A walk in the woods

Fallen over tree on our Betws-Y-Coed hike
This bird was not afraid of us at all.
Cary at Llyn Elsi
Swallow Falls
The view from our flat - the Irish Sea
Our car
Caernarfon Castle, including dais where Prince Charles was invested
St. Mary's Church, Betws-Y-Coed
Little waterfall on our hike


Today is our last day in Wales, and I have to say we've enjoyed ourselves very much. Yesterday was our favorite kind of day - full of nature. We drove about 40 minutes away to Betws-Y-Coed (pronounced BET-oos uh COYD), which is in Snowdonia National Park. The village is in a valley, surrounded by mountains and forest, and is a great jumping-off point for hikers and backpackers. We saw lots of both, as well as several outdoors stores while we were there. The village itself is adorable, almost Alpine. It reminded us a little bit of Interlaken, in Switzerland. It was kind of rainy when we got there, but we have learned that this is not a country where you can let a little rain stop you. We found the only free parking lot in Britain, I think, then headed to the TI to find out about walks in the woods. We got some good recommendations, had a quick lunch, and set off into the forest.

The first part of our walk was up the face of a cliff. Not really, but it was pretty steadily uphill for a good 45 minutes. We saw lots of pretty streams through the trees though, and the rain made everything smell so alive. We're including some pictures of that part of the walk. When we finished the uphill part, we were at a mountaintop lake, Llyn Elsi. We walked around the lake, which took about half an hour or so. The Welsh mountains are famous for slate mining, so the whole path was slate rock. Very pretty, but a lot of it ended up in Cary's shoes - he's got hiking sandals, which are not great when the entire path is made of slate pebbles. It quit raining during our walk, so we were able to enjoy some great views from Llyn Elsi, and we got the timer feature on Cary's camera figured out, so we took some fun pictures of ourselves. We only saw four other people on the entire walk, which took about two hours in all. Our legs were pretty tired at the end, especially after walking downhill for 45 minutes (harder than it sounds), so we shopped a little bit in the village and then drove a couple of miles out to see Swallow Falls, a good sized waterfall nearby. Then we headed back to Llandudno for some rest, and had dinner out at the Palladium. Everything in Llandudno closes after 5:00, so everyone in town was at this restaurant, which is a converted Victorian theater. The semi-final of the Euro 2008 soccer match was on - Germany vs. Turkey. Germany won, but everyone in the restaurant was obviously pulling for Turkey. It was a fun atmosphere, and we had a great meal.

Got to go - my internet time at the library is about to run out. We are headed to Chipping Campden tomorrow, where I think internet access is also rare, although our B&B says that some of the pubs do provide wi-fi. Rick Steves says we're better off going to London if we want to get online. So we'll just see. Hopefully it won't take us as long this time to get the internet figured out, and we can update again tomorrow or Saturday. We love hearing from y'all, so keep the comments coming! We miss you and we'll see you soon.

-Emily

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