The joys of the British pub

The English pub is a great place. You just go, hang out and have a beer. None of the obnoxious loud music and overcrowded garbage that you associate with bars in the US. This was our first afternoon in England. True to form, the weather was lovely day 1 and then rained all over us on day 2.

 

The view from the flat

On a connection between friends of friends of friends, we hooked up with Chris and Jess, the most fabulous hosts we could have asked for. They were actually headed to Cape Cod for 2 weeks and so handed off the keys to their place, and let us crash in their lovely apartment in Brixton, London. Whoever did the gardening on the first floor flat knew what they were doing, as the view from the window was great.

 

Old powerplant that looked cool

London is full of gigantic old coal fired power plants like this one which have been or are being re-purposed for other things. The Tate Modern is a great example of such a building, it actually looks a lot like this.

 

crack fox

Urban foxes abound in London. This one was just hanging out in the rain in the Nunhead Cemetery, which is spectacularly overgrown and weird. I'd recommend a tour through for anyone in South London for a while.

 

3rd fastest weirdo

Here I am being adorned by Andrew Richey himself; inventor of the lovely steeds upon which we all rode.  

Two national champs, both 3rd place.

Kind of serendipitous that Julie Secor, the fastest finisher at the US Championships, and I were both 3rd place in the race. Go USA.

 

Headed down to Plymouth

We took the train out of Oxford along with what seemed like hundreds of our new favorite people: drunken football fans. Oxford United had won its match, and gave local youth a good reason to get drunk and insult our train conductor. I can only imagine what would have happened if Oxford had lost. That would have given the local youth a good reason to get drunk and insult our train conductor.

 

Who likes pygmy ponies?

Dartmoor has herds of pygmy ponies running rampant along with all of the sheep and cows. Apparently national parks are also generally free grazing land in the UK. Hence, poop everywhere.

 

Obligatory Chimney Shot

We lunched at a mediocre little cafe in the town of Princetown, a quaint scrabbly little place in the center of Dartmoor national park. The ride up to the town was really splendid, though both of us were wishing for MUCH lower gearing. At the 15 and 20% grades we'd chug and puff up the hill until the call of "WALKIES!!" went out and then we hoof it up the rest. I would have loved to have an altimeter on this day.

 

Sheep amongst the rocks

 

On the march for the Tors of Dartmoor

 
Jennifer heading to one of the tors, outcroppings of granite on top of the hills of Dartmoor.

Plymouth at sunset

 

I'll call that a good view

After spending 2 days in the Devon and Cornwall area, we took the train up to the land of many consonants: WALES! We spent our time on the north coast of wales, which is dominated by massive hills and bluffs that lead to the sea, and some splendid little coastal towns, right near some not at all splendid coastal towns. The first day we spent tootling around on our Brommies, and the second day we took the train, then the bus and then our feet up into the heart of the Snowdownia National Park, home to the highest peaks in Britain outside of North Scotland.



Wales is scenic as heck. The highway around the north side of the Great Orme.

Conwy Castle

 
We turned around at Conwy and went across the peninsula back to Colwyn Bay.

Walking in

 
The walk in to the mountains was nice as well.

Scrambling to the top of Tyrfan

 
Mt. Tyrfan is in the next ridgeline north from Snowdon. It's a heck of a scramble with broken boulders of limestone all over the place. Jennifer sailed through the rough part of the hike here.

Lush and green

 
Wales is, like the rest of Britain, extremely lush and green. They take advantage of this by grazing sheep everywhere!

Mount Snowdon

 
This was the view that greeted us as we crested the saddle on the ridge just to the north of Snowdon.

Our buddies, the mountain goats

 
These guys watched us eat lunch on the moutntain.

The Picture House

 
This was the inside of The Picture House, in Colwyn Bay, Wales. The town was cute and the pub was great. They had an excellent selection of beers and the food was cheap and satisfying. Not really gourmet, but they did have a killer curry night on Thursdays that really brought the folks out.