Wales

It's easy to overlook Wales. Or not know it's there. Or forget about it entirely, even. 

Assuming you even knew about or had heard about Wales in the first place, can you pinpoint it on a map? And if you can, do you even want to spend time there? What's the big deal?

It's confusing to understand the appeal of the place. And political divisions and history and a re-emergence of national identity with a resurrected language after playing second fiddle (or is it third fiddle?) for a millennium or so don't help clarify anything.

It sits just to the west of England so is it part of England? Is it a separate country? How does it relate to Scotland and the United Kingdom and the British Isles and Great Britain? Why is there a Wales national team in the football (soccer) World Cup (although not this year) but not at the Olympic Games? Is Ireland in the mix here somehow? Or is that a different country? Or is the island of Ireland not just one country but two? And does that last question even have anything to with Wales? These are some tough questions to answer. It's difficult enough for people who have lived their entire lives near Wales, let alone folks who have never been there or contemplated being there. 

This year, we decided that we would spend more days and nights in Wales traveling than we would spend anywhere else abroad in 2026. Hopefully we'd get some clarity about just what this Wales place is and was. Hopefully.

Four puffins and a dragon. There are a lot of both in Wales.

There was a time it felt like I was in Wales a lot. Not a lot like living there or anything but it seemed like every summer in the mid-1970s (before we emigrated to the United States), we would borrow the caravan from my dad's mum and dad and take it and roam around Wales for a week or two. Probably. I don't know how many years it was, really. Maybe it was two. Maybe it was four. Maybe it was somewhere in between. I don't even know if it was one week at a time or two. Or if it was once or twice or three times a year. I just remember being in Wales a lot. Like every summer for a while. I can remember Portugal at age 4 and France at age 9 and 10. In between, all I remember travel-wise is Wales. 

I've stayed away since. Until this year. And honestly, my wife made me do it.

I resisted going back to Wales. I fought it. I'd been there already. Many times. And I was convinced there was nothing interesting to do there. 

For years, I got my way. But love and marriage is not always about getting your way. Sometimes you have to give in. Sometimes you have to let go. And sometimes when you stop fighting about the concept of something because you think it's going to be boring, you might end up loving the actual thing you've been fighting all this time. Sometimes, intertwined about and around all the other spectacular places on this planet that you want to visit, you have to go back to Wales and give it a shot. Once. Probably. 

I did. It was worth it.

Welsh cakes in Cardiff Market. Welsh cakes are very, very good.

Rainy Aberystwyth as seen from about halfway down the Aberystwyth Cliff Railway.

We didn't tour around Wales in 2026 in a caravan. We rented a car and we stayed in hotels. Bed and breakfasts in Llandudno in the north and Aberaeron in the west and a big, renovated Hilton with dysfunctional elevators in Cardiff. We thought Llandudno was a useful place to stay to daytrip from; we were underwhelmed by Cardiff; and we loved Aberaeron. I could easily live in our hotel room on the top floor of the Harbourmaster Hotel in Aberaeron harbor (or harbour, if you prefer) and look out over the Cardigan Bay for weeks or months. Or at least more than the three days that we actually did.

We explored Wales in a way that I never had as a kid. I imagine we had a lot more freedom than my parents did 50 or so years when they took me and my sister there. There was no caravan to drag around this year.  There were no kids needing to be catered to. And we probably are a bit more tolerant of driving hours and hours to get to places that are in the absolute middle of nowhere just so we can get a signature Wales experience than my parents were all those years ago. 

And full disclosure, there was a lot of driving with a lot of time spent on two-way, one-lane roads between hedges about six feet high on either side that curved between mostly farm properties with very little visibility and a sort of constant, continuing prayer that there is no other car actually on the road coming the other way any time soon. It's not relaxing driving. It's stressful.

It's also absolutely gorgeous. There are roads in Wales where you can be completely surrounded by green as you wind your way through the landscape. I mean hedges on both sides, fields in front of you and a full canopy of tree leaves over your head. There is green dripping all around you other than the thin strip of asphalt (with no center divider stripe) that you are traveling on. It's green in a way that other roads that I have driven in other countries have never quite been. 

Cefn-Coen Viaduct (top) and the resting place of the victims of the Aberfan mining disaster (bottom).

So is everything that exists in Wales boring? Absolutely not. I was way off base on my thinking here. I have no idea now why I fought against a Wales trip for so long. Just plain wrong might just sum up my attitude towards the place.

We split our time in Wales doing mostly two things: exploring history and exploring nature. Those two things are just fine with me. We spend a lot of time focusing on both when we travel. Nature in Wales meant the coast and the seaside. Nature also meant wildlife reserves and farms and boats to islands packed with birds. It meant mountains. It even meant driving down those completely green two-way, one-lane roads. It is everywhere in Wales. 

Welsh history is darker than Welsh nature. Edward I conquered Wales and made the Welsh feel every part of it. Rich men used poor men to extract slate and coal from the Earth and transported their spoils over fantastic works of civil engineering. And men invented massive machines to process a product so simple but so valuable and in the process wrecked a cottage industry comprised of men and women working out of their homes.

The event from Welsh history that hit us hardest though was in a town called Aberfan near Merthyr Tydfil just a bit north of Cardiff in the center of mining country. On October 21, 1966, a colliery spoils tip collapsed and cascaded down a hill and buried the Pantglas Junior School. It killed 116 children and 28 adults, most within the school itself. Of all the ways to go out of life, I can't imagine too many ways more awful than being buried in coal spoils as a child. The cemetery holding the victims of this disaster is chilling. Just grave after grave of kids aged between 7 and 10. It's discouraging.

Aberaeron harbour from our hotel room (top) and jackdaws and chimney pots (bottom). Chimney pots were definitely a thing.

There's one other thing we did in Wales: spend time with extended family.

One of the reasons we visit the United Kingdom every two years is so I can maintain connection with some of my extended family. Emigrating to the United States in 1979 effectively cut us off from most of our relatives and my refusal to travel back to England to maintain that connection for a period of about 20 years from the mid 1980s to the mid 2000s (is that the right term for the aughts?) didn't help matters any. 

But lately I've made a conscious effort to do more, so England trips in 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2024 and a Scotland trip in 2022 have always included a stop for a couple of days in Yorkshire, which is where most of my family is now. The script is the same: train into town and stay one day with one side of the family, find a way over to the other side and then move on after the second night. It never feels like enough.

So on this trip we were fortunate to be able to coax both sides of my extended family to Wales for a day or two. I love traveling with other people sometimes and so being able to supplement one or two days with extra people was a plus. But considering we managed to meet up with the very people who are a significant reason behind why we visit that country so often was a giant plus. 

This whole thing worked out great. 

Oh...those questions earlier. Wales is not part of England but not really a separate country either. It has nothing to do with Scotland except being on the same island and it's part of both the United Kingdom (full name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), the British Isles (which includes the entire island of Ireland as well as all the other islands in that part of the seas) and Great Britain. The Republic of Ireland is a totally separate country from the United Kingdom but the U.K. does have some territory on the island of Ireland. And I have no Earthly clue why Wales is represented separately at the World Cup and not at the Olympic Games.

Blog posts to follow.

Nothing like having a pint with family. In Cardiff.