Day 6: Through Flint to Greenfield

I’m not sure if the sun ever sets around here.  I fell asleep while the sun was still setting and woke up at 5:30 to broad daylight.  Since we were up, we had nothing else to do but start hiking.  We reached the first town of the day and proceeded to get lost almost immediately.  The trail marker pointed toward a hedgerow with no obvious way to get through.  So we wandered through subdivisions in what we thought was the correct general direction until eventually  arriving at an intersection that was on my very limited map.  After a brief hike along the highway we arrived in Flint.  Seth asked for directions to the castle at a gas station, the lady gave him directions and also mentioned a McDonald’s in the vicinity.  Seeing as I hadn’t had a hot meal in about 18 hours I was pretty excited about McDonald’s. 

Along the way to McDonald’s  we passed a sign with some directions on it.  In wales all signs have both Welsh and English on them.  This particular sign read: “Castle   Castell” with an arrow.  I pointed it out to Seth telling him we’ll go to Flint Castle after McDonald’s.  He looked at me like I was an idiot.  “We’re not going to castle Castell, we’re going to  castle Flint!”  We went back and forth for a bit before he finally realized “Oh! Castell is Welsh for Castle?!”  We had a good laugh about it and moved on.  We ended up taking a good nap in the Castle’s Court yard and then hiked on and off for the next 6 hours before rain drove us into our tents for shelter.  After the rain subsided we watched the tide come in next to a derelict ferry  and enjoyed our evening.

Day 5, 1st day on trail. Chester

While America is pretty great, we do a lot of things wrong.  One of these things is the post office.  Late in the afternoon on a Friday in Chester, U.K. I was in need of postage for a postcard.  I was concerned about my ability to successfully fulfill this need as my experience with post offices is as follows: if you need one, it is far away and closed.  In chester however, I discovered a post office about 2 blocks from the train station I was at.  Upon arriving I was a little confused, this alleged post office was selling candy bars and cigarrettes.  I had discovered what was essentially a 7/11 with a post office in it.  And much like 7/11’s, this place is open 24/7!  It was Incredible.  In addition, since it was privately owned and the employees at said store actually want to make money the line moved very quickly and customer service was excellent.   America please.

Now, about the trip.  Today was the first day of what this whole trip is about:  Hiking the Wales Coast Path.  Seth and I finally made it to Chester, and after a few errands (see rant above) we were in a cab and on our way.   Until the cabbie let us out  after about 2 minutes and told us he had no idea where we were trying to go.   So I pulled up a map  using wifi at a  nearby pub and showed the next cabbie on the map exactly where we needed to go.  Along the way he told us a little bit about the town history and then dropped us off.  We found the trailhead and we were off.  We hiked for about 7 miles before calling it quits at around 9pm. The sun stays up really late right now so hiking long days will be much easier not having to hike into the night.  The section of the trail we stopped on was actually a levee  for the nearby Kee river, so there was plenty of room to make camp right on the trail.  After a dinner of tortillas, peanut butter  and potato chips we turned in for the night.

Day 4: PSA #1

Note:  when boarding a ferry in dublin make sure to arrive 30 minutes early or they will leave without you.  After this happens you will frantically run around  dublin in search of free wifi in order to book a hostel before they are all gone.  You will find a cheap hostel using “cathy’s fee wifi”  in a mexican burrito Shack run by people that are definitely not Mexican and whom according to Seth sell terrible burritos.  The hostel you stay at will be very nice and you will meet people from all over the world and have great time just staying in for the evening. 

Day 2.5 and 3 Dublin to Galway

Update on soccer match! Rovers win, rovers win, rovers win! My first real soccer/football match in Europe was a success.  We arrived just before it started and got general admission tickets for 15 euros.  We were pleasantly  surprised  when we got third row seats until we realized why all of the front rows were open.  It turns out when it’s raining sideways the first few rows aren’t blocked by the overhang.  Despite this we still had a good time cheering along with the belligerent  home crowd during the rovers 3-0 routing of Luxembourg.

Day 3:  after some convincing by the other guys,  Seth and I decided to delay our hike by a day and go to Galway for a day.  So we woke up early and caught a bus out of downtown dublin direct to Galway.  The Irish countryside is probably beautiful, but for the first 30 minutes out of town the highway was lined with trees preventing us from seeing any of it.  Seth told me the trees weren’t their the whole time, but I fell asleep before that and didn’t wake up until we arrived in town.  We dropped our bags off at the hostel and immediately   hopped on a tour bus to see the cliffs of Moher,  Or as I prefer to call them “The Cliffs of Insanity”!  Apparently this is where the classic scene from princess bride was filmed.

After getting back from the tour we signed up for the hotel’s social pub crawl and headed off again.  We met up with a big  group of others staying at the hostel mostly all English speaking from Australia, u.s., and Britain. A group of British girls made fun of us when we said we were going to wales.  None of them had ever even been there, so iam guessing it will be better than they indicated.  After a long day I snuck into my room that was already occupied by 3 sleeping strangers and passed out.

Day 2: More Dublin

Apparently it takes more than 1 night to fix jet lag.  I woke up at about 5:30 this morning wide awake, I usually struggle to get up before 9.  I layed in bed for a while and after a bit, Our host, Michael, once again outdid himself by serving us breakfast and dropping us off at the train station.

Our first stop was the guiness factory tour, or what my former coworker Carlos would call Mecca.  I was a little disappointed that it was really just a museum next to the actually factory, but it was interesting enough and included a beer served at the top of the building alongside what is arguably the best view in Dublin.

We sat and watched a storm roll by before heading to lunch at the Brazen Head.  The oldest pub in Ireland, the Brazen head was established in 1198.  I enjoyed some corned beef (1 of 2 things I have to eat before leaving ireland)  and watched the rain come down some more.  After that, we checked out Trinity College’s campus before catching the train back out of town.

Yesterday we ran into some crazy Germans who told us about a soccer game between the Shamrock Rovers and Luxembourg tonight.  So after a quick nap and some dinner we will be heading there to see what real soccer fans look like.

Day 1: Dublin Ireland

The plane touched down in ireland at 8:00 local time on a soaked runway that was only getting wetter.  I expected nothing less from the Emerald Isle which in my mind is 55 and rainy all year round.  After an uneventful trip through immigration (Eric Arsenaux and multiple online articles indicated that my encounter with them would not be so simple) I walked out of terminal 1 to find my hiking buddy Seth and his 2 friends waiting for me.

Like most of the things I do, I had made no plans and figured we would find a cheap hotel room to split after wandering around in the rain all day.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Seth’s friend Ryan informed me that a family friend was coming to pick us up and we have a place to stay the whole time we are in ireland!  Soon we were all crammed into a little Toyota with the steering wheel fixed in front of the wrong seat and off for a personal tour of Dublin.

After a nice drive through the city and some of the surrounding
countryside we arrived at my new friend’s home  for some breakfast and a nap before heading in to town for the evening.  Currently the rain has stopped and the sky is clearing up.  It should  be a beautiful afternoon in Dublin.