I take a bow, tipping my cap to the crowd, and then giving sis a hug. We split, I show here my mansion, and then I take her to lunch after showing her scenic Hyde Park and its smatterings of swans. It being St. Pattie's day, I take her to the authentic Irish pub in town, good old Finnegan's Wake. It's a jolly scene inside, a sea of green and black, the workers decked out in bright green suspenders and hats, and the customers all guzzling pitch black pints of Guinness. A bit famished from all my walking this morning, we settle in for some authentic Irish fare on the most Irish of holidays. Lunch consists of Irish stew -- a hodge podge of lamb and carrots in a thick broth, served with potatoes and boiled cabbage -- and a picturesque pint of Guinness and black currant. The food and brew are absolutely delicious, and we say a fond farewell to my friends at Finnegan's and then hop on a train to Wales, that thin sliver West of England.
A short five hour train ride later (replete with the necessary train change and delay, this time due to there being no driver. (No driver? How the hell does that work? Who was driving us here before, the Phantom of the Railways?) This forces us to bus the rest of the journey, making me a little nervous since we are supposed to meet people at a specific time, but we finally arrive at Haverford West in Wales and greet the rest of the group for our adventure weekend.
We pile into this big white van and Sofie drives us to the lodge, navigating the white behemoth of steel and wheels on roads bumpier than the face of a pubescent with pox and narrower than the crack of Jack Sprat's ass. (Seriously, it feels like we're going to the Bat Cave -- cramped, secluded, one lane country roads, the sides of which slope straight to the sky, blocking out what little light remains. I start humming the theme song and calling the kid next to me Robin, garnering me nothing but strained and uneasy smiles. ("Uh, is your brother all right? He seems a little...strange...")
We finally arrive at our temporary dwelling, a sprawling ranch-style house surrounded by great fields. Inside, it plays like an MTV Real World house -- bright solid colors on the walls, fireplaces everywhere, a pool room with white Christmas lights lining the beams of the ceiling -- it's wonderful.
Having not eaten since London, getting on seven hours ago now, we are fed a feast of vegetarian lasagna (the best lasagna I've had in years -- crispy cheese on top, big chunks of vegetables inside), rolls, and some mind-blowing apple pie for desert.
After that meal I could leave a happy man, but I hang around, play board games with the five others on the trip, drinking some more Guinness (oh yeah -- they have a bar here, too. Aw, heaven...) and turning in early so as to wake in the morn refreshed and ready for anything.
We're going to do a combo of rock climbing, swimming, and cliff diving. We suit up in the wet suits -- they're tight rubbery suits under which you wear a swimsuit or underwear (or if you're a swinger like me, nothing at all...) and which cover your whole body minus the feet, head, and hands. I put on my beat up gym shoes over my bare feet and pile into the big white van ready to leave Parcynole Fach, the wee town near Mathry where the lodge is, and head out to Adereiddy.
A short ride later on the perilously narrow streets (you have to honk whenever you're going around corners so you don't get hit head on, since there's only the one lane) and we arrive on the shores of a beach, one filled with gravely sand near the water and grapefruit sized, smooth rocks further back.
The group dons their helmets and life vests and then trudges off towards the giant cliffs that stretch into the water. We will be climbing along said cliffs, and the scattered rocky islands that pepper its perimeter, on our journey, mixing in bouts of swimming here and there. We climb around for a while, skittering over rocks covered with an endless film of gray, which comes from the sea of tiny barnacles, each no bigger than the tip of an eraser, that have attached themselves to the rocks. These offer great traction on the otherwise algae covered and slippery rocks, but it also cuts the hell out of your hands if you're forced to touch them (And if you're a good climber, you shouldn't have to too often. You're just supposed to use your feet, making sure you have a firm foothold whenever you climb, and using your hands only for balance, but sometimes you can't help it.) which feels really nice with the salt water getting in the web of small scratches...)
After a few more minutes we run out of real estate and are forced to get in the water to swim to the next island. No one makes a move, so I say sayonara to my sanity and jump in head first into the bright blue water. The initial cold hits you like a cannonball to the crotch, taking your breath away faster than my dad takes credit cards from my sister, but after a minute or two, the wetsuit starts working and it heats the layer of water than is between your skin and the suit, so that portion of you is surprisingly warm, but your hands, feet, and face feel like solid slabs of unfeeling ice.
We swim to the island, climb some more, and then spot a crack in the rock where water still flows underneath. You can hear this great rumbling sound each time the water rises, and this can mean only one thing -- cave, baby, cave. We plunge back into the water and file through the crack, letting the tide of the water carry us into the darkness and then into a great, sunlit crevasse that stretches to the sky. The tide keeps us on our way, passing rocks covered with pink anemones and then to an outcropping of rocks on the other side.
This offers us a chance to catch our breath, and then someone decides this would be the perfect spot to do our first cliff jump off the side of the rocks. It's only six or seven feet above the water, but it's still a little unsettling, especially after I nearly slip and fall off, tearing up my hands trying to stop from going prematurely over the edge. I recoup, recompose myself, and then jump off, no big deal.
It's quite fun and a good preparation for later when we jump off the regular, higher spots. We tool around some more, swimming and climbing, taking in the gorgeous, sun-soaked scenery, listening to one of the guys, a bespectacled bloke named Dan, talk about how great it is to piss in your wetsuit ("Seriously, man, it feels so good. I just can't help myself. Ahh...") and for the rest of the time I make sure not to swim behind Dan, silently cringing everytime I hear hum go, "Ahh..." in the distance behind me. Ech..
We finally arrive at the spot for cliff diving, a series of three slate pillars carved out of the side of the rocks, and a fourth which is simply the tip-top of the cliff high above. It's all situated in a little nook called Blue Lagoon, but it looks more like a secluded gulf.
To become a cliff diving champeen you must first pass three tests coming in the form of increasingly lofty leaps of faith. The first is about eight feet above the water and is easy enough. The second is about fourteen feet up and is probably my favorite because you can run off the ledge and get further away from the cliff (it's quite a thrill to have your adrenaline pumping and to just take off sprinting, one minute the ground being beneath you, then behind, and a sea of nothingness let below your sneakers.) I do this level a couple of times, getting more comfortable with the process and then moving to Level 3, a jump of about twenty feet. You can't run off this one -- you have just enough space to take one big step and leave terra firma behind. This one makes your stomach rise a little, the surface of the water hesitating from greeting you a second or two longer than you body expects, creating a brief bout of nervous apprehension before impact.
And then it was time to graduate to Level 4, the final frontier, the tip of the iceberg of insanity. Up to this point I hadn't hesitated at all, I just jumped. Now, though, I made a crucial mistake -- I looked over the edge (I even did the spit test, spitting off the edge and timing the descent (between two and three seconds. Yikes...)) So I'm a little nervous. I start running around on the top of the cliff, sprinting back and fort to work out the butterflies and generate a little heat (the frigid waters along with my unease have dropped my body temperature and I'm now trying to fight off the shivers). I keep sprinting and in the meanwhile people are jumping off -- two of the guys, Jackie -- and yet I still can't do it (Alex won't tell us how high it is -- he's afraid of worrying us -- but he will tell us that spinal injuries are possible from this height, and that an army guy learned this the hard way a couple of weeks ago on the tour. Thanks, I feel much better about this now...)
I start rolling around in the grass -- it's the softest stuff ever. You put your foot on it and it sinks into a green pillow -- and then I pop up and start running around again. (I think to myself I must look a bit like a dog on a summer day, rolling and running to and fro.) While I'm making like Lassie, another one jumps off, leaving just two of us on top.
I can see he's hesitant, too, but I refuse to be a wiener, so, having found a song to pump me up, I make one more lap around and talk to myself to further motivate myself ("Two girls have gone, and one of them was your sister. You've jumped out of a plane before, so quit being such a bitch and jump already.") and then I do just that.
It takes a second to realize what I've just done -- leapt off a big pile of rocks -- and then my stomach, which rose a little last time, goes straight to my throat and starts coming out my ears. Just as when I leapt out of the plane, I try to yell, but sound is unable to emerge. My knees start to come up to my chin, their ill-timed attempt to return to the fetal position, and I have to concentrate to force them down again. The surface still seemingly days away -- how long have I been up here? -- I take this opportunity to compose some sonnets, balance my checkbook, design a methodology for eradicating world hunger and for introducing some taste to British food (one word: spices. As foreign a concept to them as ice hockey is to a Vietnamese sailor) before finally exploding through the surface. The noise my feet makes is extremely loud, like a balloon bursting in a cave, and I again am forced to embrace the frigid depths below. What a rush.
All of us still pumped (except for the one wuss / wiseman who didn't jump) we make our way back to the van, pile in, and go back to the lodge. Over a meal of hot chicken noodle soup and sourdough bread, Alex tells me he was worried about my jump. He said if I hadn't put my legs back straight, I would have taken most of the force of impact on my tailbone, not my feet, and I probably would have vaporized parts of my spine (good thing I paid attention to the morning's training, huh?)(Alex also uses this time to tell us how high that last jump was -- 35 feet, one foot for every degree of the water we were swimming in. That's high, and that's frigging cold, man...)
My appetite undeterred (not even potential paralysis can assuage my everlasting hunger), I finish another bowl of soup, polish off a PB&J, and then pile back into the van for an afternoon hike. The destination is the coast and we start walking along the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, looking out across the ocean to catch a peek of Ireland out in the distance (I swear I can hear the drunken people shouting about St. Patrick's Day even from this far away.) It's a beautiful walk along the coast, and we climb up mountainous outpatches (one in particular was pretty difficult to get up since it broke from the path. Three or four of us scaled the face of this mountain, the sides of which dropped straight down to the shore hundreds of feet below. Once we got to the top, though, we're treated to a cool sight of this rocky island just off the beach with water swirling around it. This was interesting because you could see the two directions of water flow coming together, colliding on one side of the island in big waves, and then forming swirling eddies on the backside, the fallout from the tumultuous tide. We laid in the patches of the thick, soft grass that topped it, same as at Blue Lagoon, for awhile and then headed back down to join Jackie and the other slackers we left guarding the path.
We continue on our way, admiring the mole hills and dodging the piles of horse, sheep, and cow crap that are plastered on the path (I try to approach the previous owner of some of the sheep shit, a big hairy ewe grazing on the side of the path, but it runs away, as do all of its friends. Apparently that sheep in Scotland learned its lesson and has been talking...) By the time we're done with all of our trekking, we've made it all the way back to the lodge, a good eight or nine mile hike at our backs.
I eat some dinner (a chicken casserole, baked potatoes, and peas), drink a couple more Guinness for dessert while playing Scattergories, and then collapse into bed utterly exhausted.
We play a quick game of tag with a tennis ball -- I'm "it" and I quickly tag two people, beaning them with the ball, and am on my way to #3 when my intended target flips his boat (Amazing. He'd rather brave drowning than take his chances with me. I'm a thug, baby...)
This spoils the rest of the game (near death experiences tend to do that sometimes) and so we spend the rest of the morning cruising around. We go through narrow rock passages, troll about on the wide open sea, fighting the chop, and even have a kayaking race (I won't even bother to mention who won that. I started last, and let's just say I finished a little bit better...)
After two and a half hours and close to four miles of endless rowing, we all pile back into the van and head back to the lodge. After a lunch of veggie soup and bread, we pack our things, I stoke another fire while people complain about how sore they are (I feel fine, but the next day the inside of my thighs are rather sore. This is because you sit in the boat almost Indian-style, and you control the side to side movement of the boat with the insides of your legs. Ouch.) Sufficiently full and warm, we hop into the van and a short train ride later (complete with yet another premature termination and a resulting bus ride) and we're back in London, a weekend of true adventure at our backs.
We start the tour at Kensington Palace (Princess Di's old place), go around Hyde Park, pass through the Notting Hill Gate area (where the movie was also shot), and eventually stop near St. Paul's. I take her to the Royal Courts of Justice, St. Bride's Church (the journalist's church, the spire of which inspired the invention of the tiered wedding cake) and then walk around St. Paul's (while walking through the crypt I spy the grave of none other than Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin. Does anyone know where he did his research at?) After going to the top (hitting every stair again) and walking through its amazing innards, we stop for lunch.
The place of consumption is Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, an awesome old pub which Dickens wrote about and frequently dined in. It's a classic old bar -- very dark, a bit chilly, and the eating area in the basement is eerily reminiscent of a dungeon. A pub has been on the site since 1538, but this burned down in the Great Fire of 1666 and the current incarnation was rebuilt the year after, so we had lunch (I had a yummy steak and ale pie with baked beans) in a place that's over 300 years old! (333, to be exact. It's been around for the reigns of sixteen different kings and queens!)
After this, we head to the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, then hop on a riverboat cruise up the river Thames. We get off at Big Ben, walk around the surrounding Houses of Parliament, and then go into Westminster Abbey. This is the church of the well-to-do (whereas St. Paul's is the church of the people) and is truly a sight. It has gorgeous quires, high arched ceilings, and scads of interesting finds within its walls. There are memorials to Churchill, Sir Isaac Newton, TS Eliot, Henry James, Lewis Carroll, DH Lawrence, Handel, and Shakespeare, while Alfred Lord Tennyson, Chaucer, Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, and Charles Darwin are all buried inside. (So are royals like Mary, Queen of Scots, King Henry VII, and Queen Elizabeth I, to name but a few.)
We pass the coronation chair, a rundown thing built in 1301 and used at every coronation since (and used to house the Stone of Destiny that I saw in Edinburgh), and then head outside again. Our last stop is Buckingham Palace, and then it's off to dinner at Sports Cafe, a sports bar in Piccadilly Circus, that chic shopping district. For dessert we head to Callaghan's, an Irish pub with live Irish music. We have a few drinks (all right, a lot -- way more than I should have since I have to work the next day) and then I get talked into going dancing. So, we take off for the shady (yet hilarious) Club Downunder, an Indian dance club we frequently laugh at, yet frequently attend. More shots, more dancing, and by one or two in the morning, I'm finally able to drag Jack away and I collapse on my floor, ready to wake up for work in less than six hours. Joy...