Why Welsh Autumns Are the Best

I have a love/hate relationship with North Wales. I have spent my whole life visiting here, and while I’ve always loved seeing my granny and going to the beach when I was a child, moving here straight out of high school was a whole different experience. Being that it’s pretty touristy, I would go from manic summers where I was working 60-100 hour weeks (divided (mostly) between jobs), to having so little work that I needed benefit assistance to get me through the winter. It’s kind of intense.

I did that for the first four years of my adult life, and when I did finally move back to the States, I said I’d never do it again.

Well, here I am. I’ve just survived the insanity of the summer (with an injury this time–60 hours work is not my game any more, it would seem), and entering into the autumn. And I realize now why it is that I stayed for so long. The autumns here are the best.

1. It’s Quiet
   This is something that you wouldn’t really think of to notice unless you went through the summers here. People come from all over the country, and sometimes the world, to visit North Wales during the summer. It’s a beautiful place and there’s plenty to do–from the coastal paths to sailing to surfing, to just spending too much money.
   The village I live in, at the time that I first lived here, had a permanent population of 800 people. I read one year that during Wakestock (a now extinct festival), the population rose to 20,000. That is insane! Then you have all the sailing races that the rich folk like to be there for, and all the other events that are now catering to the business of the season.
   So when it’s done, and school kicks in and everyone goes home, the villages are like ghost towns. It’s amazing.
   You can find parking. People aren’t getting in your way because–let’s face it–people in herds get dumb. People are there to relax opposed to spend money, so they’re more likely to be friendly and take the time to be polite. It’s just nice, relaxing, and quiet.
   
2. The Weather
   I have so many locals disagree with me on this one, but I swear it’s true–the weather is better when there’s no tourists. I’m not saying the tourists drive the weather to rain, because I’ve totally been here during the summer months, as a tourist, and had beautiful weather. No, what I’m saying is that the best weather months are May and September through October. All the rest of the months are just rain, kind of bleh, for the most part. There are the odd nice days, or partially cloudy days, but not nice nice. Or if they are, they’re too hot (for my liking at least).
   But the reason why the autumn nice weather is better than the May nice weather is because it’s relaxing weather. Coupled with the calm after the storm, the sun and the mild warmth is pleasant. It seems to seep into the bones more. You want to be in it, but you want to relax in it. In May, you’re so energized of breaking through the lethargy of the winter that there’s too much to do, to much want to do any of it. But after the summer, the warmth soaks into you with a slight breeze that carries my next point…
3. The Leaves
   I know, I know, it’s everyone’s favorite part of autumn. But it truly is worth noting. After the trees have been lapping up the delicious summer rain, they’re drying up and ready to change and shed their leaves, and they just smell divine.
   I come from a place that looks like it’s been carved out of the trees. I’m not a stranger to masses of trees and their leaves changing. And I love it. There is a heavy dose of ecstasy when I watch the swirls of leaves across the road.
   But there’s something different when the leaves are coming from the Welsh Snowdonia mountains. I spend a lot of time in the slate-mine village of Blaenau-Ffestiniog, and so I drive and walk through the woods quite a bit. And I cannot tell you how much joy those leaves bring me.
   The tips of the leaves are singing to orange and yellow, and they are just so eager to act as a veil to my destination. Combine that with the rolling quilt of the farmlands that look like they’re lumpy with kittens–it is something breathtaking.
4. Mushroom Hunting
   As a budding mushroom hunter, I cannot get over how many varieties of fungus there is around here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m spoiled rotten for the fungus amung us in the Pacific NorthWest, but here is just as lush with specimens. When I was growing up, in August, Granny and I would always pick field mushrooms just outside her house. I could see the fairy rings they grew in from the windows, and loved to just marvel at them. Now, as an adult, I’m on the hunt for culinary purposes, and just general curiosity. I have a fascination with them, and there are a plethora all over the Snowdonia National Park.

Until you experience it, you won’t know the difference between a Welsh autumn and that of one in Scotland, The Pacific Northwest, or Germany. And in all honesty, I’ve only experienced one of the three I just mentioned. But if you have the chance to spend a month and a half in Wales, make it the last half of August through to October. It’s worth it, I promise.

Happy Equinox, dear reader.

What is your favorite seasonal experience? Is there any location that you find to be unique with its seasons? I want to know! Let me know in the comments!

Another Blog

I know, I know, I’m terrible at keeping up with this one. But I’ve had a few requests to start a blog that is just about my travels, and so I thought I would finally take people up on that request.

So here it is, called Hopscotch and Woolgathering, a blog about a gap-year student trying to see all there is to see in Britain between work and on the cheap. If there are any suggestions of anywhere that I should go, touristy or much lesser known (which would be far more preferred), please feel free to supply me with your suggestions!

Letting Go

View of Hell’s Mouth from my Grandmother’s house in North Wales

Today is a beautiful day. So beautiful in fact, that fairly quickly after I woke, I sat outside on the porch in the sun. Sun is rare in Washington, and it’s nice for it to seem warm enough to be able to enjoy it so early in the morning.

When we moved out here into the county, it was the end of Summer, and September. It’s still nice and warm in September, but It fades quickly into fall. Being able to sit, and listen and hear and be a part of the country is a nice experience.

I saw out on the porch, smelling the new plant life coming out into the world, looking at the dew sparkling across the lawn, hearing the birds sing with each other as they do their dance of the worms.

It was the flies that did it. The sounds of the flies zipping back and forth, seeing them spiral around each other, knowing they’re in the bushes, in the ditches lining the road. Then the sounds of the tractors getting going as well. It all reminded me of being at my Granny’s house in Wales.

I felt the surge, the longing to go back there, the longing to just transfer everything I was sensing in my surroundings and just be transplanted in her hard, on top of that hill at the tip of the peninsula. The only thing missing was the calls of the sheep, which surround her house.

I have such a love/hate relationship with Wales. I had such a hard time being there, trying to fit in, trying to make friends, trying to still be myself. I had a hard time with most of the people there. It’s the land that I miss. There’s the energy that calls to me, all the time. I try to ignore it, but I am constantly yearning for that place.

Living there just about killed me.

Then there’s Granny. By not being for here now I feel as though I have let her down. Now is her time of need and I’m not there. I could be transplanted into her yard, sit on a summer day and just listen to everything. I could smell the flowers, hear the flies, watch the lambs. I could drink good tea and just be in love with the land.

But the reality is not what it is in my head.

Granny no longer lives there, the house is greatly neglected. Granny is no longer Granny, but swallowed into a situation she was forced into due to misunderstanding and neglect. She is in a home for people with dimentia and she isn’t one of them. She just can’t hear. So she’s alone in this place, with people whose minds are melting away, with staff that won’t get her hearing aids fixed so that she can be a part of the world.

It breaks my heart. I hate that I’m not over there. I hate that she’s not over here. I hate that my entire life, my goal was to live with her and take care of her when she was in need. She is in need right now and I am six and a half thousand miles away from her, listening to the flies and missing the sheep.

I feel guilty for trying to go to school at this point, guilty that I am being so selfish as to try to improve my life when I should be helping the quality of her’s. I should be over there, fixing up Craig Fryn, being a live-in caregiver for her so she can at least have the comfort of being in her own home. I should be trying to get her dog back for her from my uncle. I should be trying to do something, ANYTHING! Yet, I’m not. I’m throwing down roots to stay in one place for the next six years.

I have lived a charmed life. I have never had to deal with letting go of someone close to me, deal with the deterioration of a family relationship like this. I have never had to let go of something that has seemed so fixed in my life. I don’t know how to do this. Everything in me tells me I should just be over there, but I know that I am not strong enough to be over there, not without my other half, who has already said no.

How on earth do I deal with this?