Welsh Week

Bryncrug
Is Murphy dead? If he is it serves him right, for his “law” is well at work in Wales this Christmas Season in the form of outfitters who are closed, out of specific gear, or mail orders that never shipped and thus…have never arrived. Our long list is still long and we have been forced to travel farther and farther each day at the suggestion of locals who know this shop or that shop in Shrewsbury, Birmingham, Wrexham etc… which leads to more suggestions for places beyond and away.
Our Cottage

North To Porthmadog

We had also scheduled several days of Ice and Mountain Climbing instruction only to watch our plans float away with rains and flooding that have been in historic proportions. Yesterday we stopped in at another outfitter and climbing center that we had contacted from Istanbul…only to find them closed. Funny thing is this outfitter has everything we need on the shelves. We can see through the barred windows all the equipment we need-just out of reach.


Last night I cracked open a book that I had been saving for this time away “A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush” is an adventurer’s travel classic and tells the story of Eric Newby and his escapades in the late 1940’s in Central Asia. The bit of frustration was driven deeper as I read that in preparing for his first trip to Asia he had traveled to Wales to learn to climb and had stayed just a few miles up the road from where we are staying. His first lessons in basic mountaineering had been at Mount Tryfan…the same as ours, and he had been outfitted in the same town we had traveled to yesterday.
The Kids Near Holy Head

To our credit we have rallied in the face of these annoyances with Steward Creativity and have discovered that the consumption of enormous quantities of fish & chips saturated in malt vinegar and ketchup work to detract and divert us from our outfitting frustrations…which leads me to wonder if a change in our SRE07 strategy may be in the offing…would it be possible to eat our way through Central Asia?