Friday, April 6, 2012

Wales!

      Wales is now one of my favorite places on the planet. I had a list of about ten places I wanted to see and only two days to spend there - so instead of trying to pack things in, Nik and I chose to just go one place in the countryside and have a nice weekend absorbing some vitamin D and relaxing. And. It. Was. Blissful.
      I get so tired of constant big-city London, and breaks to places like St. Ives, Ireland, and Scotland have been really refreshing. But Wales was the antithesis of big city - green fields as far as you can see, tiny villages, friendly people, affordable costs, and at night more stars than I've ever seen in my life. It was such a welcome change, I wanted to buy a house right there and never leave.
      We took the train down from Liverpool to a little town called Chepstow near the Welsh-English border. We picked Chepstow because it was near Tintern, a spot I'd been wanting to visit for ages, and because I stumbled across the most adorable and charming B&B, the Willowbrook Guesthouse, online and desperately wanted to go there. That night when we arrived in Chepstow everything was closed, so we got some groceries and took a cab to our B&B, the Willowbrook Guesthouse, about 2 miles outside the town. We walked up to the B&B, met our host who was just as friendly and bubbly in person as she was on the phone, and went up to our room. The B&B was absolutely everything I had hoped it would be. Our room looked out towards a giant open field with a little brook running through it and all sorts of things growing. The room itself was big and comfy, it even smelled good. The little kitchenette in our room didn't have an oven, so we microwaved the chicken pot pie we'd bought, stirred in our frozen peas and corn, and turned it into an interesting sort of creamy chicken soup... ish. It was dinner if you didn't think too hard about it, and we sat eating it and staring out the window at the amazing number of bright stars (and Jupiter and Venus) we could see from our bed. And giggling at the perfection of it all (more me than Nik, admittedly. But he liked it too).
The view out our window

From our landing, looking down at the breakfast room
       The next morning we had a delicious breakfast, walked into town, and took a bus to Tintern. Tintern is a tiny town at the base of Tintern Abbey,  a ruined monastery which has foundations dating back to the early 12th century. I have wanted to go there for years because my favorite poem is William Wordsworth's Lines Written On A Hill Above Tintern Abbey. The poem tells of the beauty and serenity of the area and the view of the Abbey, and it had me completely captivated from the first time I read it. When the bus turned the corner around a hill and all of a sudden the Abbey was right there in front of me, I got all goosebumpy - the kind when you can't believe something is actually happening, it's all too perfect that it's overwhelming. Nik pulled out a copy of the poem and handed it to me right then and I just started crying and laughing because I was so happy. Boyfriend points to you, Nicholas!
       We spent the entire day basically just lounging in the sun and staring at the Abbey. The picnic tables of the Anchor Pub, right next to the Abbey, became home. We had a cider at the Anchor, walked along the Wye River for a bit, went back to the Anchor for another cider and then wandered through the Abbey itself. And then went back to the Anchor for another cider. Lots of liquid calories that day, but it was ok because we found that in the middle of nowhere, nobody takes cards except the Anchor, and therefore liquid plus the granola bars in my backpack were the only options.



      Walking around inside the Abbey was a completely surreal and beautiful experience. It's now entirely overrun by wildlife. They had removed the ivy from the stone to preserve it, but it was carpeted with grass and birds were roosting in the windows. The sky through the holes was perfectly blue and I couldn't help but think it was prettier than any stained glass. It was still a temple, but now like a temple to nature. Somehow the juxtaposition made a very profound statement for me. Sitting in the grass, leaning against the stone wall, and reading Wordsworth's poem now ranks among my top five most amazing moments of my life. Definitely the highlight of my semester abroad. I can't explain why or how, it just was everything I had imagined it to be and more and I'll never forget it. We took the last bus back to Chepstow, got some sandwiches, and went to catch our train back to London... and we missed it. I blame Wales for being so pretty, rather than us being stupid. But we misjudged by ten minutes and I cannot express how happy I was not to have to go back home. So we called to see if our room was still available and walked the two miles to the Willowbrook. On the way we stopped and sat in the middle of a field and watched shooting stars. You could not have written a script for this.
       The next day we wandered around Chepstow, taking a long walk through the field behind our B&B and discussing the merits of buying a bit of farm land and growing our own food. Screw a performance career, I'm gonna raise chickens instead. But, alas, we eventually got on a train and made our way back to London in time for my evening politics class. First things I heard when I walked into class: "You're alive!" and "Woah, you're a little bit tan!" Can you believe it???

2 comments:

  1. Further "influenced" (forever!)....

    ReplyDelete
  2. I LOVE that photo of the abbey arches stretching off into the distance. Reminds me a lot of the photos we saw at Portland Saturday Market of the St John's Bridge arches at Cathedral Park.

    ReplyDelete