Road Trip

I love road trips! It's not so much of where we're going to but the journey itself makes up a great part of the fun... and without exception, our Cardiff + Snowdonia road trip over the May Bank Holiday was a great fun. We set off at 1am on Friday night armed with plenty of junk food and a GPS navigator to Wales...

After the long drive up north (with the Cardiff + Snowdonia Olympics Challenge kicking in full - read the next post and you'll know what I'm talking about!), we finally reached Snowdonia where we were being greeted with everything in Welsh. Can't pronounce most of their words as they don't even have a vowel in it!

Just look at the sign post and you'll see what I mean. The locals pronounced the name for us and it sounded nothing like what it is being spelled as! This small little town is one of the towns in the Snowdonia area where the UK National Park is situated.

Well, when I told others that I was going to Snowdonia over the Bank Holidays everyone assumed that we were going hiking in the mountains. We were too lazy for hiking and decided that we'll go cycling instead, thinking that it would be easier and more relaxing.

AND WE WERE WRONG. VERY VERY WRONG.

There's no leisure cycling here. It's all mountain biking on sloping trails! It was no easy job trying to pedal up the mountains!!

Up slope and curvy trails in the middle of nowhere!!

The two girls still in smilling non-sweaty faces at the start of the trail.

Hahahaha.... We stop for a rest barely 15 mins into the trail! Gosh, we were all useless city dwellers with no penchant for exercising. I blame it on the age... bleh...

Halfway through the trail in the mountains, we stopped again to catch our breaths for the 10th time? (I lost count!) There was no doubt that the air was fresher and it was probably good for all of us, away from dirty London!!

Yay! We reached our checkpoint - the beautiful lake surrounded by mountains! The view was really breathtaking... at least it made all the pedalling and pushing the bike up slope worth it!

And finally we made it back to the town and completed our journey ALIVE and UNBROKEN. Cheers!

After all the hard work, it's time to reward myself with some tea and sinful scones! (Hehehe.. everyone was disgusted with how much butter and cream I had with my scones... come on, after burning all those calories from biking... that's nothing!! :P)

Somehow, the guys still managed to find the energy to have a game of frisbee!

The next morning, we set off for Cardiff. Weather wasn't very friendly - gloomy and wet from the moment we woke up!

A picture in front of our hotel - we were trying to trick Drake (guy in red sweater) to do the eagle pose but somehow all the guys were stupid enough to actually do it!! Muahahaha....

We had English breakfast every morning during the trip! Think I'm quite sick of it now, no more English breakfast for me for the next 3 weeks!!

Welsh sign-post: Mermaid Quay is Cei'r For-Forwyn?? wtf?? I can't even pronounce any of these words... and I never knew that Roald Dahl was from Wales!! Goes to show how much I know about Wales or UK...

Don't ask me what building this is, cuz I don't know and I can't read it. Go figure it yourself.

The fabulous Welshcakes... yummy... it smelt so good and tasted equally good. They were freshly baked on a cast iron girddle using a traditional Welsh family recipe.. yummy...

By Cardiff pier, one whole big POKER family! :)

A big toast to our successful road trip! Cheers!

And of course, kudos to our two drivers who drove us there and brought us back safely. Thank you Naveen and Bin Bin. (And to KT and Chong who drove in intermediate intervals!)