Aber

After leaving the rain in Llanberis, I embarked on a wonderful 5 hour bus trip to visit Michaela in Aberstwyth, a university town on the west coast of Wales.. right in the middle of welsh heartland country. a place that took me quite some time to learn how to spell and a good place to be a New Zealander rather than a Briton. Michaela met me at the railway station after a long hard day in the field... After a strenuous 2 minute walk, we were at her flat enjoying a nice dinner and catching up on old times and gossip. After a couple of games of cards, I went to sleep on a relatively comfortable air bed which became somewhat less comfortable as it deflated During the course of the night. On Friday, it turned out that i could be useful helping to keep people from nicking or disturbing survey equipment (although I'm not too sure how much good i did apart from protecting the pavement from an almighty dumping of guano), So I headed out to Borth with Michaela and Jack to do some lazer scanning of the beach and adjacent street. Before we left Aber, Kyla had mentioned that the department did have some very nice toys, and she wasn't joking. Lazer scanners are essentially a ground based equivalent of Lidar., surveying the ground (and building) profile at very high resolution, to build a 3D model of the area. (If I'm allowed, I'll post an image of the data collected while we were there.)

On Friday night, i had the opportunity to check out Aber night-life, minus the students, as they're currently on holiday. After a drink at Scholars, we headed down to Witherspoons, possibly the best value restaraunt/bar in town, and oddly, located at the train station. After a burger and a pint, we wandered on to Rummers, in the hopes that some lively, upbeat music would wake us up. The music was good, but sadly not very awakening, and we ended up calling it quits at around 12:00.

On Saturday, Kyla had more work to do, so we wandered up the hill toward uni and I split off to explore a nice wood. very interesting in that the tracks there had clearly been made by mountain bikers, before they were banned, and now there are lots of intertwined flowing walking tracks with no sign of tire marks. In the afternoon, I had a guided tour of the southern end of the coast and then saw “The Hulk” at the Commodore Theatre. Going to the movies in Aber is quite a different experience. They close the doors shortly after the previews begin, and the atmosphere in the theatre is more like a living room, with people relaxed and chatting. Before the movie starts, the curtains close, lights come back on, and a refreshments booth opens in the corner of the theatre. The end result of this is that, by the end of the movie, you feel like you've had a really good night out,

Sunday saw the only truly beautiful weather during my stay, clear blue skies (somewhat of a rarity in these parts) so we walked over the hill to Borth, (where we had been on Friday), and along the beach to Ynyslas, where we caught the bus back to Aber for drinks and dinner with some of Kyla's colleagues/partners.

Sadly, all i achieved on Monday was a bit of a wander around the ruins of the castle and a lot of time on the internet.
(with the result of finding a 4 pound ticket from Birmingham to Edinburgh early tomorrow morning..., (so I'm writing this on the train to Birmingham, which i spent too much to catch, because i was disorganised.., and i probably won't get cheap accommodation in Birmingham because i'm running late... but it all seems worthwhile given the standard price from Birmingham to Edinburgh looked more like 70 pounds..