I returned home from a week in Llandudno, Wales, on Friday.
After sitting Meg and Mog in Minera in October 2021, the Avanti West Coast (AWC) leg of my journey back to London was cancelled. I contacted them to see if I might be eligible for partial compensation, even though I had a flexible ticket to allow me to catch alternative trains from Chester to London. I arrived only half an hour later than scheduled, though I had to stand in a doorway with my suitcase on an overcrowded train from Stafford to Euston when I'd had a reserved seat on the original train.
They initially issued me two vouchers for free first-class advance single travel anywhere on the AWC network within one year of issue.
Because of my finances and life, I didn't try to book them until the last day they were valid, with fingers firmly crossed I would be able to use them. That's when I found the voucher codes didn't work.
It was an issue on their part, so AWC reissued the vouchers, and they randomly issued me a third voucher. I'm still not entirely sure the third voucher wasn't a mistake, but who am I to argue with free travel?!
Once again, finances and life meant I waited until the last minute to use the vouchers. This time, all vouchers worked the first time.
I booked tickets based on quick searches for accommodation and suitable dates for leave from work, pushing things out as far as possible. I honestly didn't know if I could afford the accommodation for each or even one of them.
Ultimately, for my first trip away, I found a suitable studio flat in a converted house a short walk from the centre of Llandudno (let's be fair: everything in Llandudno is a 'short walk' from the centre) on Airbnb.
As the flat was listed by a company, not an individual, out of curiosity, I looked for it as a direct rental. I found it only slightly cheaper via the Finest Retreats website, but I also found a one-bedroom flat in the same building on their site for the same price.
Green versus blue.
Blue is my favourite colour, and a studio flat was sufficient for my needs.
But the green flat had floral wallpaper. It would allow me to create new wallflowers self-portraits.
You can guess the decision I made.
I shared several mobile photos from my trip on my Instagram during the week. But I have copious photos I took with my Nikon D700 during the week, which I'll share early access here in due course, including the wallflowers self-portraits I took on one of my "rest days" when the weather was not so great.
While staying in Llandudno, I walked the length of Marine Drive, the road that circles Great Orme, a limestone headland jutting out into the Irish Sea just behind where I stayed.
On the first day of walking around Great Orme, I could hear sheep baa-ing above me soon after passing the toll gate. The signage told me to expect sheep and goats along the way and warned me against approaching them.
The first time I heard them, I could only just see them above me (the photograph above).
At a later point, I turned to look back to where I'd come from and saw some sheep on a ledge above the road (as shown in the other three photographs).
A couple and their small child were coming around the curve of the road behind me. I caught the father's eye and gestured to the sheep, thinking he would point them out to his child.
Instead, he responded in a blasé fashion, "Yes, they're everywhere". I mentioned I had heard them further back but could barely see them. He commented on my camera's lens as if my only interest was photographing them.
Maybe he was a local, and it was all in a day's walk for him. Perhaps he was having a trying day.
But I thought to myself (and maybe muttered under my breath) that I hope I never lose my sense of wonder like he had seemed to.
I hope I never find sheep and goats hanging out on a ledge well above my head or below the road on sheer cliffs and grassy outcrops utterly and unspeakably ordinary and uninteresting, even if I lived in a place where I saw it every day.
What a dull life that would be.