Llandudno Trip

    5th September 2017

 Today the lads have decided to stretch their wings and visit another country, it's just over 3 hours away by Train. The country in question is Wales, the northern part and the resort of Llandudno.

As usual the journey will begin from Leeds Railway Station, Colin has purchased our tickets up front 

in order to gain a price reduction? We should have been a group of 6 but Malcolm had to cancel at the last minute. So it was left to Keith John Derek Dave and Colin to sample the delights of North Wales.

Weather wise we seem to have chosen a rather wet day if the forecast is anything to go by, heavy rain overnight as left a damp misty feel to our journey start, fingers crossed we hope for better things to come. So it's all aboard the 8:33 heading for Manchester Piccadilly Station, once here we change train and take the 9:50 which will be westward bound and pass the many stations on our way, journey time just a little more than 2 hours .

Once aboard this particular train we found ourselves in a very comfortable seating arrangement, very welcomed and relaxing, time to enjoy this journey. At this point the weather outside doesn't look inspiring, but this may change, hopefully. We journey on passing places we haven't been to before 

and have difficulty in pronouncing their names, but we are in Wales now and the scenery is a little different, never seen as many caravan parks, hundreds of them and more all along the coastline.

With about 15 minutes of our train journey left the weather as got decidedly worse and the view from the carriage window looks awful now

. As the train arrives at Llandudno Junction we have to get off now, the onward journey to the resort of Llandudno is a different challenge!

3 options available, 50 minutes wait for rail connection, 10 minutes taxi ride or a 20 minutes bus journey, the first two options were ruled out, so we climbed aboard a number 25 bus heading for the resort, sadly our bus passes are not valid here in Wales, shame, so a £3:30 fare had to be purchased.

The rain was still falling as we arrived at Llandudno, we soon found ourselves headed for the Tram Station,where we would be able to take the tram journey up to the top of the Great Orme ,a famous
land mark here in Wales

. After a lengthy wait and wet seating arrangements our upward climb began,

not too many passengers on this particular tram the weather may have dampened their spirits, not ours though. As we steadily made our accent the rather misty view of the town below became apparent, onwards to the next Tram that would take us to the summit and enjoy something rather  different!

A splendid display of Randolph Turpin memorabilia along with  film clips from his glory days, magnificent. A little time was spent here soaking up the reviews before we began the journey back down to the town centre to have a well deserved lunch. Our return journey was full of atmosphere with singing and joking with our fellow passengers which was appreciated by all concerned, even the tram conductors, great stuff on the great orme!

Now back in the town we made our way to Weatherspoons which was located in a rather splendid old theatre building named the Palladium, the place was very busy but our lunches soon arrived with the exception of Dirk, who had a lengthy wait for just a sandwich.

Lunch ended we took a short walk along the road to enjoy some more delicious delights at the Alice in wonderland ice cream parlour, yum ,yummy. From here it was off to the seafront as the sun began to shine and turn the resort into a wonderful place to be, a short walk along the pier and then back to the train station in order to catch our train home.

The return journey was a much more lengthy affair as we called at every station along the north Wales coastline, we arrived at Manchester Piccadilly just after 7:30 a quick exit from this train enabling us to catch a much earlier train back to Leeds.

What another great days adventure for the lads

Cheers everyone

B