We're back!!! (at least for a short time)...

Friday, 13^th May – (BIG Catch-up)

After Lancaster, we decided to drive straight on to Bangor, as it wasn’t worth stopping again.

We had booked into another Premier Inn, but with their directions and our going astray, we ended up in the university grounds, and wound our way through a very narrow road towards the Menai Bridge, and by pure chance found the Premier Inn, when we had despaired of finding it.

No signal on our phone and no access to my mobile broadband, and the girl at reception said it was the area! I did get a phone signal if I stood outside the front door of the restaurant building, but that was about it. (Now wonder if it was an earlier version of them “blocking” the networks of other servers, like that which happened later in Bristol)

Had our usual nap, and then bit the bullet and rang Gwenda, and hoped she wouldn’t mind if we didn’t stay with her. Thankfully she was as relieved as much as we were because David was very ill, and under the circumstances, it would be better if we didn’t. So we organised to go on the next day, Saturday 14^th. Lee and I felt so much better, and as it turned out, it would have been the worst thing, both for them and for us.

Saturday, 14^th

Before we went to our friend’s house, we decided to go out and have a look at Holyhead, which we hadn’t done last trip. It is the ferry port for trips across to Dublin, and the port is huge and there was this enormous catamaran-type ferry which we saw leaving. It was quite windy and cold, and after a bit of a look around, we drove back to Bangor. The road across the island is very good and apart from a small detour for road works, it doesn’t take long, and so we found our way to David’s place.

David was not well at all, and was very glad to see us, but he was not at all the same man, and when at one stage I went upstairs to see him, he said he wanted to go, but was worried about the family.

We had as good a day with Gwenda as we could, and a lovely lunch which she had insisted on making, and about 4.00pm we left.  We had also finally met their son Chris, and he was not coping very well at all, and his girlfriend Michelle said she was shocked at the dramatic change in David, as she had not seen him for a week.

David went into a coma the next day, and never recovered, and died on the following Thursday, the 19^th. We didn’t hear until we got an email from Chris on the Saturday, which was nice of him to do under the circumstances.

(We haven’t heard how things were done for the funeral our anything, but David wanted his ashes scattered up in his beloved hills,)

It was very sad leaving Gwenda there, knowing we would most likely never see her our the family again, but we had to move on.