Walking for Fun!
Whilst we are away, we often go walking and this holiday is no different. Anglesey has amazing coastlines, and the coastal paths are well marked and so we decide to head off and explore.
Planning is vital as we will be somewhere we have never been and the weather may change suddenly, we may not have a signal on our phones, and we may injure ourselves. This means we need to be prepared for the day. Are we prepared? Of course not!
Usually, we don’t really know where we are going but hey ho, that is a minor issue. After a look at google, we decide we will head for the nearest beach, and hope we can avoid roads where possible. I asked the warden on site about footpaths, but she gave me a look which I took to mean that normal guests wouldn’t use footpaths as they drive – only peasants walk. We could drive but that would mean putting everything away in Ethel and working out if there is somewhere to park the other end. This involves me stressing out over google analysing every carpark website to see if they have height barriers. Walking/cycling is so much easier and if you drive everywhere, you miss half of the countryside anyway.
Going on a walk is the one activity Mel doesn’t overpack for and I find this odd. Mel always has too much ‘stuff’. Her handbag is like the one Mary Poppins has and any space is quickly filled up with a variety of bits and pieces. However, her rucksack on a walk only contains her purse, a jumper, a packet of crisps, a small bottle of water (which I packed) and some sweets. Mine isn’t much better although I do have a power bank with me. The last thing we want to do is to carry heavy bags. Less is more isn’t it?
After establishing there aren’t any footpaths and with the mighty google maps in hand, we stride away from Ethel, promising we will return strong and reinvigorated later. How deluded are we? We should film ourselves leaving in the morning and returning later and compare the sight as I am sure very different people return. The one’s leaving are full of enthusiasm, energy and excitement but the two oldies who return later appear truly broken.
Anyway, we march off with purpose and the first battle is agreeing how we should walk on a road which doesn’t have a pavement. I was always taught that pedestrians should walk facing the oncoming traffic whereas Mel seems to not to have been taught anything about safety on the roads, including the need to look both ways. Repeatedly, I save her from being squashed by vehicles, but she isn’t grateful at all. In fact, she is positively pissed off with me for pushing her in to a patch of brambles yet again. She feels I am overreacting. She points out that it is a quiet road and the car had about ½ a mile to see us and enough room to give us 6 feet of space. I’m a bit hurt that she doesn’t seem to appreciate me for saving her life.
Yesterday’s walk saw us head towards Moelfre which is a tiny village with a nice beach. It takes us about 30 minutes by road to get there and then we picked up the coastal path. I would like to say we knew where we were heading from there but I can’t as we didn’t know. If you look at a map with Moelfre on it and the sea in front, we went right. Simple.
The weather was amazing and I feel smug that I have put on lightweight walking trousers whilst Mel is wearing jeans. I’ve made that mistake before as it is very hot to walk in jeans. My smugness soon evaporates when I realise I haven’t brought any ibuprofen and my knee is starting to hurt. Chin up though girl, you are hardcore and this is a gentle walk.
Gentle? The internet lies. Why is the coast always hilly? I know we are in Wales, and it is known for its mountains, but it seems that there are more up hills than down hills. At one point I am pushing Mel up in front of me which would be funny but isn’t as I realise there’s no-one pushing me. As we eat up the miles, we smile at each other and pretend we are enjoying the experience and I continue to take random photos of yet another beach to post on Facebook later. If the only thing I achieve today is to bore my 25 Facebook friends (24 of them are family) it has been worth it.
Every time we meet a fellow walker, we pretend we are seasoned travellers and ensure we are standing tall and walk with long comfortable strides. We control our breathing and as we pass, we cheerfully shout hello, or make some joke about the hills ahead/behind, as if they are nothing to us as we are professionals. Hills? What hills? But as soon as they are out of site, we grab a fence to lean on and try to breathe again.
Then comes the point when we realise we aren’t prepared. My knee is really hurting now and I haven’t brought my walking pole. The sun is beating down and we don’t have any sun cream, the water is going to last for another 10 seconds and we ate our crisps 2 hours ago.
The banter between us begins to dwindle which doesn’t really matter as we can’t speak and breathe at the same time anyway. I start to focus on the step counter on my watch and announce we have walked 4 miles, 5 miles etc. thinking it will be a boost. But it doesn’t actually help as it reminds us that we are miles from Ethel in the middle of nowhere. I then exacerbate the problem by looking up how long it will take to walk home from where we are. This is just depressing.
We have a chat about the validity of ‘What 3 words’ and wonder if it actually works if we need rescuing. Each time we round another headland, we hope we will see civilisation, but our hearts sink when we see yet more sheep. My ‘say hi to Bob’ game soon seems very silly, and we just want a cup of tea.
Eventually, we do find a road/village/stream and decide we can’t walk any further and the only way forward is to get a taxi. But this is impossible as we are in the back of beyond and the two taxi drivers on Anglesey are on the school runs. We find a bus stop but don’t know which side of the road to stand on so I bravely ask a random man, only to find that I cannot understand a word he is saying. I don’t think he is speaking Welsh – he just has an accent so strong, he could be speaking Mongolian. Sign language is used, and I work out which bus stop we need to be at.
Meanwhile, I know Mel is not well. She has popped into the co-op to buy some milk, and instead of buying cake, she arrives with bananas and grapes. Is she ill, do I need to call an ambulance, is this the point I find out whether ‘what 3 words’ actually works?
The bus duly arrives and on we hop (translates as crawls) and try to buy a ticket which then generates yet another conversation with a local. The problem with using buses is that you need to know where to get off. After further sign language, we think we have the understanding of the driver, and we take a seat. After what only seems to be 3 minutes, a fellow passenger informs us that our stop is next and due to sheer tiredness, we fall off the bus and watch it drive off into the sunset. Google jumps into action and we realise we are in the wrong place. The village we are staying near has two stops either side of it and we got off the wrong side. This means a walk of another 25 minutes. Neither of us are impressed but say nothing and we stagger home. Iwatch says we have walked 8.36 miles which is pretty amazing for people who only walk any proper distance when on holiday.
Have we learned anything from our experience? Clearly not as today, we set off in the opposite direction – remember the map in your head? The one with Moelfre on the map with the sea in front? Today, we went left. Were our rucksacks full of life saving equipment? No, although Mel had packed us a banana each.
Today’s walk was harder, even though it was only a tiny bit longer. We’d had a conversation last night about the importance of planning and we should stop walking earlier to allow for the distance to get home. It was a great idea but simply didn’t work. The coastal path just kept going and we couldn’t find signs of life anywhere. We did waste time getting lost when the coastal path told us to go away from the coast and we believed we knew best as there was a ‘right to access’ area next to the sea. Just consider this situation for a while. Surely a coastal path should be by the coast, not inland. After wandering around the right to access bit for a while, we realised why the coastal path went the way it did; there was bloody great river in the way and you couldn’t get over it. So, we had to go back the way we came and trapse inland. Why couldn’t there be a sign explaining this?
We eventually found a pub. Hurray, life is wonderful! A lovely alcoholic beverage will cure all ills and for a moment our mood blossomed. But this was very shortlived as typically the pub was closed – what pub shuts during the day? I thought we were in the 21st century. Instead we aimed for the bus stop, only to see the bus fly past when we were ten seconds away. 30 minutes of waiting later we were on the next bus and heading home. Today we walked 8.39 miles and we are half dead. Tomorrow is a rest day as we are moving sites, so our muscles have a day to recover before our next yomp!
2LadiesTravelling 