On Saturday, I forayed into the arena of driving on the left side of the road and went to Wales with my brave friend Faith. I'm pretty sure that we followed most of the traffic rules and only got honked at twice. It was about a 2 1/2 hour drive west of London and the English countryside on the way there was quite nice. Once there, we saw a 900 year old abbey called Tinturn Abbey as well as a castle, daffodils, green grass, and lots of sheep. Some of the towns we made brief stops in were Chepstow, Monmouth, and Abergavenny. They had kind of a feel of York or Bath but on a small scale. As a side note, St. David's day was on March 1st and is the Welsh equivalent of St. Patrick's day for the Irish. Woe be it, I'm told, to the gardener whose daffodils are not blooming on March 1st. A famous person you may know of who is from Wales is Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Welsh is actually a completely seperate language from English and while most people in Wales speak English, there is a strong culturual pride in maintaining things in both languages. It is similar to Barcelona in Spain with the main language of Catalon spoken but Spanish being the language spoken by the rest of the country. In case there is any confusion, Wales is definitely still a part of the United Kingdom.
Welcome to Wales
Driving on the other side
Welsh Sign
1 comment:
The one thing I like about Wales is that they still keep the language alive by having it in sign boards and making children study it in schools. I wish more people spoke it though.
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