I was supposed to get on a train in Bath with a stop in Bristol before my stop, Newport, and continuing on to Cardiff. From Newport, there was another train for Chepstow. Maybe not eyes-closed easy, but certainly no strain.
However! When I got to Bristol my train was canceled, ALL the trains through Newport were canceleled, in fact. I ran around the Bristol station like an idiot for a long time, until finally the information desk told me to get in a taxi and go to X station (they'd pay) and they'd provide coaches from there.
Said station was really really far away and in Middle-of-Nowhere, Wales and there were no buses or trains or any thing except confused people arriving in fours in bright blue taxis from Bristol.
Luckily the people who'd shared my cab were quite nice and I was glad not to be alone on my adventure. It was fun to talk to English people. They sussed me out as American straight away but I guess there's no hiding it. I enjoyed their mix of overdeprecation and optimism, and I almost busted out laughing when one of them was like, "at least it's a nice day, at least it's not tipping!" (raining) They ticked all the stereotypes.
We waited around like 40 minutes and finally I realized I could probably go straight to Chepstow from Middle-of-Nowhere, and luckily I realized that mere minutes before that train pulled in, so I said goodbye to my new friends and hopped on it. (FUNNILY ENOUGH I saw one of them in Bristol on the way back and found out they'd made it: the advertised Cardiff train was like ten minutes late.)
It would've been better to just have stayed in Bristol and waited for the train issue to clear.
The funniest part is I ended up only like thirty minutes behind schedule somehow. (This messed up my plan anyway, but still, quite impressive turn of events)
Chepstow Castle was incredible. (I was rushing through it a bit, unfortunately. I was still trying to catch the earlier bus to Tintern Abbey before I finally gave up on that and just took the later one.) I recently read Life in a Medieval Castle by Frances Gies, which mentions a whole bunch of castles but mainly focuses on Chepstow. It's along the river and quite long but skinny, with lots of additions from different eras.
I traveled to Tintern on a bus. Tintern was just stunning. Every angle was staggering and it made me want to walk around both inside and outside, clockwise and counterclockwise because there was constantly a new view. It was challenging to take photos--first of all, because it was too gorgeous and secondly because I was constantly contending with harsh sunlight, backlighting, clouds, or a combination. Quite the best type of challenge though: take lots of photos and some of them have to turn out!
The bus back to Chepstow was okay, but I was disappointed on seeing that the next train was not for 45 minutes, which didn't leave time to see more sights like I had planned.
Finally had a travel win at the end of the day. From Newport, I realized I could take an earlier train back to Bristol and make my own change to Bath instead of waiting for the one that went all the way to Bath--made it thirty minutes ahead of that train, which was the additional wait for it--finally beat the train game!!!
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