I pondered over the title to this post. In essence, today, we took a train to the sunny seaside, had a gorgeous meal but mostly, our super blow up tent suffered a malfunction.
I’ll start with the tent. When we pitched up, we were delighted at how easy the, never before erected, tent went up. Instead of the traditional poles, this structure relies on air beam to give it its form. Basically, the beams are like giant inner tubes in sleeves attached to the tent which when filled with air give the tent it’s shape.
As with inner tubes, you can get a loss or air. This is what we experienced last night as the beam at the front of the sleeping section started to sag. We pumped up the tube but it soon started to deflate. Panic started to set in.
Reasoning that the sleeping compartment (essentially a tent within a tent) which hangs of the defective beam was pulling it down, we released this but the problem persisted. To get a feel of how the tent’s integrity would hold in a worse case scenario, I let out all off the air from that tube. The tube sagged but the tent held fairly rigid.
I refitted the valve, which I’d removed to deflate the tube, and pumped it back up.
It held. It was still firm this morning (oh err missus!). I looks as though we had had a problem with the valve. After some frantic searching on line, we really need to get some stuff to repair these beams should we get a problem in the future. You wouldn’t go cycling without a tyre repair kit, would you?
On to the better parts of yesterday.
Following an unhurried start, we drove to nearby Blaenau Ffestiniog to catch a train (full sized, real train) to the seaside town of Llandudno. The return fare for the pair of us was under eleven quid.
We left a very overcast and dreary Blaenau (to be honest, it looks dreary on a good day – sorry Blaenau) and headed north on the Conwy Valley Line.
The further north that we travelled, the brighter the weather and by the time we reached our destination, we were bathed in bright sunshine.
We had planned on doing a few Adventure Labs around Llandudno but with issues on the server side of the app, we thought we might have to go for a plan B. Luckily, the connection problems settled down and we were able to solve a few of the questions.
As we approached the pier, we noticed a small boat tied to a jetty which offered to take us on a trip around Great Orme lasting about half a hour and costing us six quid each.
Knowing Sue’s love of boats, we clambered aboard and spent thirty minutes getting a different view of the headland. We have, in the past, ascended to the top of this rock by tram (technically it’s a funicular) and cable car.
Returning to dry land, we walked along the pier, getting the answers to a geocache at the end.
With few more AdLabs picked up it was time to head back to the station, picking up some provisions en route.
The trip back was uneventful as we watched the bi-lingual messages pop up on the screens. Usefully, as we approached each station, an arrow showed which side hte platform would be as the Conwy Valley Line, being a single track branch, could have the platform on either side.
We have seen this sort of thing before, in Switzerland, but it’s a UK first for us.
When we had been waiting at Llandudno, I had found a promising looking restaurant in Cricceth, near to our campsite, and had booked a table.
After a quick change at the, still fully inflated at this time, tent we returned to Cricceth for our dinner appointment.
Sue was surprised when she saw what the eatery was called, Dylan’s, as this is our eldest grandson’s name.
Dylan’s is housed in a Grade 2 listed, art deco, building designed by Clough Williams Ellis who, more famously, designed the nearby Port Merrion.
The menu was varied with many different options but in the end we went for Seafood Chowder and a rice bowl.
The service was speedy and we were soon tucking into some delicious grub.
After the delightful mains attention turned to afters – Rhubarb Meringue Pie for myself and a Messy Môn ( a variation on the Eton Mess) for Sue.
After my talk of penny-pinching in an earlier blog, this was a bit of a splurge but we are on holiday !
Post dinner, we did a quick Earthcache before returning to the tent. After a bit of housekeeping, we settled down to a film before noticing the sagging beam as described above and all that that entailed.