squirrelhaven

We can hear the surf crashing just outside our window!

So, yeah, we got to Aberystwyth with no problem on a scenic three-hour bus ride. I have no idea how drivers manage big vehicles on these roads, and the secret is, sometimes they don't; at one point one lane of the (theoretically) two-lane road (one lane in each direction, that is) (well, two-thirds of a lane in each direction) anyway one lane was closed, and the driver couldn't turn the bus into the other lane, avoiding parked cars and cars waiting to come the other way, until he got out and moved one of the "lane closed" signs a couple of feet back. And there were plenty of times when the roadside hedge was audibly brushing the bus windows as we went by, and a couple of times when we came around a corner to find ourselves abruptly almost nose to nose with an oncoming car, which usually had to back up to let the bus complete the turn. Disconcerting to those of us used to wide North American roads with generous sidewalks or breakdown lanes; utterly unremarkable to the locals.

Aberystwyth is the big city compared to where we've been! According to Wikipedia, the twin towns of Fishguard and Goodwick, that we just came from, have a population of about 5400; Aberystwyth has maybe 18,000 depending on where you look? (And whether you're counting the university students, who won't arrive until just as we leave.) We went from the bus station first to the tourist info, where we picked up some flyers on coastal walks and such; then we staggered into the extremely strong wind coming off the ocean to our hotel, which was half a block from the shore.

Well. What we expected to be our hotel. It turned out to be a "self-check-in" place, meaning unstaffed; you walk in the unlocked door and the front desk has no human, just some folders with people's names on them, and you find yours and in it are your room key, hotel info, etc. You know you're in a low-crime area when! But there was no folder for us.

I poked my head further into the hotel and found a couple of guests in the lounge, who showed me the rather tucked-away button on the desk that might summon a staffer. It did not. So I phoned the number on the hotel's business card, a stack of which were also on the desk, and the guy who answered said a) he had no record of ever receiving our reservation through Booking.com, and b) the hotel was full, no vacancies. He was apologetic about it (while also anxious to assure me that he wasn't holding my money; Booking.com was), but there was flat-out nothing he could do.

I've never had that happen before! (Not that I use B.c that often, I always prefer to book direct, but sometimes either a hotel has completely outsourced its booking to third parties like B.c or B.c just has better rates and cancellation policies.) I had multiple confirmations from B.c, but apparently they were all auto-sent without the hotel's involvement.

So that was stressful! Geoff and I camped out in the hotel's wee lobby for a bit. I had my printout of B.c's confirmation in one hand, their website open on my ipad in my lap, and with my other hand I was phoning B.c customer support. Fortunately I did connect quickly with a human, who put me on hold briefly to call the hotel himself and confirm that they couldn't house me (I presume to ensure that I wasn't just trying to scam an upgrade) and then told me that B.c would cancel that booking and email me some possible alternatives, and I could book one of them and B.c would pick up any extra cost above what the original place would have cost.

He said the email might take 30-45 minutes to arrive, but in fact it took only a few minutes -- which I expected to be the case, since it's all automated; it's not like there was someone hand-curating my options, although the agent's spiel made it sound like there was. I picked the one with the best B.c reviews that was close by and on the shoreline, hastily booked it, and off we went into the wind again!

The new hotel is actually in a slightly better location and has an actually staffed front desk (by incredibly cheerful and friendly young women), and we're on the second floor ("first" to Brits) with a bay window looking directly out at the beach and the waves rolling in. (Today they're rolling. Yesterday they were crashing. Either way it's a lovely sound to fall asleep to.) There's also a small table and two chairs in the bay, to sit in and watch the ocean, but frankly Geoff has dumped his stuff all over them (my stuff is dumped all over the floor on the other side of the bed) and we like to just sit in bed, from which we have almost as good a view. And the bathroom is large, and has plenty of flat space on which to put toiletries etc., and also has a tub. Yay!

The only difficulty now is that I am absolutely morally certain that the agent told me on the phone that if I chose one of the options B.c sent me, they'd pick up the whole price difference; but the email actually says that they'll pick up up to £51 and change. The actual price difference is £105. I'm prepared to fight them on this (the phone call "may have been recorded for training and verification purposes," after all), but if we lose, well, worse things happen at sea.

Once we'd successfully checked in to the new place, we went out to stretch our legs and look around the center of town a bit. And we started by going back to an outdoor-gear store we'd walked past on our way to the tourist info, that was having a going-out-of-business sale!

I'd realized a few days before that the coating that lined my rain pants was disintegrating; they were shedding a fine white grit. And they had eventually soaked through, in that storm we were in. Durable water repellency doesn't endure forever. Also, my everyday backpack is a basic Jansport school bag; it's fine for its intended use, and I like that it's big enough to serve as weekend luggage (I'd say it's thirty liters) while still small enough to fit under an airplane seat, but when I load it up with rain pants, rain jacket, one or two midlayers, one or two water bottles, lunch, emergency first aid supplies, and so on for a serious day's hiking, I really regret its lack of a waist belt. Also I only have a cheap third-party rain cover for it, which you may remember proved totally inadequate against a real rainstorm. (I sure remember.) And, the other day, I noticed a thinning at its bottom where the material was beginning to think about wearing through; not immediately, but that's not something I want to run risks with. And I don't have a rain cover for my big (seventy-liter) hiking pack at all.

So we stopped into the store and I scored heavily discounted replacements for all of the above! Including a thirty-liter daypack with not only a proper waist belt and ventilated back panel but -- what I didn't realize until I got it back to the hotel and was exploring all its pocketses in detail -- its own integrated rain cover! Win.

After that we just wandered around a bit, and spent a good amount of time clambering around the ruins of the coastal castle, which was fun and dramatic and also very windy omg. We eyeballed a bunch of restaurants, but nothing screamed out "eat here" to us.

So we went back and had dinner in the hotel restaurant, because we were not up for researching a place; I had done enough frantic internet juggling for one day.

me at dinner last night: I think I'll have a big glass of wine.

Geoff: You should. You deserve it.

me: I had a very stressful five minutes!

(He did loyally remind me that in fact it was longer than that.)

by which I mean work! Fun work!

Before we left on this trip, we'd booked a sea kayaking tour for today; with only two full days here, the idea was to spend one of them hiking along the tops of the coastal cliffs, and the other admiring them from below. Also we go lake kayaking at home, which we enjoy a lot though it is of course orders of magnitude more gentle than sea kayaking! We booked a similar sea kayaking tour in New Zealand years ago and really loved it.

But it was a lot warmer in New Zealand. And we weren't quite so tired. and we were a lot younger After the day we hiked through sideways hail, we both agreed that we'd just as soon give it a miss. But of course we were well past the company's free cancellation deadline. But fortunately (??) the forecast for today was for heavy rain and high winds. The kayaking company wrote to us a few days ago saying that the outlook was bad, and would we be willing to switch our booking to Saturday (yesterday)? No, we said, so sorry, we can't do that; and crossed our fingers. And indeed, on late Friday evening they cancelled Sunday's trip and said they'd refund us. (I haven't actually checked, but I assume the refund has gone through, or will on Monday.)

So we were off the hook! As I said in an earlier post, we laid in food (and beer) yesterday for tonight's dinner, so we wouldn't have to go out. And Geoff had the brilliant idea of asking Mike and Christine if they'd be willing to show us around the farm a bit today, maybe we could offer unskilled help with whatever they were doing? So we asked, if it wouldn't be intrusive (I mean, it's their home, and Mike's son is visiting), could we participate in their work today? And they were pretty surprised, I think, but said sure!

This morning I made a big breakfast for us with three of the six eggs, two of the four sausages, all the cherry tomatoes that hadn't gone off, three of the five huge mushrooms, and half a red onion that we'd also bought the day before, because for Geoff it's just not an omelet (well, a scramble) without onion. It was delicious.

They said they'd likely be at work in the barn behind the house around ten, and we'd be welcome to come by; but when we started over there a few minutes past the hour, Christine saw us passing their door and nipped out to say they hadn't started yet. So we suggested they just come by whenever they were ready for us, and went back to lounge about a while longer. Finally Mike came by and said he was on his way to the barn to split logs, and if we really wanted to come help, we'd be welcome.

It was ferociously windy and gusting rain, sometimes quite heavily. (Definitely not a kayaking day!) (At least, it was ferociously windy to us, but Mike said that 50kph winds are nothing, around here. Eep.) We put on rain gear, but to my private relief we ended up actually working inside the barn. (Mostly.) Mike was sitting at a powered log-splitter (somewhat like this https://www.homedepot.com/p/YARDMAX-6-5-Ton-15-Amp-Horizontal-Electric-Log-Splitter-YS0650/323678117), with huge tarpaulin bags of cut logs behind him, and it was our job to keep handing him logs to split, keep another bag positioned for him to toss the split ones into, and haul away the bags of split ones when they reached max haulable weight, piling them against a wall of the barn to be moved further (and sorted into shorter ones that would fit in their own home's wood stove and longer ones that would fit in the rental's) sometime later. Geoff also went out into the rain a couple of times to bring in wheelbarrows-full of more logs. Meanwhile Mike's son Aneurin was dealing with their apple harvest; they have I don't know how many apple trees, but I can see through our own window some trees absolutely flush with apples, and the strong wind meant lots of windfalls; so they had to be picked up and brought in and sorted into best quality/not so great quality/use right away, and the first two categories at least had to be put away, each variety separately in its own part of their apple storage cabinet. (Mike called it the apple store, meaning storage of apples; it looked like a tall enclosed cabinet with shelves, and I'd try to find a picture of the kind of thing I mean except that I know you understand that searching for "apple store" will not turn up anything relevant.)

Anyway, it was fun! We borrowed work gloves so our hands were protected, and I was careful of my back, and in about two hours we'd helped him split, at a very very rough guess, maybe fifty cubic feet of wood? We filled seven tarp bags to the limit of the weight that Geoff and I could haul to the side. I know that Mike couldn't have worked so fast alone, and we freed up Aneurin to deal with the apples; Christine was inside their house cooking and also directing Aneurin whenever he had a question about the apples that Mike couldn't answer. Certainly he and Christine seemed genuinely pleased to have us helping; Mike said a couple of times that we should come back, and we'd find the Cwtsh (our rental space) heated by wood we'd helped split!

Once all the wood was split, he invited us into their house for tea! Christine welcomed us in and made impressed sounds when Mike told her we'd filled seven bags of split logs. The kitchen, which was the room we walked right into, is a wonderful space. She said that when they bought the house about twenty-five years ago, she initially didn't like it at all; it had been redone badly and uglily in the seventies (a drop ceiling instead of that gorgeous medieval vault! Terrible colors!), and they tore all that out and restored it to what it had been, except of course with all mod cons. Her oven and hob are tucked into the huge stone arch that was the original fireplace, and the ironwork chain and hook that were originally over the fire, to suspend the cooking pot from, are now hanging decoratively from the rafters. She has floor-to-ceiling shelves on one wall that are largely filled with enameled cast iron pots and pans; I expressed my admiration!

Mike took us further into the house to a small solarium, filled with plants; he successfully grows pineapples there, as well as a cinnamon plant, frangipani, limes and lemons, and more that I can't remember. (Imagine being in a Welsh market and seeing pineapple for sale labeled "locally grown"!) We oohed and aaahed, and then came back out to have tea with the two of them and Aneurin, although Aneurin looked at his phone and excused himself once he'd finished his cup. We chatted about what Geoff and I do for work, and Christine told us about working in professional storytelling and also writing a book of local folktales (https://www.amazon.com/Pembrokeshire-Folk-Tales-United-Kingdom/dp/0752465651 -- there's a copy of it in the Cwtsh but I hadn't realized it was by her!), and also about falling in love with the property despite its hideous 1970s tat when they learned that it has its own spring-fed water supply. We talked briefly about the awfulness of climate change. (I forgot to say that earlier, one of the times she'd come by our place for some reason, I'd said something that made clear I was originally American, "but these days I don't admit it," and she shudderingly concurred, and added that they have a swear jar in the house, and every time That Man's name is mentioned, the offender has to put a pound in.)

They invited us to stay for lunch; but we demurred. I at least didn't want to overstay our welcome even though they pressed us a bit, and I didn't want them to feel pressured to socialize at the expense of getting necessary work done (there's a lot more to do; Mike described a lot of work that's going to be done in and to the barn, in preparation for which a lot of space has to be cleared in it), and I was a little socialized out, to be honest, and wanted to have a chance to relax and also catch up on blogging! Also we really have overbought food -- we still have bags of nuts and dried fruit for hiking that we haven't even opened yet -- and while I'd always rather have too much food than too little (especially on long hikes; imagine if that sideways-hail hike had been even longer and worse, and if we hadn't had plenty of calories available if we'd needed them), we really didn't want to spoil our appetites for dinner, when our wee fridge is bursting with the food we laid in yesterday.

So we said many thank-yous on both sides, and Geoff and I came back to our space. Mike commented that the rain would probably stop in good time for us to have a dry, if windy, evening walk, but we've just been sitting around contentedly on our devices (and Geoff had his usual-when-he-can afternoon nap). Tomorrow Christine will give us a lift down to the bus station, where we'll catch a 10:48 bus to Aberystwyth; the timing apparently works well with an appointment she has, which is great.

It's been a fabulous visit, and I'm sorry it's so short. The location has its inconveniences (and cooking for ourselves? on vacation? what?) but overall this is a great place to stay, the sort of thing AirB&B originally marketed itself as (they are listed on AirB&B, but we booked directly, which I think they much preferred). We've loved both the space and the chance to spend time with them!

Now Geoff is busy figuring out how to work the oven, to heat up our pies and chips, and I'm finally catching up to now here!

Our long-delayed front porch and mudroom project finally began construction while we've been away, and within a couple of days they notified us that they'd found dry rot and more asbestos. This house, I swear.

As God is my witness, I will have a mudroom this winter!

We have completed our day's hike with only a little bit of rain at the end, had lovely showers, and are ensconced in the pub; Geoff is just having coffee but I have a quarter-liter of red wine and -- for the very first time even though I've watched all of GBBO -- a Victoria Slice. The music is eighties hits, when we walked in it was Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

This is good.

Geoff, looking out from under our sheltering tree: "It'll keep raining, but I think the worst of the rainstorm has passed us by; shall we start hiking again?"

the rainstorm: *thunders, doubles its windspeed, begins hailing sideways*

Geoff, after we've hiked uphill for two hours through heavy rain and driving wind: You know, this pastime has a bit of masochism involved in it.

me: YOU THINK.

(but since I'm posting this this evening from our second hotel, you know we made it! The company said 4½ hours of walking, allow six; it took us seven. Geoff is exhausted and I have a blister.)

Our flight was delayed by almost an hour and I had serious doubts that we'd make our train out of London, which would have set off a cascade failure of prebooked transit. But by dint of rushing as fast as possible through the infinite hallways from our arrival terminal, through baggage claim and border control (THANK GOD for the e-gates), to the Heathrow Express platform, we actually made out train with time to breathe! That was not how the smart money had been betting, so I'm very relieved.

(Also, as you can tell by the fact that I'm posting this, my UK SIM is working perfectly. £10 for all the service we could possibly need, I'm very pleased.

Now we're relaxing on our first train (of two, followed by a prebooked taxi). Well, I say "relaxing," but we're apparently on the Lad Local; we're sitting directly behind a group of eight young men all talking and laughing uproariously, and consuming vast quantities of sandwiches, crisps, and canned drinks that look like beer but I'm not sure. I can't really follow their conversations but they don't seem unpleasant in any way, just loud. I like hearing people having fun!

ETA: One of the lads just tried a friend's drink and announced that it was some kind of tequila lime grapefruit something something, I didn't catch it all; and he said, "Do you ever feel like they're putting too many flavors into a drink these days? Like, that's a lot of flavors! I like it when I just drink a beer, you know, it's a nice simple refreshing one flavor--"

"In other news," interrupted one of his friends, "old man yells at cloud."

ETA2: Our first train was delayed en route and we had only four minutes to catch our second one, but thankfully it was 1) on the adjacent platform, and 2) also slightly delayed! Everything has fallen into place despite the stresses. On this train, the announcements are made first in Welsh and only afterward in English. I've never actually heard Welsh spoken before; it's so pretty!