After a super busy few weeks at work, Gina decided to take a week off and head over to Dublin for some relaxing times. We umm’ed and aah’ed about whether we should rent a car and travel around Ireland for a few days, or head over to Wales on the ferry to see my family and do some hiking. We decided it would be much more fun to do some hiking and seeing the sights in Wales, so we booked ourselves on a ferry over the Irish Sea. There was much speculation if the ferry was going, as the weather over in Wales was very stormy. Gina read that it was the worst storm in 10 years.
Our super fast ferry was cancelled, so we had to wait to catch the 9pm ferry over to Wales. It went super smoothly – with some of us sleeping the whole three hours. We were greeted in Holyhead by Dad, who took us back to my parents house – and to our super newly decorated bedroom, which was nice. CamperVan art and all! For Monday, the weather wasn’t in our favour to be heading up to the hills, so we decided to have a ‘tourist’ day around some of the places Gina hasn’t yet been to in Wales. After a quick stop at my favourite bakery in Llanrug to get a couple of nice pastries, we headed up the Llanberis Pass to see the mountains, and slowly make our way towards Betws y Coed where we decided to go for a spot of lunch.
Llanberis Pass
Swallow falls
Along the way, we stopped off at the lovely Swallow Falls – a multiple waterfall system that’s located on Afon Llugwy on the way to Betws y Coed. As it’s been raining hard all week, the falls were quite spectacular, the most fierce I’ve seen them.
Gina at Swallow Falls
Iestyn and the Falls
‘Afon ffyrnig’
After a nice stroll around Betws y Coed, looking at the art galleries, we had ourselves a nice cuppa and scone from a local cafe, and decided it would be cool to head up through the Conwy valley and see the mighty Conwy Castle.
Rainbow at Conwy Castle
Incoming rain
The castle itself is a fantastic place, It’s stunningly located on the Conwy River and has fantastic views all over. We spent a couple of hours exploring every single rooms and hallways, even bumping into my old school teacher that I hadn’t seen for over 10 years.
Iestyn at the tower
Miniature Conwy
Conwy Castle
We finished our touristy day with a quick trip to pizza hut, and then met up with a couple of my friends for a pint and a catch-up in Llanberis before heading home for the evening.
…and because Iestyn happily leaves posts unfinished like this, I will have to finish the job on this one.
After a touristy Conwy escapade, we decided the next day we should also do some nature fun, and selected Yr Aran for our little hike. We didn’t want to do anything too crazy as the weather was uncertain, but in the end it actually held quite nice with no rain, and it was just super cold and windy with some ominous blackness in the sky – just as we like it.
Not much to say about the walk otherwise, it was not extremely eventful. Iestyn took a nice panorama picture of the view but there was a rusty stick smack in the middle of it, so it kinda spoilt it. I took a great selfie up on the top.
Up Aran
Iest taking panos
Selfie!
View from Aran
On the way back to Dublin our (fast) ferry was cancelled again due to bad weather, and we had to take the big slow one. The storm was epic and the sea really rough this way round, so I got all sea sick for the first time in my life and was throwing up all over the place. I was not nearly the only one either, the whole thing was basically just a chain reaction started off by a little girl, who felt sick and did the only reasonable thing at such situation – ran to her dad and threw up all over him. Anyway, Iestyn was fine of course, but refused to go to the captain to tell him to use the stabilisers on the boat, which would have been appropriate I think.
Anyway, I spent the rest of the week in Dublin, which was boring as per usual, but sunny and nice nevertheless. We went to the Dublin National Gallery and I liked one of the paintings too.
Tags: Afon ffyrnig, Betws Y Coed, Conwy Castle, Conwy River, Conwy Valley, Cymru, Dublin, Eryri, Llanberis Pass, Rainbow, Snowdonia, Swallow Falls, Wales