Mountains, valleys and the meaning of romance

Posted on Tue 15 February 2011 by alex in general

We spent the weekend in Wales on what has become an annual tradition of post-winter walking loosely organised around a couple of friends birthdays. The location changes every year but this year we were based in a hostel in the Snowdonia National Park.

By convention there are usually two walks, higher and lower. I opted for the lower walk to ensure I was back in time to catch England's crushing defeat of Italy in the Six Nations. Fliss decided to skip the higher walk in favour of climbing Snowdon with Lee. They made it with no major incidents although I suspect it will take a few days for muscles to reach full flexibility again, especially as there was no bath available for post-walk soaking at the hostel.

I walked to the local pub in Dolwyddenlan with a couple of the Scottish contingent to watch Wales dominate in their match. The banter with the locals was all in good humour and I was able to claim English neutrality for the whole game :-)

We sensibly had taken a couple of days of to make this a long weekend and spent Valentines day taking it in turns to level up Fliss' [STRIKEOUT:killing machine]profile in CoD. Fliss assures me it was a most romantic gesture on my part! Our one nod to the local economy on this hallmark holiday was to visit the local for a swift pint before they filled up with romantics enjoying a pub meal. We saw no reason to pay the inflated prices these "special" meals usually incur so I cooked a romantic meal myself. Romance on a budget, no reason to be contradictory concepts.