We had to wait a whole 3 months for our honeymoon but it was the most perfect week, so I'm not too mad about it. I was determined to have a cabin with a hot tub and I particularly wanted to go to Scotland but finding the right area at a good price was way harder than we anticipated! So we ended up settling for Wales. Well, I say settling, we do actually love Wales. I didn't get my hot tub though! Fuming.
Monday
We set off for Wales at 9am Monday morning. It was actually quite a nice drive (says the passenger princess over here), we chatted, we laughed, I did some journaling and we stopped off at a services station halfway through to stretch out and get a Starbucks. After another 3.5 hours on the road, we finally arrived at our cute little shepherds hut.
Tuesday
Our first mission of the week was the Osprey Centre. Josh has really got into wildlife photography this year and was determined to see some Ospreys. If you don't know what an Osprey is, it's a beautiful big bird of prey - one of the biggest out there - who has no natural predators! Unfortunately there were no Ospreys around that day, but the centre is so stunning I didn't mind; just look at those views!
After giving up the osprey hunt, we decided to check out Machynlleth town centre. It was quite a nice little town, lots of antique shops! We went into every single one and really took our time exploring. We also found an art display that was quite interesting - the book this mannequin was reading really tickled me!
We grabbed a Greggs for lunch and headed back to the hut to eat and decide what to do for the rest of the day. It was about 2/3pm at this point, and we weren't quite ready to call it a day yet. We decided to pop 30 minutes down the road to the Dolgoch Waterfall. Apparently there's a few of them, and I can't remember exactly which one we went to, but it was so lovely! We really took our time there and Josh loved playing about with the shutter speed on his camera. We stayed for a couple hours, then headed back to the hut for the evening.
.JPG)
~3.JPG)
Towards the end of the evening, we remembered that there was supposed to be a meteor shower that night and neither of us had seen one, so we got all set up with blankets on the grass and stared up at the sky for a couple hours. Oh my god it was one of the most incredible things I'd ever seen in my life! We got to see at least 10 shooting stars before having to call it a night as the clouds rolled in. It was a really special night and I'm so glad we remembered.
Wednesday
Wednesday came and it was time to get our hiking boots on. Hafren forest was on the agenda. I'd never heard of it but apparently it's one of the most beautiful forests in the UK. It did not disappoint. I won't lie, I did spend a lot of the walk in a grump because I was mad that Josh was getting better photos than I was. Yes, I know, very childish of me, I'm working on it! But I did my best not to ruin the walk. To be fair, once I got up the hill and watched the buzzards flying around I cheered up considerably. It really was a beautiful walk and I would very much like to go again so I can appreciate it better. I did love the fact that we took the walk slowly. In the past Josh was so focused on getting to the end that I would spend all my time in pain trying to keep up with him, but now that photography is a huge passion of Josh's, he's finally learned to slow down and a two hour trail took us four hours! We also found a waterfall and Josh took himself for a paddle.
.JPG)
Thursday
On Thursday, it was finally time for me to choose what to do for the day! I wanted a break from hiking and chose the Magic of Life butterfly house. If you've seen my August Vision Board you'll know I'm hugely into butterflies at the moment! Of course I had to go. I absolutely loved every second of it, although having the butterflies lick the sugar water off my hands felt very weird and tickled a lot.
When we were done there, we headed off to Bwlch Nant yr Arian forest visitor centre to see the red Kites. More birds of prey, yay! It was a very wet, foggy day but it didn't stop us enjoying the walk while waiting for the 2pm feed.
The display was absolutely incredible, and the weather cleared up a bit so we could actually see them! Unfortunately there was a huge amount of seagulls as well but seeing the kites was still amazing!
On the way back to the hut, we also stopped off at Furnace Falls. It wasn't amazing, but Josh still enjoyed the history part of it. We also got a bit lost trying to find parking and ended up driving up this incredibly steep hill which only had a path big enough for one car. It was very sketchy but it was still fun and we had a good giggle.
Back at the hut we decided to get a fire going and enjoyed a long chat, including a hypothetical "what would you do if you won 2 million." I was surprised at how different our answers were! Although Josh had me down to a t - I'd get my hair, nails and lashes done a lot more often!
Friday
By Friday we were starting to struggle to figure out what to do and getting pretty tired. We decided to check out the local beach towns, Aberdyfi and Tywyn. They were not the best. Aberdyfi was very pretty but slacking in the tourist attractions. We were on the hunt for souveniers to bring home but nowhere had any! Not even Machynlleth. Tywyn was even worse and we spent £9 on some awful milkshakes. We did however stop off at the nicest fish and chip shop ever, I honestly haven't stopped thinking about their chips!
We then headed back to Hafren forest to check out the osprey hide. Unfortunately we still didn't see any ospreys and it was like 4pm by then so we gave up and headed back to the hut.
Saturday
We decided to leave a day early. We'd had a lovely time but we were knackered and decided to have Sunday at home to prep for work on Monday. We didn't rush though, we slowly packed up and made sure the hut was clean, then we headed back to the osprey centre.
We actually saw them this time! It was so nice to finally see them, but we do wish the nest was ever so slightly closer to the observatory. The centre does have a Youtube channel though, and I have been really enjoying watching their videos and checking up on the live feed to see if they're there or not!
On the way out, we then spent about £60 in the gift shop. Oops! We got a mug each, treated Charlie to an Osprey cuddly, myself a beanie and a fridge magnet. We did think about getting souviners for others from there but because they were all just fully osprey based, it did seem a bit pointless - don't think anyone would have appreciated it like we did.
Then we had the long drive home. We didn't get home until about 7:30pm and we were fully done in.
We absolutely loved our time in Wales, we didn't really want to come home!
Saph x
0 yorum:
Post a Comment