Wales

Saturday 18th – Sunday 19th July 2020

Our first night away in about 5 months and we are off to Wales to enjoy Vikki’s belated birthday Velocity 2 zip wire present. After weeks and weeks of beautiful weather the forecast showed one day of terrible weather would perfectly land on the day we booked the zip wire!

Day 1

6am alarm on Saturday morning started the weekend and off we set at 7am on the 5+ hour drive. Some terrible singing (the wrong words to the tune of teddy bears picnic!), a 30p toilet stop, an impatient Steve given the windy single track roads, quite a bit of rain later and we arrived. We checked in and then enjoyed a lovely picnic lunch…in the car to avoid the rain!

All harnessed up, with damp harnesses and hairnets (particularly important for keeping Steve’s luscious locks in check) and we were ready to go. We had to tell the sheep in the carpark that they couldn’t join us before getting going on the first zip of the day.

It was quite slow and short and should have had amazing views – shame the weather meant there was limited visibility and in Vikki’s case, none at all thanks to rain drops and misted goggles! We then boarded a truck / bus to take us up to the top of the quarry to the faster zip wire in the world. After waiting for ages, we finally set off – only for all the water gathered on the roof of the vehicle to spill over and land on Vikki’s lap! Steve’s saving grace was that he was wearing a mask so a very unimpressed Vikki couldn’t see him killing himself laughing!

We drove through the clouds to get to the top, there was literally no view at all and it was still raining! We got set up with our cameras which made putting on the goggles a bit of a challenge, much to Steve’s entertainment! After a short wait in the queue it was our turn, we got ready, were attached and off we went…travelling down a zip wire at 100+ mph in the rain is very much what we imagine it must be like to be sandblasted in the face!!! Lots of fun but quite painful – although it resulted in a very good exfoliation of our faces.

As we walked down the hill to take our harnesses back the rain stopped, by the time we had taken them off and gone to take some photos, the clouds were clearing and the view was coming back. Sod it we thought, lets do it again. So we paid for a second shot of the large zip, got harnessed back up…and it clouded back over and the heavens opened up again!!!

Once we got to the top and queued the weather had cleared quite a bit and we could actually see where we were zipping! Second time was definitely clearer (and less painful on the face!) however Vikki seemed to go quite a bit slower and then was left hanging at the bottom for a while due to something wrong with the line!

Delayed slightly by Vikki losing her phone…or not as it turned up on the the seat in the car…and we headed off to the hotel. Booked a castle hotel, to discover we were staying next to the castle and not in it and Covid restrictions meant we pretty much couldn’t go in it! Beautiful views from the castle terrace and we enjoyed a lovely meal, complete with Steve smuggling Brewdog in as he didn’t like the beer and we ended the day with a masked man in our bedroom (trying to fix the tv)!

Day 2

Sunday was our first ever room service breakfast in bed, not by choice, and wasn’t the greatest breakfast. Teeny croissants, giant pot of coffee, luke warm bacon and eggs but it set us up for the trip home. The sun was shining so we enjoyed a walk by the water, tarnished only slightly by Steve’s singing!

With Vikki driving Steve decided to get some great video footage from the car…except the phone kept falling over so it at least served as entertainment for Vikki! A stop in past Stratford Upon Avon for a cool drink in the garden with Mark en route completed a very nice weekend.