A Long Walk Home: A bumble to Mumbles and a bit of ChilLaxin'

Greetings one and all!

Once again I will begin this post like so many of the other ones with an apology for the lack of attention being paid to this blog by myself. I suppose if this blog was a goldfish, it would be belly up in a algae coated fishbowl due to my negligence.

I will start this one with answering some questions posed at the end of the previous post. I did end up going to Mumbles (if that wasn't inferred by the title) and I still have no idea about the birds and cannot give you a definitive answer on that question. As for the question "What the heck is going on right now?" well on that one I was just trying to be amusing. The saga continues...

I ended up walking to the small, posh fishing village of Mumbles via the beach and the promenade that goes all the way there. It was a very nice walk and I did it with my new Canadian buddy and lacrosse teammate, Pause. Pause is a very rotund and funny kid with some odd insight on certain topics and a lack of a filter from his brain to his mouth, similar to one Mark Roberts. Our walk was filled with talk of a variety of topics including lacrosse, women, living in house boats, traveling and disregarding do not enter signs. Pause had also heard of a castle that was in Mumbles and on the way to our destination and suggested that we try to find it. I obliged.
The only problem this posed was that neither of us knew exactly where this castle was, but, as any good adventurer will tell you, "To find something in an unknown location, you must first arrive at the location and then open your eyes." Ok so that might be crap advice and I personally don't know any Frodos or Aragons but I'm sure that if they were in our position they would have done the same thing we did- looked for a sign or some sort of clue that the castle might be nearby. And when I saw a place called the Castle Garden, I figured that the castle we were searching for may be quite near indeed.
The Castle Garden didn't look like a garden at all, but rather a path through an area of ancient deciduous growth. It was heavily guarded by a thick wooden gate (probably made of some sort of semi-hardy wood) that had a block of wood chained to the back to ensure the ability of said gate to close. After slight deliberation and amazing tactics, we pushed the gate open and continued on our quest, only looking back to take photographs of our conquest (seen below).
We continued on this path for about 2 minutes- an amount that was only made longer due to Pause and I taking pictures of trees, it would only take about 45 seconds normally- and we made it to the stairway from hell.
Now this stairway wasn't too long but the spacing of the steps was the absolute worst. Each step was about 1.5 of a regular step length and Pause and I got slightly distraught throughout the endeavor. You have two options with steps like that. Either take larger steps and risk potential groin injury, or just grin and bear it with two times the amount of steps. Well, we grinned and beared it, finally reaching the top after a grueling 30 seconds of stairs. Woof.
Once we reached the top we were met with an amazing sight. An old, broken down structure with scaffolding around half of the outside. We had found the Castle!
The castle sucked really. We couldn't go in. Half of it was breaking. And there were signs saying we shouldn't go near it (which we ignored),
After exploring the castle grounds, and going down the "Stairs of Doom" again, we proceeded on our quest to the pier at the end of the bay. On our way we saw a big clock tower that looked interesting and decided to explore once again.
The clock tower over the town proved to be a church by the name of the 'All Saints Parish'. This church has been churching for a long, long time and is over 1000 years old. You can especially tell by the defensive style the clock tower was built in. It was a cultural and militaristic center of the city way back when.
The church was beautiful. We didn't go in because mass was going on but we took a long walk around the outside. It turns out that they turned many of the tombstones that surrounded the church into the sidewalk that gets you to the doors (a concept that I was fairly alright with, but my Canadian colleague was freaking out abooooot). The church itself was very pretty though and maybe someday I will go inside it, possibly even attend a service? That would be slightly strange though.
From there we continued our walk to the pier which turned out to be much more entertaining that you would imagine. After the church we were within about a 20 minute walk, but we had to pass through the boat launch and the docks. While we walked by, we saw some of the best names for ships that I have ever encountered. Pictures are shown below. I don't even want to write down some of these names because I don't know if you'd believe me.
At the pier we met with 3 other Americans that were doing a similar trip (except they took a bus rather than walked- their loss right?). By the time we got there the tide was in all the way, but apparently, if you get there when the tide is out, you can walk to the light house and there is also a sweet cave on the other side of that island. I'll have to see it sometime no doubt. Pictures to come in the following weeks hopefully :)
After that we ended up in a pub watching the 6 Nations rugby match and eating fish and chips. Then, we decided to go home, and that was an adventure in itself.
On the bus from Mumbles to Swansea, I ended up dropping my wallet. This was a complete accident, not fueled by alcohol or any other chemical substance, but rather complete American ignorance and detachment. Who knew that wallets could fall out of cargo pants?!
I ended up going to the station, where I waited for the bus to come in, and asking the driver if he had found it. Thankfully someone had turned it in and my life was back in order.

As for lacrosse, our university team is doing pretty well. I don't like playing for the city team, but sometimes it is something to do. We are now in the semi-finals for the nation. We might even play in Hyde Park next Wednesday.

Today was a beautiful day in Swansea. I awoke around 9 am and read a little bit outside and watched a biographical documentary about Hunter S. Thompson. Then, around 2 pm, I got a call from some of my lacrosse teammates saying they were going to play catch on the beach and they wanted to know if I was interested. Of course I was. I was soon on my way to the beach with a lacrosse stick and waterbottle mix of whiskey and coke. At the beach we played catch for about an hour and a half and then we decided to get into the fire business. And business was booming. Soon we were competing for the best fire on the beach with our similar fire-making neighbors. We won. After 7 hours of continuous kindling, drying, burning and the occasional friendly banter with what we perceived to be a formidable opponent, we had established ourselves as the dominant force of fire tribes, and how glorious it was.
We basked in our glory until 10:45 when we realized we had to leave to catch the last bus home. The fire and the beach were amazing. They were a tribute to what is true and primal and real and good in all of us and aided us in bonding at a subconscious and complete level. I don't want to sound gay or nothin' but it was truly a spiritual event. (Inspiration taken from a mixture of Hunter S. Thompson and Orgazmo for previous entry).

Basic Paraphrase: The fire was fun. And my friends and I had fun.

That is the basic update of the cool things have happened recently. I will try to repost soon.