Driving on the left side of the road
UK Return Part 4: Hay-on-Wye to Bath to Stonehenge
We left Hay-on-Wye with trepredation. To make it to Bath today we were going to need to understand the public transit systems and for it to to be reliable. Getting on the first bus to Brecon was pretty easy, but after 15 minutes of waiting for a transfer that was supposed to be 5 minutes, we started to get nervous. To make it worse, it was raining and they were doing construction and drilling into rock half a block away. It wasn’t a scenic place if we were going to be waiting here long, so we wandered up the road and found a nice little brewery to pile all our luggage in a corner and warm up at.
We thought we had the right time for the transfer, but when we got back to the bus stop there was still nothing happening there, and we succumbed to the idea that we might now live in Brecon, Wales (it wouldn’t have been a bad place to be stranded). Finally, a bus we needed came and we were off to Abergavenny through the Brecon Beacons national park and mountain range.
Lots of sheep, lots of beautiful mountain ranges through the fog. When we arrived in Abergavenny, we weren’t sure where to catch the train station and almost got off at the wrong stop. Luckily the bus driver helped us out, and we only had to walk 1/4 mile to the train station. Talk about accessibility though, the only way onto the train platforms was up a steep staircase with no other way to the tracks.
While we were sitting in the tiny rural Welsh train station, my Mom noticed that the only other people in the train station were wearing a KC Currents shirt (the Kansas City, United States soccer team). She asked if they live in Kansas City, and they did! We got Welsch cakes and coffee and talked. We might have interacted with 21 year old me twelve years ago in some kind of Welsh time warp, who knows at this point.
From Abergavenny we took the train to Newport, from Newport the train went unexpectedly went the ocean, via the Bristol Channel I believe, to get to Bath (which I was not a fan of, but also happy I didn’t know it was happening before it was!)
We made it to Bath, which was a beautiful old stone city, and then took buses up to our Youth Hostel on the hill. After settling in Carp and I walked from our hostel downhill to the city center to meet my parents. We walked through a pasture with cows, and then past canal boats making their way through the countryside.
We met my parents for Thai food nearby where the actual Roman Baths stood, and then walked around for a bit.
Carp and I stayed out a bit later, to have a cultural experience of meetings a few angry drunk Brits who we flipped off as we left the bar.
The next morning was the big day, renting a car and driving on the left side of the road! We were headed to Stonehenge, but first stopped at a cute little farmers market to get some snacks.
I’m not going to pretend like I didn't kind white knuckle it while driving (we all took turns driving) but it was also way easier than I imagined as well. We arrived at Stonehenge a few hours later, and learned a lot. You know, no big deal, just a 5,000 year old mysterious structure. I overheard someone while looking on at the structure: “It’s still doing it’s job. It was meant to bring people together, and it’s still doing that.”
After Stonehenge we drove to my partner Carp’s family town of Shalbourne. We asked around at the post office (the only place open in town) if there was a church in town (Carp wanted to see if he could find any gravestones with family names), and she directed us to a footpath that led to it under a cover of trees (there was no access road).
We found the church, but didn’t find any Carpenters. To be fair, it would have been over 200 years ago when they were there, and then church, while beautiful and sturdy for being built in the 13th century, had a small yard and weathered gravestones. Carp also got some chestnuts to take home from the site, and left a rock from Lake Ontario from where his family ended up in the US.
We drove home (with some curb bouncing and pheasant dodging) and returned the car (successful first day for everyone on the lefthand side of the road!) and grabbed some dinner in Bath. The next day and final day on our trip we were headed to London.
