A drive through the countryside in Wales is like traveling back in time. If I were to describe this little country beside the Irish sea in a single word it would have to be “enchanting.” Having just spent the previous day in Tintagel, Cornwall, this place had a tough act to follow, but Wales left me breathless.

Sheep grazing on lush green hills, old stone farmhouses so close to the road you could touch them, and incredibly narrow roads where the vine-covered stone walls beside it grew right into the canopy of trees overhead to form a gorgeous green tunnel through which us time travelers could pass.

My husband may not have been left with such a spectacular impression, since he was our driver. There were blind corners everywhere on roads, barely wide enough for a single car to pass. When meeting another vehicle, one had to pull over into the “hedges” or tall grass, where in America we have a shoulder or ditch, so the other car could pass. On more than one occasion, we pulled off beside a well-trimmed hedge that was hiding a massive stone wall beneath its green coat. And those stone walls were everywhere. Nearly every roadway had them built four feet high and a foot thick. Like beautiful barriers in a labyrinth, the walls only allowed brief peeks of our prize at the other end. Even that occasional glimpse was more than enough to keep you driving down that rabbit hole. Unfortunately, because there were few places to pull over, and they come and go too quickly for you to react at 100 kph, that prize was nearly impossible to fully grasp…until we reached the coast! But you’ll have to read my next post to hear about that.