ashab41

hey party people

I've moved bloggs - you can now find me at:

http://blogs.bootsnall.com/asha/

Good Friday:

easter was a road trip with five pals to Wales - in particular Cardiff and the Brecon Beacons. We hired a car to be picked up from Fulham Broadway. Met Todd, Gerrard and Helena at the Fulham Broadway tube stop and started the walk to the car hire place where Fiona was to meet us. At the car hire place we were shattered to see a line up of people waiting to also pick up their cars for the long weekend. We drank our coffees and waited in line for just over an hour, but finally we got our little blue station wagon and were off on our adventure.

My "awesome" map reading skills got us out of west London and onto the M4 in no time! Then it was bumper to bumper in the easter traffic. Damn! After about an hour of this I decided we could get off the M4 and run parrallel to it most of the way to Cardiff on the A4, so we attempted that. Those afore mentioned "awesome" map reading skills got us totally lost in Reading! Mind you it did mean finding the BIGGEST sainsburys I have ever seen in my life! so we stopped for a late lunch before deciding the M4 was probably the way to go after all....It took us until about 5pm to get to Cardiff but it was a beautiful day (we were blessed with wonderful weather pretty much the whole weekend) so it was nice to just watch the english countryside pass us by. Lots of daffodils on the side of the road :)

Cardiff - quite a lovely welsh city :) Helena, Fiona and I decided to go for an explore while the boys rested from the long drive. We discovered a really big park near the castle and decided to go for a wander. again lots of daffodils for asha to play in, lots of trees in bloom and it was just nice to be surrounded by greenery and a little bit of nature in the middle of a city - haven't found too much of that here in London yet, I know it's here just haven't had too much of an explore yet...Dinner was a good pub meal and then off to discover some nightlife. We didn't discover too much of it in the end, but could have been because it was good friday. Had a game of pool while a DJ and drummer attempted to blow our eardrums apart in one bar and then decided to have an early night.

Saturday
Cardiff Castle and Caerphilly Castle - Saturday dawned beautiful and sunny aswell and we were off to look at castles - the first stop being Cardiff Castle, situated right in the middle of town. It's a biggish castle with a tower keep still in quite good condition, it meant we got to climb some stairs and see the view over Cardiff city, so that was reallt great - we decided not to go into the Gothic part of the castle which cost extra and we were a bit short on time. So we just wandered around the castle grounds and
soaked up a bit of the history...had a "welsh" lunch at the Cauldron, I wasn't overly fussed and don´t recommend it too highly...

Then with me behind the wheel we set of for Caerphilly castle. It took less than 20 minutes to get there, it looked a bit longer on the map, but that was fine. Caerphilly is HUGE! not the town, the castle.... it sits again in the middle of the city but on a large sort of parkland, with a huge moat and lake system and the ruins themselves are in pretty good condition, with a hall that is obviously still used for events (there were people setting up tents, and practising sword play, we think there might have been a medieval
fair on or something)...we spent a good couple of hours here soaking up the sun and enjoying the weather and just being somewhere different from London.

Then we were off to Tredegar and our next hostel for the night. This time I needed a rest after the driving so Fiona and Helena went off exploring by themselves, They were back in ten minutes after walking the entrie town. Tredegar is very small :) We asked the lady at the hostel where to go for dinner and she responded "ohhh, you could try the wetherspoons next door, it is good and cheap"...then we asked were to go for a little nightlife "ohhh you could try the wetherspoons next door..." we got the picture and went to
the wetherspoons.

Next day didn´t dawn quite so nice, was overcast and a bit chilly, but was the day to go walking in the Brecon beacons. again with me behind the wheel and Fiona navigating we made out way to a small welsh town that I couldn´t pronounce and won´t attempt to spell to get directions to some waterfalls at the southern end of the Beacons national park. a two minute drive out of town along some narrow winding roads and we were at the entrance to the farm where the walk started. The track was muddy and sloppy but we were ready
for an adventure...the first waterfall was about 15 metres wide and dropped about 6 metres down, there was a large group of people there, probably part of a tour and one crazy nutter had decided to jump in for a swim. We ventured further along the path and found ourselves rambling through forested areas straight out of middle earth, with lots of birght green moss hanging off leafless trees, was very beautiful. We continued along the walk for another hour to the big waterfall at the end. This water fall isn´t much bigger than the first one we had seen but you could actually walk behind the water at this one, so we donned out waterproof jackets and walked behind the water. It was very loud but calming watching the white water rush over our heads from above.

After walking back to the car we decided it was Fionas turn to drive - as she hasn´t drive a manual for over 6 years there were a few nervous people in the car...but she did fabulously! we decided seeing as there was still plenty of light (summer time started on sunday morning giving us an extra hour) we decided to go back to tredegar via the rest of the national park. we went via Balck Mountain which is supposed to be less visited and more rugged. and finally we were in the Brecons! Huge rolling hills covered in low heath and grasses, very sparse looking set against grey skies, was very reminiscent of my last visit to Wales in 1997. We got out a number of times to just wander across the hills a bit and get a really sense of the space and natural environment of england. was really gorgeous. At one stop there were what i thought were shetland ponies (they might have been welsh cogs according to Horrace at the Tredegar hostel)...these cute little horses the size of large dogs (only came up to our waists)...they were pretty tame, letting us get right up close to them. The rest of the trip home was more of these large hills/mountains with large valleys, low lying cloud, and some fog and mist. was very magical and it was good having the car and being able to just explore at our own pace.

Monday - the trip home... we came home along the A40 stopping at Raglan castle. This castle was a highlight for most of us I think. I thought the others might be a bit over castles at this point, but we spent a good while here taking lots of photos and exploring - it was another glorious day so I enjoyed just sitting on a bench and soaking up the smells and sounds and the sun light while the others explored the moats and different towers etc. This one was a very "castle" castle, with big hexagonal towers etc. Was easy to imagine what it would have looked like in it´s day.

The journey home along the A40 was lovely because it took us through gloustershire, a bit of the cotswolds and via oxford (though we just bypassed it), so felt like we got to see quite a bit of the countryside. So
it was a great weekend out of London and finished with Gerard saying, "so how about Cornwall for the long weekend in May"...excellent! more adventures to come!!!!

it's spring in London! the last two days have been really mild and i have walked to work in just my denim jacket and two layers of work clothes (as opposed to big heavy black coat, scarf, gloves sometimes a beanie and three layers of work clothes...just so you have something to compare to!)

The walk to work also consists of flower beds full of daffodils (okay, maybe not 'full' but definitely starting to bloom) and I am told this is the quintessential english sign that the change of season has occurred and the warmer months are on the way. So yay for daffodils and bring on the warmth :)

Last Wednesday 9 March, I saw Missy Higgins live at the Carling Academy in Islington. There was a huge turn out (of predominantly aussies) - Missy commented her surprise at having so many fans in London.

It was a terrific concert, her voice is so strong and powerful live, you don't quite get the full impact of her voice from her album. She really lets her emotions shine through, you can identify with what she is/was feeling when she wrote the songs. She chatted with the audience quite a lot and explained the back ground for some of the songs, which is pretty gutsy letting hundreds of people into very private moments that were the foundations for most of the songs.

I highly recommend seeing her live if you haven't already done so - check out www.missyhiggins.com for tour dates and also to hear her songs [plug plug plug, am I in marketing or what?!?]

The next adventure will be full of stories from Wales and hopefully have photos, though I haven't figured out if I can do that from this journal yet...

So I finally got around to setting up a blogg for myself...

This will probably just be an outlet for me to ramble on about life in the UK and how everything is going...so just a quick ramble so this entry isn't too boring

things I have learnt about walking in snow:

1. an umbrella probably would be useful (nearly everyone else was using one except me)
2. snow quickly cakes on the bottom of ones shoes and turns icy, making walking a bit precarious (hint: stamp ones feet, or scuff ones shoes on any rough surface periodically to remove said icy layer).
3. one should not tilt ones head when looking for traffic if one can help it, or snow goes down the back of ones jacket (brrrr).
4. walking to work/tube in the snow brings a big smile to my face!