Wonderful Wales…

 Yes, back from picnic….It was fantastic…enjoyed a lot !!
         
          We started our journey from Leeds on Saturday 29th may, around 8 am, though it was late by an hour. Some of our friends were supposed to join us from Milton Keynnes (MK), so we headed to there and picked them. On the way to reach MK, we had a funny incident, what happened was, we put down the post code for MK railway station in sat navigator & after few miles it showed that you reached your destination, but the fact was that there was neither railway station around us nor any body, it was kind of jungle… :):)…We all were expecting railway station at that post code..so we all were surprised & laughing…from there only we realise that we don’t have to fully rely on sat nav otherwise we could end up in jungle …hahaahah….anyhow we found the railway station & we picked two of our friends. Now all of 10 were boarded in the car….& all were excited…after few hours of journey we all were hungry & wanted to stretch out our legs…so we had a small coffee break at service station. We had coffee, some snack & charged up again…

          Super Saturday, it was not great atmosphere in England as well as in Wales as predicted…we had some rainy patches throughout the way to Cardiff…After around 4.5 hrs of journey we reached to Cardiff (Capital of Wales), & we did check in the hotel….hotel was good we had 5 double rooms…we got fresh & rested for some time….after an hr or so we all were ready and as per plan we have started to explore Cardiff….There was a beautiful garden nearby our hotel it was just about 5 min walk…so we roamed in the garden and then headed to visit Castle..Though it was not worth enough to spend few bucks to visit castle..so we had a look of it just from outside…we also had photo session there….Now it’s around 5pm in the evening…everyone was hungry…so we had some snack in burger king…after spending an hr. at Bk, we moved to visit Cardiff Bay…which was just 20-25 min walk from city centre…..I asked everyone whether they are ready to walk that much or not by considering the weather conditions..but everyone was very much enthu to walk…so finally we started to walk towards Cardiff Bay…..it was a fantastic sea bay, adjacent to good bar & restaurants….we went for the horse ride as well…it was really good time….we enjoyed a lot..After finishing ride we had a long walk to the bay & explored few good places around the bay..Now it’s dinner time…near the bay we managed to find good Indian restaurant…although it stated “Indian Cuisine”, it was Bangladeshi owned restaurant….. ……Restaurant has good ambience, very good food but the only problem was that, “price” – it was too expensive…it cost £2.50 for 1 roti… generally roti used to be cost you around 0.50p or max £1, u can imagine how costly it was….but any way we ordered limited curries & finished a costly dinner .. After having dinner no one was really wants to return to hotel by walk, so we asked our driver to pick up us from hotel & we reached hotel in around 15-20 min…Long journey, few miles of walk & so finally we all were tired by now and called it end of day …. :) :)…
         
          Sunny Sunday, yes next day morning we got up & ready for the adventurous sport..First thing I did after getting ready that, I asked Chris – our hotel owner/manager regarding nearby places to visit which we may not covered in our plan, he suggested few places but due to time constrains we could not cover that..
Anyway, then we all headed towards the adventurous sport place where we booked for Quad Biking. By seeing bikes I was not very much excited, because it was very small like it’s for teen agers. But after mall training on that bike, I realise that it’s not for teen agers  …it was very difficult for me to ride the quad bike, initially. But after few rounds somehow I managed to get hold on it. But that was too late…I probably the last one in my group of 5 ppl to complete it. Any way it was unique experience. After that we went to see beautiful beaches..so we moved towards Swansea, Mumbles, Gower…which has got fantastic coast line beaches..we have visited 3-4 beaches which were on our plan including some snacks at Mumbles Pier..But the Llangennith Beach was the fantastic one, which has white sands, fantastic & clean beach area, we really had good time over there. Most interestingly, when we were approaching to Llangennith Beach, here again we have been following directions of sat nav., we could not see beach at all…we were just seeing mountains, green trees, town & villages..At some point we realised that r v on right track or may be trapped somewhere??
But thanks to sign board on roads, we somehow managed to reach to the beach…and after reaching there we realise that that’s the place where we could have spend a day or two, including camp fire..near the beach there was fantastic campaign site, we love to do that but didn’t possible because it’s pre-booked…but all together it was worth visiting Llangennith Beach. From here we went back to hotel, picked our luggage & checked in to new service apartment. Here we have splitted in two groups first group has 6 ppl in one apartment & other has 4 ppl. Our apartment is just 2-3 min walk from the hotel, so we 4 reached there. After having bath I with other friend headed for dinner. In fact we planned to get the dinner at one apartment & had dinner together..till finishing the dinner it was almost midnight & we were required to leave to our apartment… it’s time sleep..good night !!

           Mast Monday, the last day of picnic….we all got ready by 11 am & started our return journey with the breakfast near to our apartment. Now it’s time to leave Cardiff, we direct headed towards Bath, beautiful city in the south England. At bath we saw The Royal Crescent & bath museum…also roamed around city centre..Which is very different from the other English city centres.. it has bit ancient roman touch…beautiful valleys…lakes, churches..It’s worth to visit beautiful bath…really enjoyed !! Now that was the last place to visit in the picnic, we headed towards MK & two of our friends has train, bus to catch from there. So we bid bye bye to them, had some snacks at sub way & then we were on the way to Leeds…Finally we reached Leeds around 10 pm…here where we all departed & gone to home with the fantastic memories of “Wonderful Wales”.

          Few things I must say about this trip, first foremost I made 4 new friends…. And I came to know my planning ability….actually I had prepared a whole literary for the trip & everything happened was as per the plan…so feeling sense of satisfaction….:)

Bye Bye,
Pritesh