After another terrific "full English breakfast" (more on that in the July 4 entry) we checked out of the Olive Branch and headed west to Wales. Most people who visit Britain, I think, probably either just see England or maybe England and Scotland. Scotland seemed to be a bit far for us to realistically visit given the number of days we were staying so we looked into north Wales and found a nice little section that's somewhat off the beaten path. Most of this day was spent driving to Betws-y-Coed (pronounced, roughly, Bettis E Coid) which is in a large national park called Snowdonia. Unfortunately, our sunny drive turned to rain along the way. Also, our nice highway turned into a very difficult mountain road. A mountain road with no shoulder on the side, but usually a retaining wall. Did I mention the lanes were narrow? Those same lanes were on the left side of the road? And it was raining? I tried to keep the speed up but eventually there would be about four or five cars stuck behind me until I'd find a place to pull over so that I could graciously allow drivers more skilled at driving mountainous roads in the rain on the left side of the road pass me. Whenever oncoming traffic would be coming towards me on a curve, my sphincter would tighten to singularity. So no, I did not exactly do a lot of sightseeing during the drive. Nor did Ronda, as it was she who was about one foot away from the retaining walls in the passenger seat.

So naturally, we were quite happy to get to the nice town of Betws-y-Coed, rain or not. After we got settled into our B&B, and my shoulder muscles relaxed somewhat, we decided to put on our raincoats and do a bit of walking.
A church in Betws-y-Coed.

Now one big problem with the rain is that the very low ceiling of clouds on this day obstructed the mountains that we had come to see. We wandered through the town for a bit and ended up near the train station.
Betws-y-Coed train station.
Since there wasn't a lot going on in town and it was drizzling we decided to take the next train and see what was going on in another town. I was done driving for the day. The next train happened to be going in the direction of a town called Blaenau Ffestiniog which I had remembered reading about during my research. So we took the train there and got off. One major problem with going there was that by the time we arrived after our short train ride was that it was about 5:20 in the evening and everything was closed. So we wandered on the main street, in the drizzle, and admired all the closed shops.
Blaenau Ffestiniog. Note that the signs are in Welsh and English.

Now the thing Blaenau is known for is that it is a major slate mining area and was booming in the 19th century when slate was used more. The big tourist sights are a narrow gauge train once used for mining and a tour of the slate mines which is supposed to be quite cool. These things, of course, were closed. One thing we were able to see from the mining history, however, is that they have mountains of slate around the town that is presumably left over from the mining process. Seriously, these are mountains.
A mountain of slate near Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Now the funny thing is that after returning back from our trip I listened to the audio book Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson and he had a remarkably similar experience in this town in that it was raining and everything was closed. Bryson was there on a Sunday morning, though, and had to settle for coffee while we were able to have a pint of beer as we waited for the return train (which actually turned out to be a bus after we re-examined the train schedule). Pretty much everyone in our pub was smoking, which was unfortunate, and they were speaking Welsh, which was neat. The north part of Wales is apparently more nationalistic and there's a lot more Welsh spoken here, from what I read. We didn't go to the south part of Wales, but it is much more populous and presumably has more movement of population between England and Wales so that's Gerry's theory on why English would be more commonly spoken in southern Wales rather than northern Wales. If you want to hear what Welsh sounds like, you can listen to the BBC Cymru Welsh language feed and listen to the DJs.

After our strange side trip we waited for a bit for the train to come until we realized that we had misread the schedule and it was a return bus, so we moved over to the bus area. But prior to that, while waiting for the nonexistent train, we stood near three 18ish girls speaking Welsh and smoking and no doubt bored with their town as 18 year olds in small towns are wont to do. And trust me, it was gloomy and gross out so they had a good reason to gripe this day. They were speaking Welsh, as I mentioned, and said something that I guess we could have misunderstood as being a comment towards us, assuming we spoke Welsh. So the girl apologized and said that they weren't talking about us, and I mentioned that there was no problem as we were from the United States and didn't speak Welsh. At this point, a ray of worldliness shown over us, and the girl asked us if we had ever seen any pop stars, apparently thinking that pop stars are more common in day to day life in the United States. I mentioned that, no, we lived in the general area of Washington DC and it was my understanding that the pop stars mostly lived in California. After seeing her disappointment we felt bad that we hadn't lied and mentioned frequent sightings of Tom Cruise and Britney Spears.

We did have a nice visit on the bus with some other vacationers and arrived back in Betws-y-Coed for dinner. After we returned to our room we ended up relaxing and watching some tv. There was a mystery that was showing on ITV and it was pretty funny, as well, called "Midsomer Murders." I tried to figure out what was going on since we started midway in the show, plus I started to get drowsy from the day. I really enjoyed the show, though, and was happy to find, upon returning to the US, that it is a series of tv movies and some of the shows are even shown on a cable channel here. John Nettles, as Inspector Barnaby, is great.

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