Out of office on……

Well, the long weekend holiday didn’t quite start as planned…we were booked on the 11am Easyjet flight to Liverpool however Glenn had had one to many to drink last night and was feeling so tender this morning that he couldn’t get up, let alone face the thought or airports and planes! So, leaving Glenn in bed to recover I booked us on to the 3pm Mannanan sailing for later that day (having checked that the weather was going to be fine!!). Fast forward to 3pm and we had a lovely smooth sailing over to Liverpool, and then headed up the town to check into our hostel (Hatter’s Hostel) on Mount Pleasant. We then took a wander down to a pub called The Hub before having a lovely tapas tea in a busy restaurant called The Salt House (would recommend it however ask to sit downstairs as the upstairs gets very hot!). Feeling pretty full and not really up for drinking (!!) we headed back to the hostel to get an early night (although we didn’t sleep that well as there were lots of students arriving in at all times of the morning…god I sound old!). The next morning we enjoyed the free continental breakfast in the hostel (offering cereals, toast, ham, tomato, hot drinks and juice) and then heading to the main street to do a bit of shopping (after much deliberation I bought a pair of ankle boots from Jones’) before catching the 12.30pm train to Conwy via a change at Chester. You could tell Conwy was a nice town as soon as we got off the train – the view was dominated by a largely intact castle and tall town walls. We headed up the hill to our hostel (YHA), dropped off our bags and then walked back down to the town, taking in the views of the quayside, Rover Conwy and castle on our way. As we were the first of the Jamieson clan to arrive we took a short walk down the main street (the place was buzzing as it was the food festival and had a nice feel to it …little independent food and gift shops and plenty of pubs) and then up around the castle walls which stretched all the way around the market town, giving us a great vantage point of the town and surrounding fells. We then met Max and Zoe (who’d taken advantage of the nice weather and walked up Snowdon) and chatted, drank and ate in a tapas bar called The Bank of Conwy until Ho, Polly and Margie arrived around 8pm. We then took a wander down to the quay and had a drink in the Liverpool Arms before heading back up the hill to our hostel for the night. After checking out of the hostel at 9.30am we all drove about 5 mins out of Conwy to a nice marina on the coast where we had our breckie. By the time we had finished it was time for Glenn and I to catch our train so we got dropped back at the train station and got the 11.15am train back to Liverpool (via a change at Chester). We stopped for a drink in Liverpool to break up the journey and then got the bus to the airport in time for our 4.30pm flight back to the IOM. From there it was just a short bus into Douglas and a walk up Bucks Road and then we were home! Although it did seem like we did a lot of travelling over the weekend, it was lovely to have a catch up with the Jamieson’s and tick Conwy off our list!