Where in the world is Brandon OBrien

You're reading posts I wrote on July 21 throughout the years. Return home.

The Lovely Beach Town of Llandudno

Sunday, July 21, 2013 @ 9:37 PM in 2013 Europe

Day 25

Today was another long travel day. Eric had to be on his train to London by 8:30am and my bus departed York at 10:30am. I had an exciting day of 7 hours on buses and two bus changes ahead of me. My first destination was Leeds where I changed buses to head to Manchester. Once in Manchester I jumped on the Bangor, Wales bus that ran by my destination of Llandudno.

I didn't really know too much about Llandudno before booking my hostel and bus tickets other than the fact that it was on the water, had some really good hiking areas and there was an old castle all within a few miles of town. When the bus rolled into town I was amazed. This seems like the place that all seaside resorts in the States were modeled after. You've got the huge promenade where people are strolling or sitting and eating ice cream, then you have the seaside resorts, B&B's and restaurants on the other side of the street.

There's also a big hill/mountain/cliff on the west end of town that has hotels and buildings climbing its face. This is going to be my destination for tomorrow (assuming the weather holds out. The weather is calling for 70% chance of rain unfortunately). The area is filled with hiking trails but there's also a tram and cable car for those less inclined to hiking.

Once I got into town I checked into my hostel (I'm the only one in an 8 person dorm tonight!) then set about finding some dinner and enjoying the awesome weather. I had a really filling meal of mashed potatoes, roast beef, carrots, peas, stuffing, fried potatoes and bread. All of that was only 6.99 which is amazingly cheap for the amount of food (and how good it tasted!).

Being sufficiently stuffed I thought it would be a good idea to walk it off. I started off toward the pier and walked to the end of it for some nice photos of the entire town's waterfront (check out some of the panoramas in the photo gallery linked below). I didn't feel like that was enough of a walk so I walked the entire length of the promenade, enjoying the people watching and great weather. At one point the Llandudno band was playing some tunes to a large crowd right on the promenade. It was a really nice sight.

Unfortunately most of my day was spent on the buses so I came back to the hostel around 8:45pm to answer some emails and write this blog post. I'm going to try to get an early start tomorrow to beat some of the rain and clouds. We'll see how that goes!

Teaser photos:

Llandudno Promenade

Llandudno pier

Llandudno from Llandudno pier

Llandudno Promenade

View Entire Photo Gallery

Tags: daily journal, wales, llandudno

Posted from: Wales

Pacific Coast - Day 8 - Epic Motorcycle Ride

Saturday, July 21, 2012 @ 7:00 PM in 2012 Epic Motorcycle Ride

We woke up around 7 this morning to some very wet tents and gear. I'm not sure if it actually rained last night or if it was just the fog/mist coming in off the ocean. Either way it was yet another cold wet morning which we've had more mornings than we would like. We tore down camp, packed up and ate and then took a quick tour of the beach. We were soon on our way for Cape Disappointment at the very south western tip of Washington.

We had to backtrack about 15 miles to Port Angeles so we could fuel up. We weren't sure where the next town was and didn't want to have to resort to the Rotopax again. After fueling up we started our journey down the 101. The ride was really nice, although it stayed cold for the majority of the day and the mist/fog was essentially rain and kept us equally as wet.

We stopped at Ruby Beach in the Olympic National Forest and were greeted with some really nice views of the pacific ocean. This is also the first time one of our bikes went down this trip. I was trying to turn my bike around in the parking lot so I could get my kickstand down in a reasonable spot and didn't release my clutch enough and tipped over. The SW-Motech panniers held up amazingly well and we quickly righted my bike and carried on. I did start to have a few idling issues for a short while after this though. Instead of idling my engine would just shut off. We pulled over a few times and couldn't figure out what the problem was. We thought it might be a spark plug issue but then it went back to normal and the problem hasn't appeared since. We're still not sure what it was.

We eventually made it to Aberdeen where we stopped for some lunch about 70 miles away from our final destination. Ryan's rear tire has been causing him some concern so he started looking for KTM dealers nearby that he can hopefully get a new rear tire from. He found one near Astoria, OR and decided he'd call them when we got to the campground.

Some nice scenic roads later we made it to our campground and got set up and found out there's no cell service here. We'll try to find a KTM shop some time tomorrow when we get reception back. We walked around the beach and took some shots. The sand was very black and also nice and warm. The water however was freezing cold.

After getting back from the beach we decided we needed some more booze and set off on a walk to the nearest general store. What we thought would be a quick walk turned into a walk that was a little over a mile each way. It took us about 30 minutes to walk each way. They didn't have any hard alcohol so we ended up getting some beers and walked back to the campsite. We cracked open the beers and started a fire and that puts us to where we are now. We've still got a couple hours of daylight and will probably eat soon and then head off to bed. We've got a really long day already planned for tomorrow and if we do try to get Ryan's tire changed it'll just add that much more time to it.

We're hoping we don't get rained on tonight which would be nice for a change. We'll see how it goes though!

Teaser photos: