Keeping Up with Kimmy: Wales Adventure Weekend

For our last weekend of traveling, a group of about 32 students from my program headed to Wales on Friday morning. We took a train there and enjoyed seeing the English and Welsh countrysides. It was about a five and a half hour train ride, including a transfer. The train makes multiple stops along the way and at one of the stops an older man got on and sat by me. He struck up conversation with me and we ended up talking for about a half hour until he had to get off the train. He was a very nice man and told me he loved my American accent. It made my day talking to him! Once we got to the final train station at Fishguard Harbour, the group that was in charge of us for the weekend picked us up and took us back to the lodge where we would be staying. Fortunately, Hannah and I got a room to ourselves. After we got settled in to our room, we went next door to the dining hall/common room and had dinner. After we ate, a bunch of us went for a walk to go explore the land and see the coast. When we got back, we relaxed and played cards. We went to bed fairly early since we had to rest up for our full day ahead of us.

Saturday morning was our first activity. We were split into three groups and Hannah and I were in the same group luckily. Our morning activity was kayaking. We got all of our gear on and received a few basic instructions and then headed over to the bay to begin. We kayaked up and down the coast on some pretty rough water. I capsized three times because I was challenging the waves and trying to follow our guide who was moving through some pretty rough spots. The water was absolutely freezing, but at least I had a wet suit on to help a little. We even went into a sea cave which was pretty cool. Our guide also brought a thermos of hot chocolate with him so at one point when we were all gathered outside the sea cave, we passed that around which was nice and very tasty. When we finished kayaking, we headed back to the lodge for lunch. Then it was time for the afternoon activity.

We had coasteering next. This consists of climbing, jumping, and swimming along the coast. We would climb across all these rocks, find a good spot to jump into the water, and then swim to the next set of rocks and start over again. One of the times we jumped, I asked if I could do anything and our guide said it was fine, so I did a back flip off the rock into the water. I was pretty excited to be able to say I back-flipped into the sea. :) During this activity as well, we found another sea cave to go into. The tide was high at this point, so we were only able to swim in about half way. Once we swam out, we were at the spot where our biggest jump was. After being thrown around by the waves, we finally made it out of the water and onto some rocks. We climbed to the top and prepared for our 25-foot jump. One at a time we jumped back into the thrashing water. Some of us, including myself, actually jumped twice from this spot. Then it was time to start heading back. This was definitely an exhausting activity but it was by far my favorite. When we got back to the lodge we had dinner, relaxed, and once it was dark we had a bonfire. It was the perfect ending to such an adventurous day. Everyone went to bed early again since we were all wiped out from the activities and still had one more in the morning.

Our last activity Sunday morning was a 7-mile hike along the coast. Our leader drove us out to the starting point and handed us a map to get back to the lodge. We had the most beautiful views as we hiked. It took us between two and a half hours to three hours to make it back. By that time, lunch was ready and we were able to gain back our energy. After lunch, we got our bags together and the adventure group drove us back to the train station where we boarded and headed back to London.

Not only did I have a blast doing some awesome adventurous activities, but I made some new friends over the weekend as well that are in my program in London. This weekend gave us all a chance to get to know each other better and make some amazing memories together. I will miss traveling with my friends and seeing such great places.