Home -> Europe -> Great Britain -> Travelogue 2005 -> Thursday 1 September

Via Chester to Wales

After a delicious breakfast (very soft fried eggs for Elisabeth, scrambled eggs for me, as always when we are in Great Briatain) we drive to Ingleton to visit the White Scar Cave.

The tour takes about 80 minutes, but we are spoiled a bit; we have seen so many beautiful caves over the last few years that we don't find this one very special. Our travel guide states that this cave is spectaculra, but although the cave is more than a kilometer long, there is only now and then something to see, like the silhouette of a witch, on the right picture. But the area is very nice and a footpath leads along 6 waterfalls.

After this visit we drive towards Wales and stop for a while in Chester, a charming town on the border with Wales. We skip places like Liverpool and Blackpool, we can't see everything (although we would like to). The rain just stops falling when we park the car and get out, but we need to wear a sweater. Lots of people are walking in the center of the town, as if people are still on holiday.

Here again, we see a lot of houses with the typical building style where the tarred woodwork is visible on the outside. And there is the usual cathedral in this town, but we skip that today; there are enough other typical buildings to see and we walk around for some time. The medieval wall is still totally intact and we can walk on it.

In early times it could be dangerous in Chester, bordering Wales that was often the enemy. There still seems to be a local law from the medieval times which states that inhabitants of Chester have the right to shoot an arrow (at the height of the leg) when they meet at least 2 Welshmen on a satruday night after 9. We couldn't find when that happened for the last time.
When we see an internetcaf, we go inside to check our email and notify our family that all is well, we haven't met any hostile Welsh yet. The last few years we used to do that with our laptop and mobile phone, but after our last trip (Scotland in May) we got such a high bill that we don't do that anymore.

In the center of Chester we see a great eample of a British roundabout which can be photographed easily; Great Briatin seems to have invented the roundabout, for more than a decade now they are very popular and there doesn't seem to be a village without at least one. They have the most weird and phantastic forms and sizes, from a point on the ground (like this one) to very complicated and entangled roundabouts with sometimes 8 exits. The roundabout density is probably in no other country higher than in Great Britain. Since a few years Holland has also adopted this ingenious invention.

But when we leave Chester we end up in a traffic jam, yes, before a roundabout! There has been an accident and people who are going in the 'wrong' way block the roundabout so people who go the 'right' way can't cross and drive on. On all outgoing roads the traffic is totally blocked and it takes us more than an hour to leave the city. When we finally pass the border the landscape immediately changes and we see it change into a hilly and even mountainous scenery.

But we drive directly towards the setting sun and the later it gets, the more difficult it is on these sometimes busy roads. Around 6 we decide to look for a hotel, since it is much too cold to sleep in a tent, even at this time, but all hotels are full, too expensive or smoking isn't allowed. It is half past eight, when the sun has already set, that we find a hotel in Harlech, just beneath a castle that is build on a steep face.

The hotel also has a pub and the owners are very friendly. They first have to clean a room, so we wait and have a drink in the bar. But the moment we enter our room, we feel how tired we are and we go to bed very early. Just a quick look at the news to see what the weather forecasts say and maybe we could go to a campsite for a couple of days, it looks allright. But first we are going to have a good sleep.

Travel through Europe and Africa

with Elisabeth and Teije