craven.fr

This is an article in my ongoing series about our trip through the British Isles. Earlier articles include the Introduction, Stonehenge, and Oxford.

This was another travel day, which makes it a little less interesting to hear about, but I'm writing it up all the same, as it might be useful to anyone else planning a driving vacation in the same area.

The order of business for this day was to get our British rental car, head to Witney (a charming little town west of Oxford) with both cars, where we had arranged to park our French one, then head north in the rental car, reaching Bangor, Wales, by evening. Deepest thanks to the West Oxfordshire District Council for allowing us to park in their long-term parking lot at the centre of town for longer than is usually allowed!

In Britain, the town of Tunbridge Wells is traditionally considered the most typically picturesque southern English town, and although I haven't been there to compare it, I can't imagine it being a more lovely little town than Witney. (Tunbridge Wells is in Kent and therefore too close to France for us to include it on this trip, which is all about exploring deeper into the UK.) This photo of Witney isn't mine but it captures the general look of the place.

My original, and over-optimistic, plan, was to have the rental by nine, have the Renault parked by ten, and be in Wales before lunchtime. We'd be able to lunch and shop in the "book town" of Hay-on-Wye before heading north through the scenic roads of Snowdonia national park.

As it turned out, that plan was completely unrealistic.

For starters, a lot of people pick up and return their rental cars in the morning, and there is a fair amount of paperwork involved in the process (especially if you're taking the car to Ireland), so we spent over an hour at the rental place alone. (We got a 2007 Prius though, which was perfect, especially given how many miles we were going to put on it.) There's nothing unusual about that, but somehow I had failed to take it into account in my planning (probably because all my attention was focused on places to visit). Ultimately we only made it to Witney around noon, so going through Hay-on-Wye and Snowdonia we would never have made it to Bangor by James' bedtime.

(The 30-minute drive from Oxford to Witney was itself a major adventure for Emilie, as she had to drive the Renault while I led in the Prius, something she was very apprehensive about. But it all worked out fine, and once our car was stowed away she could relax again until the end of the trip!)

So, we instead opted for plan B, heading straight for Bangor by the shortest route, which unfortunately meant seeing a lot less of Wales than I wanted—the motorway runs up the western edge of England, so we drove alongside Wales on the English side of the border until we approached Manchester, and then turned west at a right angle into Wales. This route was almost twice as short as the originally planned one, but it also meant seeing a lot less of Wales (fortunately we'd have the next morning there too, though). Since Snowdonia would have been a beautiful region to drive through, and since the M6 was a pretty bland, uninteresting superhighway, this was a bit of a let-down. Not long after we crossed into Wales, though, we were rewarded with a spectacular coastal drive, with the sea on one side and beautiful green mountains on the other, and more castles than you would think possible. (We didn't get any photos since we were just driving by, but I'm including one borrowed from wikimedia to illustrate here.) Also there were a few tunnels, which first frightened, then fascinated James, and were probably the highlight of the day for him :-)

So basically it was a day taken up with practical matters and travel, but the last hour on the North Wales coast was so beautiful that it made up for a lot of the tedium, and we checked into the hotel in Bangor in high spirits. High spirits which were only brought higher when I logged onto the internet at the hotel that evening to the surprising good news that my cousin Jen had been discharged from the hospital!

Stay tuned for Day Four, when we would finally get to visit some of Wales more properly, and then take a ship to Ireland—which turned out to be James' favourite part of the whole trip!