Pays de Galles

6 to 8 April

6 April

We both started out the day working as we normally would and then around 16h15 we were finally packed up and ready to head to the airport.

Lets just say we were EXTREMELY lucky to have made our flight today. Our first issue was the Uber driver took about 15 minutes to arrive at our apartment, but the issues didn’t stop there. Traffic was so bad that it took us almost an hour and a half to get to the airport (and only because our Uber driver was a great driver) which meant that we arrived almost exactly an hour before our 18h55 flight. Our luck turned around there though because we got the golf bag checked in quickly and there was zero line at either border control or security so we ended up at the gate with plenty of time to spare. Our flight was also a few minutes late departing, but since it is such a short flight they made up the time in the air no problem.

We arrived around 19h local time in Cardiff. Now I know what your thinking how do you have a 5 minute flight? Well it is because the flight is only about an hour and Wales is 1 hour behind us here in Paris. Also, this trip was planned because I was suppose to have a meeting not far from Cardiff on Monday. However, it got cancelled but our flights were already booked so here we go!

Now the real fun started, aka our first left side of the road driving experience! The GPS wasn’t all that helpful at first so we ended up on some interesting roads, and the circles were a little challenging going the opposite way, but we ended up making it to the hotel, St. Pierre Marriott Hotel & Country club, in Chepstow around 21h just in time for some good old fashion pub food and beer and cider!

7 April

We were woken this morning by the sound of rain. I mean what else can you expect when you are in Wales in the spring right. We had breakfast at the hotel to start the morning and then headed into town to explore a little and get some snacks.

One of the reasons we had picked this particular hotel is because there are two golf courses on the property, well and of course because it is a Marriott. So after exploring town for a little while we headed back to get ready for our first ,wet, round of golf.

Luckily the rain had pretty much stopped by the time we teed off at 11h39, but we were hitting off mats on many holes and it was so wet that you sank into the ground at points. The round was extremely slow as we had multiple 4 balls in front of us and they didn’t pair us up with anyone. At the turn we had huge fresh made sausage, bacon, and egg sandwiches for lunch. Jer hit the ball great today and we made friends with the group in front of us, as well as behind us because of the speed of play so it wasn’t too bad. We ended the round, as often do, with some beers on the terrace overlooking the 18th green.

After drying out and showering we headed back into Chepstow to have some drinks and dinner. When we first arrived we explored the castle for a little as well as going down to the river and crossing into England for a minute. But only for a minute.

After exploring we decided to do a kind of mini pub crawl. Our first pub stop was at The Five Alls which was definitely a towny bar, but really fun to experience. After a few beers we had picked out another pub to have dinner at, but unfortunately if you don’t have dinner before 20h here they stop serving food so we had to continue to walk around until we found a place that was still serving and we settled on Lime Tree.

After dinner and a few drinks it was time to head back to the hotel as we had an early tee time tomorrow morning.

8 April

Our 07h45 tee time was great this morning because there was no one else out there with us, unlike yesterday. The course was still quite wet, but definitely better than yesterday.

We again dried out and showered, then packed everything up so that we could spend a few more hours in town at the market they had planned for the afternoon. We also stopped by the main part of the hotel for some photos since the weather was finally half decent. Boy this place is beautiful.

The market ended up being pretty small, but we were able to get something local and had some amazing pizza! We also grabbed some coffee to go and made our way back to the airport with the GPS following a much better route this time and we made it with plenty of time to spare for our delayed 16h flight.

We didn’t have the same kind of traffic issues on the way home, thank god, and were back at the apartment before 21h.