WELCOME TO WALES

Sunday morning Robin and I got up and got a cab to Euston Station to catch the train to Manchester’s Piccadilly Station. We got to the station a bit early, so we grabbed a bite to eat and waited for the train. In this case train meant train in the classic sense. We wouldn’t be going underground.

We ran into a snag when we boarded. We were bringing our suitcases, and the train didn’t have a lot of space for large suitcases. I put a large suitcase in my seat and sat across from Robin. A fellow had a ticket for the seat I was in, but he was nice enough to seat in another open seat.

The train ride itself was uneventful. The English countryside was pretty. Robin and I talked a bit, read a bit. There was a third person at our table, but she slept most of the trip. My suitcase didn’t say much, because, well, it’s kind of boring and doesn’t have a mouth.

We arrived at Manchester Piccadilly Station, and got a cab to take us to the Enterprise car rental place. We got ourselves a Citroën SUV, and then, the fun began!

Yes, UK cars have their steering wheels on the right sides of their cars. Yes, UK cars drive on the left side of the road. Yes, it is possible for an American driver who’s never driven a UK car to drive a UK car. But I’m not sure it’s possible for an American driver to ENJOY driving said UK vehicle on said UK roads, while driving a French-made vehicle that wants to quit at the first sign of trouble, and having one Robin Satterly as a passenger.

Robin started out well enough, but her love and support evaporated quickly under the onslaught of the sheer terror and anxiety that is me driving a new vehicle in a completely different system. One thing that American roads have over UK roads is that they are wider. UK roads are as narrow as #@&!, and they don’t have shoulders. This only increased Robin’s anxiety.

She started out reminding me to get to the left, and when the left side of the SUV was getting close to the curb. Within minutes, under the constant onslaught of driving, her supportive sentences became curt, tense one-word commands. “LEFT!” “CURB!” “CURB!” I woke up that night in a cold sweat after a nightmare in which she could only speak the word, “CURB!” Do you have any idea how hard it is to communicate with someone with a one-word vocabulary? Robin woke up from her sleep in a cold sweat after a nightmare in which I didn’t understand what ‘left’ and ‘curb’ meant.

Once I got onto the highway, there was a bit of respite, although we did learn that Siri has a bit of an issue with UK roads as well, as she sent us the wrong way when we were trying to find a particular shop. So we got that sorted and continued on our way to Wales. One of the things we noticed along the highway were these warning signs that said, “Badgers”. I thought maybe it meant something in British vernacular, but it turns out that there are enough actual freaking badgers that suicidally run into the road that they need to put up warning signs. They’re big enough, 25lbs, that if a car hits them, they can do a lot of damage.

We got to Conwy, and it took us three tries to get the right road. I wasn’t sure if it was because every road in Conwy appeared to be one-way, or Robin’s incessant “CURB!”, but we finally figured it out and pulled into the parking place at the rear of the condo in which we were staying. Robin spent some time throwing up Hail Marys to the heavens. I rolled my eyes because despite the number of curbs I hit, the tires were in great shape, we were alive and well, and no badgers were hurt.

To get into the condo, I got the key out of the lockbox, and then found out that the lock would only work if we did something with the door handle, turned the key the right way, entered the correct 50-digit cheat code into a controller we didn’t, and sacrificed a badger to the local, ancient pagan Welsh god Booji. We go that sorted and got into the condo. After I lugged all the suitcases up the kajillion stairs to the door to the condo, Robin made the executive decision that we we leave them on the first floor of the condo, and not have me lug them up any more stairs. I gave that plan a double thumbs up, and we set out to find a place to get some dinner.

We settled on a nearby place called the Erskine Arms. The food was good, the beer was good. And the woman I tried my Welsh on didn’t speak any Welsh. Her son, however, was a big Manchester United supporter, and he came over and we talked football for a bit.

We went back to the condo, sacrificed another badger to Booji, and got into the condo to get some sleep.

We were finally in Wales! Now I needed something to get badger blood out of my clothes.