By Adam Stewart
From the Newsroom
I’ve hinted before that Michelle and I had special plans to celebrate our fifth anniversary, and now that they’re in the rearview mirror, I’m ready to tell you all about it.
We got married in the spring of 2021, and we didn’t feel like we could responsibly travel before COVID vaccines were available. So we didn’t really take a honeymoon trip, but soon after, we started planning and saving for a fifth anniversary trip, eventually settling on northern Wales after a show we were binge-watching at the time had an episode set in Snowdonia National Park. It had a lot of what we wanted in a destination: medieval castles, stunning mountain and coastal scenery, cute touristy villages, and public transit from the big city airport.
On April 11, we finally got to start that journey, flying out of Oklahoma City, stopping in Atlanta for a layover, and continuing on to Manchester, England, where we landed early on April 12. From there, we took a series of trains to Conwy, Wales.
After carrying our luggage the very short distance from the train station to our bed and breakfast, we found we had enough time and energy to walk to Conwy Castle and tour it. It was incredible, but I don’t know how people used the narrow, steep spiral staircases in those castles with any regularity without badly injuring themselves.
Between the time difference and my lack of sleep on our flights there, I got to sleep probably around 6 p.m. that night, which is good, because we had a big day planned the next day.
It started with a hike to a car rental place. Yes, we decided to rent a car, despite the differences in traffic laws and road designs—most notably that the United Kingdom drives on the left side of the road, and they use a lot more roundabouts than here. Honestly, neither of those changes made driving particularly difficult or stressful.
Instead, the thing that made driving stressful was that the rental car company gave us a car that was much larger than we asked for—and larger than we’re used to driving—despite the roads in northern Wales being dramatically narrower than in Kansas. To make matters worse, in a lot of areas, those narrow roads have hedges or even stone walls that run right next to the road.
On top of that, we started our trip with the most difficult day of driving—on Anglesey Island and Holy Island, where the roads are even narrower than elsewhere. It was a lot to get used to all at once.
That day, we visited Beaumaris Castle, which is very much what I picture when I imagine a medieval castle, with a moat around the lower outer wall, then a higher inner wall surrounding an inner courtyard. We then got fish and chips for lunch before continuing on to Holy Island, where we did some hiking, took in some amazing views of sea cliffs, saw the South Stack Lighthouse, and amazingly, ran into some other visitors who had a connection to Hutchinson—missionaries who are supported, in part, by Westside Baptist Church.
On our route back to Conwy, we stopped for a hike to Bryn Celli Ddu, a burial chamber built late in the Stone Age. The site itself was interesting, but I liked the hike between it and the parking area—along a tree line at the edge of a pasture, next to a stream—nearly as much.
We drove to Llanberis, a village at the foot of Yr Wyddfa, the tallest mountain in Wales. Our goal was to hike to the summit. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be. We realized less than halfway up that, while we might have been able to make it to the summit, doing so would have left us exhausted and unable to safely descend the steep path.
It was disappointing, but fortunately, there was plenty more to do in Llanberis after we hiked back down. We took a short hike to the ruins of Dolbadarn Castle, built by Llywelyn the Great, then another hike to a waterfall. The waterfall was the unexpected highlight of the trip for us. It hadn’t been on our itinerary at all, but over a late lunch, we found that a trail to the waterfall started right outside the cafe.
It wasn’t just that the waterfall hike was so cool (but it was) that felt good. It was also that I didn’t get grouchy about changing course when our big hike plans didn’t work out. I’m often bad at rolling with changes to plans, especially big plans that have been in place for a long time. So having a great time adapting felt especially good.
The trip took a downturn Tuesday night, but I’m already past my word count, so that story will have to wait another week.
Adam Stewart is the assistant news editor at The Hutchinson Tribune. He can be reached at adam@hutchtribune.com.