Easter

A while back, John and I had considered going sailing over Easter weekend. He has a small-ish sailboat that we could have taken out in a regatta off the south of England each day... the plan was originally to do that and to camp somewhere nearby each night. Alas, the weather decided to complicate our plans.

On Wednesday, two days before we were planning to leave for the trip, the forecast called for heavy winds (too heavy for us to sail) and rain on Friday, Saturday and Monday of the four-day weekend. After a whole string of messages back and forth that night, we decided to cancel the trip and find something else to do.

I frantically looked for alternatives... could I book a last minute flight to somewhere in France or Switzerland, find a hostel with an open bed and ski for the weekend? Were there affordable flights to Ireland, where I've been considering for a while now that I want to spend at least a long weekend off in the countryside? Whenever I had a few minutes that Thursday morning at work, I was on travel websites trying to figure out possibilities. As you'd expect, everything was much more expensive than I wanted to consider paying, but I wasn't about to spend the weekend at home.

John and I ended up talking later on Thursday afternoon and decided to go to Wales instead. His girlfriend plays in the BBC orchestra in Cardiff and had just recently moved there... so we had a place to stay as a base for the weekend, and it was only a few-hour drive to get there.

We drove up there Friday afternoon (yes, it took just about the whole afternoon... it took more than 90 minutes to get from Lewisham just to Heathrow), cooked dinner, then explored town a bit at night, playing with night photography... a few of my photos are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/trenshaw/Cardiff

Saturday morning, walking through town, we found that there was a Cardiff v. Toulouise rugby match that afternoon, with tickets still available! Of course, we had to go! Great time, great tickets, and I'm actually starting to be interested in the game... maybe not yet a fully hooked fan, but definitely interested and much more readily able to follow it.

Sunday, we drove up into the Brecon Beacons, went on a short hike, drove through the hills, explored a bit and eventually made our way back into London that night. It was a great way to get out of London for a few days, relax and see Wales!

Now, for the fun part... it'd been raining when we left London on Friday. By the time we got to Cardiff, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The weekend was a perfect spring weekend... warm, sunny and great for being outside. We saw sailboats out on the harbor in Cardiff and had this nagging feeling that we may have missed a great weekend of sailing. As we crossed the M25 coming back into London on Sunday, though, it started raining again. Apparently the weather had been miserable down here all weekend. It may have been dumb luck, but no complains here!