Taken on my recent trip to Wales
Later this week I will be living the dream by starting my long-planned motorcycle trip round the US, going into the wild as much as possible, breathing the fresh air, meeting strangers, creating friendships 
Chicago, here I come.
… just as soon as I clear this damn man flu 
This was definitely a first. Not only have I ever seen this meteorological phenomenon, I was never expecting to see it in the UK – the country known for its wet climate.
I was working in a small village in Lancashire but lived on the coast and on my way home I saw these strange dark clouds on the horizon. As I got closer I realised it was clouds of soil and dirt that were being picked up by the strong gusts of wind. Quite a few times the visibility on the road went to just a few metres and I had to turn on my lights and my rear fog lights. Very eerie feeling.
Floreat Salopia meaning May Shropshire flourish a fitting start of this blog post dedicated to my latest locum job that has taken me to Shrewsbury, the capital of Shropshire. I have never been to Shropshire before and it really was something I needed to amend as it hides some really amazing gems. The most charming, in my opinion, is the before-mentioned medieval capital, about the size of Maribor, that has hundreds of grade listed buildings and lovely narrow streets. A lot of streets are cobbled and most of the medieval houses have not one straight line on them. Some look more like they will fall down any minute. Probably all due to the fact that the modern spirit level wasn’t invented until the 1920s.
I love the fact that the city centre shops seem to be thriving, most of them lovely individual private shops, not part of any large corporations. I can’t even remember seeing any empty shop window.
One weekend day I drove round the area and stumbled upon the small village of Ironbridge, home of the first arch bridge made out of cast iron built in the 1770s. This village, like, Shrewsbury has a lot of inviting individual shops, one of them especially caught my eye called Bear on the Square. It boast over 3000 items on sale and I can tell you for sure that most of them are teddy bears I did see an almost life size chicken, though
I was reading up on the Shrewsbury Wikipedia page and found out it used to have a nuclear fallout warning station. It turns out it now houses a veterinary practice – in fact the veterinary practice I was working at as a locum. They made the walls extra thick and reinforced so no wonder I was not able to get a damn signal on my mobile phone all the time I was working there. They did have a branch surgery in a village called Shawbury and luckily that place wasn’t built to withstand a nuclear bombs so no problem with updating my Facebook status. Probably because there was a large RAF helicopter base next door the mobile signal was excellent. Thanks MOD 
Not to repeat myself to many times but I went on a great hiking trip round Snowdonia. Got up way to early and still by the time I came to Nant Gwynant I was still very much in need of sleep. Besides that it was still pouring with rain but there were prospects of sunshine later. So I I did something I haven’t so far: crawled in the back of my car, got myself comfortable, opened the windows a little bit and went to sleep. It certainly did the trick as when I woke up I felt great and the sun was up as well
So my trek started just west of lake Gwynant and the YHA hostel. At the campsite I turned left to continue on the old road and then onto a path to Pen-y-pas. There I took the Pyg track to Snowdon and then the Watkins path on the other side back to the valley. took me about 6 hours to complete.
Standing on the famous Cantilever on Glyder Fach in Snowdonia
A couple of years ago I trekked these hills with and came away with a lovely sunburn, sore legs and a great experience. Not unlike this time although I cannot fathom how those UV lights beams were able to penetrate all those clouds yesterday in order to give my skin a damn good uv-light trashing.
The Glyders horseshoe as its also known usually means walking the 4 mountains in one go and this time I did them in this order: Tryfan, Glyer Fach, Glyder Fawr and Y Garn.
I have heard of the cantilever stone but I seemed to have missed it at my last trek so I asked a fellow walker who pointed me in the right direction. As you can see from the above photo I did find it and was able to ask someone to take a photo of me on it. The least interesting was my last summit, the peak of Y Garn which has a monotonous path leading to it from Llyn y Cwm and a gruelling descent towards Llyn Idwal. Gruelling as my feet at this poit were killing me and I couldn’t wait to get to my car. More as an indulgence in comfort I soaked my feet in the murky cold waters of Llyn Ogwen.
Job done, can’t wait to do it again
