London to Porthmadog

We arrived at 8:30 on September 5th. A little bit ahead of schedule. Roz was still in bed and quickly decided she needed to get up and get going. Lucky for her there was a rail stoppage and the Gatwick Express to Victoria Station was stopped. Luckily for us there were other choices but it also meant a gong show in the terminal. We managed to make our way to a train and met Wes outside the Krispee Kreme donut shop and Roz was waiting for us coming off the train. Thank God for technology and wifi in the airport as I was unable to get our esims working. I suspect it was because we were underground in the TUBE but Whats App worked on the wifi.
We grabbed some food to eat at Victoria Station. Roz and I had been to a nice little shop, that sold fresh soup and sushi, last year and it was so good. I told the owner that I had been there last year and came back for his soup. He gave me mine for free. It was yummy.
After food we headed out to the first train heading out at 12:30 for Birmingham International where we changed trains to go to Porthmadog, Wales.
No this is not a bad photo, this the window on the train leaving the station. Almost impossible to see out of. Most of the countryside was industrial or flat farm land until we got to Wales.
Lovely and green and these are stone fences up the slopes.
Sheep are white (seem to be white with black faces and feet in England) and they are everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Up to the top of the hills all the way down to the sea.
Pretty fancy house in the middle of nowhere. It is hard to take clear pictures without reflections from the windows.
Stone fences. My girlfriend in Ireland said when the boys misbehaved she sent them out to put stones in the walls. I guess there were a lot of misbehaved kids in Wales.


On a point as you are entering Barmoutn sits this lovely little house.
In 2008, Ed and I took the kids cycling in Europe for 6 months. We started in Birmingham and after several days we managed to make our way out of England through Shrewsbury, Welshpool to Barmouth. We camped there and the next morning came to this castle. Harlech Castle had been the one medival castle the kids liked to build out of bricks.
Porthmadog or Portmadoc as it is pronounced is a lovely wee town of about 4,000. 
From 1808-1811 a man named William Madocks built a seawall to reclaim land from the sea for farming. He soon discovered that the divergence of the river caused it to scour out a new natural harbour deep enough for small ocean going sailing ships. In 1825 wharfs were built to handle the slate coming down from the mountains. The slate boom is now over and the Harbour is a haven for sailboats.

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