And I have no idea if that's correct, because I used an online translation tool, and we all know how reliable they are. I hope it says "Wales - the big country that I love". For a tiny country Wales is immense. Mountains and lakes and open land give it a grandeur far exceeding its physical size.
Just got back from Snowdonia. We stayed in a little lodge on the banks of Llyn Gwynant, in the shadow of Snowdon and the other mountains. Another place of almost supernatural beauty. We did our normal round of walking, this time almost exclusively with dogs on leads, which added a new dimension to climbing mountains. This was necessary because of the sheep which roam everywhere. Martin thinks we should put the dogs in a pen with a ewe and a ram. A farmer told him that five minutes trying not to be gored by a ram would put them off chasing sheep for a lifetime. The sheep are mountaineers - who'd have thought it with those clumsy feet? We climbed Snowdon on Thursday. Martin and I with the dogs on leads, the children, 8 and 9, and my 74 year old mother. It was hard, but so worth it! The views at every stage of the climb were beyond description, and when we got near the summit and I looked out over Wales, it was too much and I burst into tears. I think the only beauty I ever cried over before was that of my sleeping children. Only slightly marring the triumph of our arrival at the summit was the fact that I looked to my left and saw a rather smug sheep, curled up on a little outcrop, gloating over the fact that he'd been there for bloody hours before I arrived. My mother went down in the mountain railway but we elected to walk. It took us eight hours to go up and down. The dogs were knackered, I was knackered, Martin was relatively knackered but the children could have done it all over again. They have badges to take back to school saying "I climbed Snowdon the hard way!" and maps of the Miner's Path which we took up, and the Pyg Track which we took down.
We also walked for hours to get to an immense stretch of breathtaking beach on Anglesey. We got there at half past four in the afternoon in August at the height of the season and there was barely a soul about. The children took off their clothes and jumped waves, collected oyster shells and generally larked about while the dogs ran around like things demented and we adults walked and walked. Stunning.
Those were my two highlights of the holiday. Mum and I went to see the village of Portmeirion, which is a weird place. It has a sort of theme park feel. After the glories of Snowdon and Anglesey it seemed curiously sterile and ill-at-ease in its surroundings; a paeon to architectural 'beauty' as conceived by Clough Williams-Ellis between 1926 and 1978. His idea of beauty is mediterranean, all pastel colours which are ill-suited to Welsh weather. All the paint is running because of the rain. Strange place. Mum was disapponted because she remembers it fondly from many years ago. It was also one of those places where you feel mugged; it charges quite a high admission fee, and then every building you go into is a shop where prices range from high to exorbitant.
But the holiday was wonderful. Wales is a wonderland practically on our doorstep, and Martin and I are seriously thinking about stretching our finances and buying a second home there which we can let out for much of the year to cover costs, and pay for some allocated time as our countryside bolt-hole. Probably just a pipe-dream, but there's nothing wrong with those, is there?
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