Conwy is for anyone who does not know, is a very cool place to visit. A vast medieval castle towers over the town and the castle walls completely encircle it. Built by Edward I between 1283 - 1289 it was designed to keep the Welsh out and protect the English within the walls. So amazing is the castle and the walled part of town that it has been assigned a "World Heritage Inscribed Site" status.
I can be a bit of an anorak about history and was completely carried away with myself, reading all the information boards dotted about the town and creating vivid pictures of battles, markets, smugglers and donkeys to the kids. Bubble and Squeak are used to their mums eccentricities and just rolled their eyes and humored me. We decided to walk along the walls of the town, it was a nice day, the sun was shining, we were on holiday and life was good. I should have known then it was too good to last!
Anyone who knows me, is aware that I really, really, really do not like heights. I had not quite realised how high the walls were and on reaching the top felt my stomach drop, my heart start pounding and my legs turn to jelly. The kids turned round, saw the look on my face, and promptly burst out laughing (their love and support for their mummy often amazes me!). I was holding on to the delinquent, who was trying to catch seagulls in mid air on a very high bloody wall!. I was not very happy at all. Not wanting to be a party pooper and spoil it for the kids by insisting we all go back down I decided if Superwoman could do it then I certainly could. We set off around the town walls. Actually some bits were not too bad, (the lower bits) and I quite enjoyed looking at the rooftops and gardens, but other bits were very high, I was scared, the kids were bouncing about and the dog who has no fear at all kept trying to jump onto the top of the wall!
Finally we came to the end of the wall which is in the sea, it was a bit wider and lower so I started to feel a bit better. Telling the kids what an amazing place this was, and how it is such an important place that it is recognised as a world heritage site, the delinquent promptly decided to do an enormous poo! Only I can have a dog that disrespects places of cultural significance!
Wandering slowly back along the wall, still having wobbly legs and palpitations I now had the poo bag in one hand and the dogs lead in the other. This meant I could not even hold onto the railings! Bubble suddenly said "it could have been a lot worse mum.....he could have cocked his leg and wee'd on all those people underneath us!" I was very glad to finally get off the wall and have made a mental note - NOT to try and inspire my kids to love history ever again.
The afternoon found us at the quay. This was good as it was busy and bustling, we could watch the boats and eat ice cream. Wandering past a shop I spotted a sign that said we could buy a crab fishing kit for £3. This sounded pretty reasonable so I purchased 2. We got a bucket, a line, a weight, a bag of bacon and a net thing to put our bacon in.
Returning to quay we duly found a spot and settled down to spend the afternoon fishing. It was pretty good fun, we did not catch many crabs and eventually we gave up. Walking along the quay we came across two lads who made everyone elses crab fishing attempts (especially ours) look pathetic. Turns out their secret ingredient was to use fresh sardines rather than bacon. I made a note of this interesting fact and filed it away for use another day.
A few days later, we decided to try crab fishing again, we already had all the kit so all we needed to do was turn up. I remembered about the sardines and stopped at Tesco on the way. Guess what? Tesco in Wales by the seaside does not sell sardines! I was disgusted. The poor fishmonger must have been quite taken aback when he was accosted by 40somethingbitch demanding to know why - in a coastal fishing town there were no bloody sardines! He asked me how many I wanted and when I told him I wanted 2 - he quite seriously explained to me that there simply was not enough demand to justify him selling them! I scratched my head and decided to try the fish pie mix! The fishmonger looked delighted when I said please could I have some of his fish pie mix, and he tried really hard not to show his disappointment when I said I only wanted a pounds worth!
Tesco fish pie mix must be like heroin for crabs! Setting ourselves up on the quay once more we baited our little nets and dropped them in. Immediately we felt a tug and pulling up the lines there were about 10 crabs hanging onto the net! This we thought was going to be good. It was - within half an hour I had been dispatched by the kids to go and buy a bigger bucket! Then they wanted another one - I tried suggesting they tip them back and carry on fishing but they were having none of it. Quantity is key!
Three large buckets of crabs later, Squeaks stomach began to growl - I was dispatched to the chippy and bought a large portion of chips, and big bottle of coke. Sitting on the quay, surrounded by crabs sharing chips and coke with the kids I suddenly thought I must be the only woman in the world who deliberately set out to catch crabs!
Thanks for reading x
No comments:
Post a Comment