Heading to Wales and 2 SERVAS Visits, July 4, 2018, WTRD's 28-31

Chris and Marion  - Our first SERVAS Hosts

Roz with our second SERVAS host, Joanna

July 4-July 8 WALES
Our First of Two SERVAS Visits

We said goodbye to one of our host's Collette at Highclere and headed toward Wales by 10:00 in the morning.

Prince of Wales Bridge over Bristol Channel into Wales

Russ and I are members of an organization called SERVAS.  If you keep up with our blogs, you know that we joined SERVAS in the USA in 2013 at the same time as we joined Friendship Force.  Both organizations

"SERVAS is a worldwide cooperative cultural exchange network of travelers and hosts working together to foster peace, goodwill and mutual respect."

"Friendship Force is a non-profit cultural organization focused on promoting understanding, cultural education and citizen diplomacy through homestay Journeys and personal friendships."

Both organizations are focused on building peace through friendship.  SERVAS is catered primarily to independent travelers and individual host who make their own arrangements with one another.  Friendship Force is a locational club organization and is formally organized to send 15-20+ FF club members to other member clubs for hosting.  FFI has about 300 clubs in 60 different countries.  

We enjoy being a part of both organizations because we love to travel, love to learn about other cultures, love to make friends out of strangers, and appreciate the economical savings of traveling under the umbrella of these two groups that provide hosing with no cost for accommodations.  Most of all we believe that making friends around the world is preferable to making enemies, and in a small way we work toward building peace.

We have visited SERVAS families in homes in Finland, Poland, Turkey, and the UK.  On this trip we are visiting SERVAS members in Wales.  Our first two night stay is with a couple in 

Llangennech, Lianelli, Carmarthenshire.  They live in an old farm house and still hold at least 10 acres of land.

Both are retired physicians who have both a considerable amount of experience both traveling and hosting.

They were both GPs in Wales, and took care of the folks in their village including many ailing coal miners.

Coal mining was the primary industry in this area.  Today the coal mines are closed and the blackened valleys and the lungs of the afflicted are recovering.

While we are here we visited the "Green Valley", a former coal mining area that according to our hosts Joanna and Chris is unrecognizable from former days when the hills were black, the forest denuded, and the houses covered with coal silt.










Today the valley is verdant, the railroad that transported coal converted to gentle walking trails, and the company row houses are gradually giving way to the upwardly mobile who call this valley home.

We enjoyed a long walk from mid valley to the end and back.  Chris and Marion are expecting another SERVAS American family from Georgia later today.  Their home is big enough to accommodate all of us.  We gather together around the kitchen table for dinner,

share stories, play Uno with grandchildren and later introduce Left Right Center to the Adults.

All too soon our visit was over.  Thank you Marion and Chris!

we left on July 6, and headed from "coal" country to "slate" country.  It took us most of the day to reach our destination, but loved the vistas, lakes, valleys, and villages along the way.

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Mountains of Slate not fit for Commercial Sales

Our SERVAS host Joanna is a retired teacher of music and classical singing. She herself has lovely soprano voice and a generous personality, and is currently working as a TESOL (Teaching English as a Second Language), so that she can take some additional useable skills upon her travels.

Joanna coming out of her front door.

The deck into a private garden off our bedroom.

Dinner

After dinner we take a nice long walk through the river valley where Joanna lives.

Slate comes in various colors and cleaves in flat slabs

On our second day with Joanna, we take off on our own to Snowdon.  We plan to visit the Slate Museum and take the cog train to  the top of Mount Snowdon which is about the same elevation as Colfax.  Unlike the gradual climb through the foothills, Mount Snowdon rises dramatically upwards.  Had we more time and the weather was not so hot we would have hiked to the top, but not today.

Our first stop is the slate museum.  Slate is still mined in this valley, but not to the extent that it was.

After our visit to the Slate Museum, we took the Snowdon Cog Train to the top of the mountain.  The hills were alive with hikers enjoying the unusually warm and sunny weather.

We have half an hour once we reach the station to climb the rest of the way to the top, enjoy the view and take photos before rebounding and heading down the hill.  We have made the all day trek up and back in two and half hours by train.

Snowdon Traffic to the Top

King of the Mountain on the Highest Point in the UK!

How Human Kind Changes the Landscape and the Environment

On our way down from the mountain, it looks to us as if a dying wish may have been honored for this man in a wheel chair by his friends and family.  A close up of his scalp looks as if he is bald and has lesions on his scalp.  This was incredibly moving.  Perhaps this was just a loving gesture and he will be well.  Let's hope so.

A Lone Tree in a rocky grassland.

Alas, our second visit filled with great stories, good times, and a personal relationship has come to an end and we leave for England in the morning.  But before we go we look through the old school telephone and see lots of Worralls, one or two Nyes, one Tibbets, many Shaws and Lewis.  With Liverpool not far, we suspect than many of our ancestors may have live here in Wales.  The Welsh language is still in use.  It is very difficult for us to understand or even pronounce.  The people are fine, and we bid goodbye to Joanna and to the country that could have been of our ancestors.

We leave for Liverpool back into England.

All is Well With the Worrall Travel Rs in Wales.

Highclere Castle and a Quarter Final Win for England, WTRD 27

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Today has been an outstanding day.  We had a ticketed time for 1:30 today at Highclere Castle.  If you aren't a Downton Abbey fan you probably are not aware that this is the primary location for filming this series.  Highclere has been the background for numerous movies, but Downton Abbey is the series that has generated huge surges of visitors and enough income for starting some of the major repairs needed.  

As Downton fans, being here is a big deal for us. We had a leisurely morning in our accommodation, but got ourselves ready and out the door at 12:00 for a stroll to the castle.  Our AirBnB host told us how to walk the back roads to the castle.  

It took us about an hour to walk to Highclere, enjoying the scenery along the way, past cottages and and country estates.  

Lord and Lady Carnavon live in the big house in the winter when the Castle is closed to tourists, and retreat to a summer cottage on the property during tourist season.

Our first glimpse of Highclere on 6,000 acres

We were the first tour group of the season and bought a special ticket for today.  It is listed as a special tour.  We don't really know what that means but are looking forward to finding out.

It turns out that our tour was limited in size and leisurely paced.  There are about 60 of us all together (usually there are 1300 people a day!) going through the castle.  The  60 of us are split into three groups with three guides, and Lady Carnarvon meets us on the third step up from the bottom of the grand staircase and welcomes us to the castle.  Wow, didn't expect this.  The small groups, ours had 12 adults and four children start in the older part of the home built during the Georgian era.  Lady Carnarvon then catches up with our tour group for a little while as she passes through and out the back door to do her work.  She is a blogger, writer, and takes an active roll in running the castle and promoting it.  The current Earl is the eighth in succession to the Castle.  

Our guide had been a staff member before Downton Abbey was filmed here and had some great stories to tell us.  She also served as one of the overseers to the film crew of Downton Abbey.  We were unable to take photographs inside the estate, so the photos you see of the interior were taken from a complementary book given to us at the end of the tour.  

We spent nearly 2 hours inside moving from rooms that were in the series and a few that were not. 

Mary's bedroom and the downstairs servant areas were filmed in a studio setting. The rooms downstairs in Highclere where the kitchen would have been in Downton Abbey had long  been converted to a King Tut and Egyptian exhibition and museum.  The fifth Earl of Carnarvan was an amateur Egyptologist and funder of Howard Carter who discovered the tomb in 1922. This is a fascinating story of discovery and demise of the fifth Earl.

Upon the conclusion of house tour and Egyptian museum, we were given vouchers for the tea room in the back courtyard where we served tea sandwiches, tea cakes and biscuits, and of course tea, coffee, juices, or sparkling water.  We shared a table with a mother and daughter from Hong Kong.  The daughter was in her twenties interning as a fashion designer in London.  She spoke excellent English.  Her mother had come for a visit and did not speak any English.  We learned from the daughter, that they had watched the whole series of Downton Abbey with Chinese subtitles.  The series is popular all over the world.

When finished with our tea it was nearly 4:00 pm.  Our last stop was the gift shop where we were given a gift bag that weighed at least 5 lbs.  Each of us received a coffee table size book of Downton Abbey.  We were able to trade one of the books for two of Lady Carnarvon's other books on the Ladies of Carnarvon.  All were hand signed by Lady Carnarvon.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wondering the grounds and gardens.  We even found the Secret Garden used in the film of the same name.  

The grounds closed at 5:00 at the same time we walked out.  We had the gardens virtually to ourselves.  

It was wonderful and a birthday present I hope to always remember.  By the time we returned to our accommodations and then walked to dinner to the Red House just down the street from our accommodations, we had logged about 6 miles of walking for the day.

Our television in our room doesn't really work, so we were looking forward to watching the quarter final match between England and Columbia at the local pub.  It was an exciting game that culminated in an overtime kick out.  The emotions of the pub goers and soccer fans were high, low, high and finally jubilant for the Brits!  

Everyone is in watching the game!

Tense moments

Jubilant moments

Mixed moments - man in the middle cannot bring himself to watch

Last Minute Victory for England

It was a great way to end our day.

Whatever country we are in wins!

All is Well with the Worrall Travel Rs in Highclere.