals, catching up and reminiscing - and begin fed to within an inch of our lives...

Our journey back was just as easy, except that for some reason the entire population of North Wales had decided to go to Chester, but once our new friends, Audrey, Dave and the gang had all got off we had the train pretty much to ourselves, found seats in the terminal and at the boarding gate, made friends with some charming Bolivians and a lady with a white elephant holiday home stuck in the French sticks (la France profonde) and flew uneventfully to Bordeaux, where you find us currently baking under the relentless early morning sun.

A good time, etc. tired but happy.