Vacation Blog day 8

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Today we moved. I woke up at 5:30 and continued the packing I’d started the night before. As we didn’t have a dependable dryer, I didn’t want to do any laundry with less than 2 days there, so we had 2 suitcases full of dirty clothes and one of clean clothes. We used up a box worth of food, but bought a box worth of stuff, so we had about the same amount of stuff as we had coming up.

We finally got it all together and swept the house and were out the door at 9am. I had found out that Morecambe Bay, not far out of our way, was unique in its fast tides and large salt marshes and quicksand. The children were of course VERY interested in quicksand, having seen it on The Lone Ranger once, so we planned to stop there. However, my research was incomplete, and where we stopped only had mud. We did go out quite a ways by walking on rocks, and then sea shells, but we stopped at the mud and went back to the car. Disappointing.

We pressed on to our new location- Trefriw, Wales. We did stop not far from the house at a services and filled up with gas and used the toilets and ran around in the grass. Elijah had been fussy all day, and at this point I took his temperature, which was 102.8. I didn’t have Infant Tylenol, so I broke up a children’s Meltaway and fed it to him a quarter at a time. He started to feel better soon.

We pulled up to the house about 5pm, and the owner, who lives in a travel trailer next door, was outside and met us as we disembarked. She was a bit put out at our having 7 children when we’d reserved for 5 (it was the only way to do it! Those silly automated forms won’t let you put in all the children. They are small; if the house can hold 6 adults it can hold 10 children!), but overcame it and showed us briefly through the house. This place is much bigger than the last one, and has a tumble dryer and dishwasher. But it is more “homey” than resort-y. There is a piano in the living room, books and toys in the bedrooms, and lots of mis-matched dishes. But the beds are all hard and worn out – big divots where people sit on them all the time. Yuck. It is on a 20 acre working farm, and supposedly the owners let children get up close with the animals, but we’ll have to overcome our cool welcome in order for that to happen. It is also on the side of a steep hill, so there isn’t any yard to speak of, and the advertised “parking for three cars” doesn’t exist. Parking for ONE car, and please make sure to pull up far enough to be out of the way. This is my opinion of Bryn Pyll farm cottage so far.

Anyway, after settling down a bit we went in search of food. We’d been told there are 3 pubs within 5-15 minute walk, so we started walking down the very narrow lane that leads to our cottage. At the main road is a hotel and restaurant, but it looked pretty snazzy and didn’t have a children’s menu posted, so we went on into the village. We had about decided there wasn’t a village when we came upon The Old Ship. They allowed children, and had a menu for them. I saw a large table so we went in. There was no greeting at the door, no offer of menu or instructions to order at the bar. We about decided the Welsh just aren’t very friendly. Anyway, we got our meal ordered and when it finally came it was very good, and – get this – we ALL GOT FULL. Our family motto is “I’m still hungry” so this was quite a shock.

On our way back to the house (where the lane is several feet lower than the houses on it), we were accosted by a loud snarling sound rushing towards us from a garden above our heads. I thought “German Shepherd” – the children guessed lion or bear – but Bob knew what it was. A pig. Yep, a big red and black spotted pig was bravely guarding his turf.