Christmas Gatherings – Victorian Style

It’s that ‘most wonderful’ time of the year again. I’m sure it comes around quicker each all the time!

Anna and I have a slightly, no, scrap that ‘very’ different Christmas planned this year. I’ll let you in on what it is once we’ve done it, but the run-up to Christmas is going to be the usual hectic few weeks. It had already started with various concerts and parades that Anna takes part in with the Aberystwyth Silver Band, but it doesn’t really start to feel like Christmas until we’ve paid the annual trip to family in Bristol to exchange gifts (without the children seeing) and to have a family get-together.

Braving the Storm

Storm Darragh was set to hit Wales and the South West as Anna and I left Morgan in charge of the house. He was unable to join us as he would be working at the weekend. We drove to Bristol on Friday afternoon in relative calm as people prepared for the storm to hit.

Anna and I then had some retail therapy at The Mall whilst trying out some Tesla chargers for the first time. The chargers worked perfectly and were in a convenient spot too so I’m sure we’ll be using them again. We did have to pop out to move the car over a few spaces so as not to incur an overstay charge. With the car fully topped up it was back into The Mall to top ourselves up with a pizza-hut dinner and then time to drive to my parent’s house as the winds started to increase. In fact, as we sat down in Pizza Hut, everyone’s phones sounded an alarm as a Government Alert was pushed to their mobiles. No one quite knew what it was at first but once it dawned on us what was happening, we could see the Red Alert – a ‘risk to life situation’ as the storm approached.

Once at my parents house, things were being closed and cancelled left-right and centre. Unfortunately this inculded the SS Great Britain where we were supposed to be going en-mass tomorrow for a Victorian Christmas experience. It was supposed to be most of the family so we would have been a 22 strong party but with a Red Alert issued by the Governement they had decided it was safest to close their doors and retract the gangplank for the day.

We had been in touch with Morgan to make sure all was Ok and to check that he wasn’t planning to go out in it! His day of work on Saturday was cancelled as well. We were also concerned about our newly built and not-yet-quite-finished shed too!

With our Saturday ativities cancelled we had a quiet day at my parent house and then everyone came there for dinner – which wasn’t quite so quiet!! At home, Morgan had been plunged into darkness thanks to storm-induced power cuts and he was without phone lines, Internet and even mobile data too thanks to the storm!

SS Great Britain

In addition to our Saturday Christmas experience at the SS Great Britain, we were supposed to be returning there on Sunday for a Christmas dinner on board as well. This was really a birthday dinner for my Mum. Fortunately the SS Great Britain re-opend on the Sunday and some of us were able to use yesterday’s tickets for a tour of the various museum exhibits as well.

So, I had an early morning run then we headed into Bristol and parked on the dockside. We then spent an hour or two exploring the SS Great Britain before heading to the First Class dining hall for a delicious Christmas Dinner. It was still cold and windy outside but the worst of the storm had passed and things were returning to normal.

The dinner was lovely but we now had a long drive home. There were road closures everywhere thanks to storm damage. There were trees down everywhere, telegraph pole s down here and the and even some landslides so we stopped off for a coffee near Newport to make sure we had plenty of charge for potential diversions. We risked driving along one closed road and managed to get through but took a diversion up to Caersws and through Machynlleth to avoid the A44 from Llangurig to Aberyswtwyth as the reports looked pretty bad for this stretch and it looked completely closed at Goginan. The diversion adidn’tdd too much distane or time. We took it easy as there was plenty of debris everywhere and made it home safe, ready for a night in our own bed and then a day of Christmas decorating on Monday…

Tags: BristolChristmas