Pony Trekking in Wales

(photos: obviously not working. this one photo of wales took two hours to load because i left it on and when i came back to the computer it was up. i am not willing to wait two hours for every photo so i'll try again at a later date)
On Friday, at 7 am, i embarked on the trip i was most looking forward to : pony trekking in Wales. Before i left for London, i had looked on the school's website to see what kind of activities or trips they offered and found out that they ran a trip to Wales for "Pony Trekking". I did not know what pony trekking was, exactly, but i decided that i was going to like it. A lot. I anxiously awaited the sign up sheet, and since there were only 19 spots per trip (they will be going again in a week) i rushed down to the office in the morning to sign up. Luckily, a number of my friends are friends with the guy who runs these trips so they managed to sign up as well. I handed over my 150 pounds, trying not to think how much money that was, and walked away not knowing what a fantastic deal i had just gotten.

We all left around 7:15 in order to meet at the train station. I took only a backpack, and i was smart this time and bought breakfast the day before so that i could bring it and eat it while waiting for the train. Well, we sat around for quite some time, waiting for everyone to arrive, and about 10 minutes before the train was set to leave, we were instructed by our trip leader to get up and go through the turnstile. There seemed to be some sort of miscommunication though, and he had to go try to get individual tickets for everyone at the desk or something strange like that... So we all wait. Time passes slowly and it is not 2 minutes before our train departs. The man finally rushes us all through the gate, waving his hand in an elvis-type motion, and watches 20 twenty-somethings RUN down the platform only to jump on the train before they closed the doors. It was exciting.

The train ride was nice..except for the first hour when i was anxiously awaitng it to hit 9:40 so i could call Rebekah back at Reid Hall. You see, Morrissey tickets were going on sale at 9:30am for his Glasgow show. There is not too much in this world i want to do more than go to a Morrissey concert. (Though it is topped by a few things, like seeing Eddie Izzard, who really needs to stop sending out e-mails about all the shows he is doing in California that I can't go to) So i gave Rebekah all the information one would need to steal my identity and left her in the high-pressure position of being responsible for getting tickets for us. I called her at 9:40, and found out that she did, in fact, get 2 standing tickets. I was extremely excited, but seeing as i was on a train full of sleeping people, all i could do was whisper "I am extremely excited." So we are going to Glasgow the weekend of December 2nd to go see Morrissey. Anyway, back to the parts of the weekend that may actually interest you loyal readers...

We landed in Swansea where we took a coach to our farmhouse bed and breakfast somewhere on the Gower peninsula in South Wales. The house was a Victorian cottage, and one of the most beautiful houses i have seen . A semi- elderly Welsh woman greeted us at the door with her farmdog, Sharp, whom i would soon befriend. I decided immediately upon arrival that i wanted to move there straight away and work for these people. For the first 15 minutes my friend was following me as we checked out the house and i kept repeating "This is fantastic! i want to live here!" She just laughed at me. Our room was quite nice as well, 4 beds (two bunked, one double, and one twin), a tv, and a lovely bathroom with a proper shower. They also had tea and coffee and a kettle in the room, which i certainly took advantage of.

After getting set and exploring (they had a room full of leather couches and one with a pool table and a pingpong table!), we headed off in search of food. The only place close by was the Gower Heritage Center Tea Rooms, a twenty minute walk down the long street/driveway of the farmhouse. They had a whole center set up that we did not quite have time to look around. I did see their water mill and their old woodworking tools, but i did not get to see the blacksmite that many signs mentioned. It reminded me of the farm. I half expected to see a Welsh Norm behind the forge, but i never found out. I ate a "Gower Hot Pot" which was some sort of pie like thing with beef, potatoes, and carrots; and of course, chips on the side.

After lunch, we went back to the house to regroup, and a couple of us decided to try to find this beach they spoke of that was also a 20 minute walk. We passed some donkeys and they came galloping over to us, i think in search of food, but quickly lost interest and became very interested in the grass on our side of the fence. Turning the corner of the nice residential area we were walking through, we were greeted with a beautiful view of the cliffs and sandy beach with the ocean stretching to the horizon. After some discussion, we decided to talk the difficult path down the rocky, sandy hill in order to get to the beach itself. Once on the beach we explored little caverns, found shells, frolicked, and took many photos. Despite the wind and cold, we took off our shoes and went in the water up to our calves; though my friend Antonia was not very good at avoiding waves and wound up with some damp pants. We found an interesting little cave/ tunnel which housed a few tidepools. Amber and David spent some time poking at an object they were not sure was alive, until their question was answered when it moved. I heard yells of "EW IT'S SLIMY" as i took photos of the cave and sky.

We decided it was time to go (even though it was time to go 15 minutes ago) in order to get back in time for dinner served at the farmhouse. We plopped down in the sand to brush the grains off our feet, and replaced our socks and shoes. We took the easier way up the hill this time and decided to try to take a quicker route back. RIGHT. Quicker. Ha. We wind up in front of this locked fence with a sign saying private property, and if i recall correctly, an image of a skull. I may have made that up though. Many of their signs were pretty intense, so it could be true. I don't recall..but it sounds more dramatic that way, so we'll say it was there. We choose not to hop it, and decide instead to walk around the fence in hopes of finding a break in it. We walked for a very long time. There were no longer roads in any direction. So we decided to turn back, retraced out steps, and got back to the original path we took. We arrived 25 minutes late to dinner, which i felt exceedingly guilty about, though the woman was very nice and brought out our dinner anyway. Which was DELICIOUS.

After the lovely meal, we went up and showered, and came back down to hang out in the common room. I played my friend Emme in ping pong for about an hour, and we actually got quite good by the end. By good, i , of course, mean we could volley for about 7 times before hitting it wildly into some furniture. When we tired of ping pong, we searched in their game chest and found...dun duh dah! SCRABBLE DOMINOES! How exciting! And how exceedingly difficult! We wound up using every tile that was left ( i think there was a substantial amount missing), only by employing such words as "resteth", "feebler", "outie", and "le." They are all real words i am sure.

I returned to my room after this great scrabble domino accomplishment, read a bit of James Joyces' "Dubliners" and went to sleep for an early day of ...PONY TREKKING!