[Holidays] Jon’s Stag Do in Wales

I’ve just got home after the first of two weekends that I’m spending in North Wales this semester.  In a few weeks I’ll be traveling back down for the wedding of my friends Jon and Jenny from Warwick, which is taking place at RAF Valley on Anglesey. This weekend was the accompanying stag do for Jon, and it’s been good fun.

Beautiful Snowdonia (Credit: David Brown)

Jon arranged for us to stay in the shadow of Snowdon, so we were surrounded by fantastic scenery for the whole weekend. We were staying in a fairly big bunkhouse, with enough room for all 10 of us (and plenty more besides), plus some rudimentary cooking  facilities.  After we all arrived on Friday night we got some fish and chips in, and sat around eating and drinking (and drinking, and drinking), and catching up. Most of us had been at Warwick for overlapping periods in the lifesaving club, and it was interesting to find out what everyone else was up to now.

After not too late a night, we had a leisurely morning on Saturday, with breakfast and a quick trip to a small steam railway. Then we went on to our main activity for the weekend. Ian, Jon’s best man, arranged for us to go on canyoning. We met our guides, got changed into wetsuits and bum protectors, then hiked down to the river. The course we were taking involved some jumps, some slides, and some river walking, and ended with a zip line down into a large pool. The water was incredibly cold, and many of us were shivering uncontrollably by the end of it. We also couldn’t feel much in our hands or feet, but on the whole it was a fun experience and completely different to anything I’ve done before. The first half was great, as was the zip wire, but I didn’t particularly enjoy the large rock slide hanging onto a rope.

Me in the middle of the big canyon slide. That water was incredibly cold! (Credit: Nigel Burt)

After we all recovered from the cold we decamped to the pub for the evening, and had a really nice meal there, with more drinking and some embarrassing story telling for Jon.  It turns out that he’s really bad at answering questions about his future wife, but to be fair to him they were rather hard and she’d been surprisingly frank!

After another relatively early night, we made it up at a decent hour for a fry up, then took a quick trip to a Welsh slate mine before lunch, and goodbyes. I’m currently sitting on the train about half way through my 7 hour journey, but the weekend was worth the long roundtrip.

The bunkhouse that we were staying in. (Credit: David Brown)