The cold (hot if you are reading this from New Zealand) month of January has rolled around (and passed) again and that means I continue the ritual of celebrating my 29th birthday again. Now I can officially report that you still age a year on your birthday even if you aren’t in your home country. I had my doubts going into it. Last weekend, well, now two weekends ago, I celebrated my first Welsh birthday. Thankfully, IAC managed to show me how it is done. She also did a great job taking care of me this year. Our day started as all good birthdays should by sleeping in and not working. IAC was even nice to get up and feed Siena allowing me to wallow in and out of consciousness for another hour or so. In the afternoon we headed up toward the foothills of the Cambrian Mountains to a forest preserve called Bwlch Nant-yr-Arian (the Silver Spring Pass or something akin to that). This preserve is known for the red kites that live in the area and that are fed on a daily basis.
Red Kites circling during the afternoon feeding
We arrived just at the feeding. I never really appreciated the rarity of the bird, but I guess this is one of the “lucky” stories about a species coming back from the brink. Supposedly, all of the red kites that live in Wales can be genetically traced back to a single female red kite! The three of us then took off into the woods along one of the hiking trails of the preserve. While the weather was cold, it was dry and the early parts of the hike provided great views back toward Aberystwyth to the west.
Looking west toward Cwm Rheidol
We had a great time walking through the various forests. We especially like taking Siena hiking through the woods as she comes back smelling great (assuming she hasn’t rolled in anything)!
IAC and Siena on the trail
After the great walk, we returned to town to eat dinner with some friends at the new(ish) Japanese restaurant in town, Wasabi. The food was pretty good, perhaps very good when judging Aberystwythian Japanese. Our table split random sushi and other appetizers and most of us polished off our own bowl of ramen as a main course. In a quirky fate, of the eight of us at dinner, two of us were celebrating a birthday that day, me and H, and another guest, I, celebrated his birthday the Wednesday before. Thus, my birthday turned into anniversaire à trois! Then again I am used to sharing my birthday (Hi bro!). However, since it was my birthday party, I got all the presents. Our Welsh friends decided to lighten the dinner with their appropriate Welsh gifts:
Welsh Seidr!
After dinner we headed back to our place for some tea and cake. It is the one and only time a year that IAC disregards her native roots and bakes a cake. The cakes keep getting better every year too! This year’s two-layer yellow cake was iced with homemade lemon-cream cheese frosting with a lemon custard filling. Yum! She even had the foresight to add all three birthday names to it. Another great birthday, another great year, and maybe after a few more 29ths I will have perfected it and can move on to being 30.
