You're watching Vagabrothers.
We're in Wales,
and this is the world's fastest zipline.
3-2-1
Good morning Vagabuddies.
Welcome back to Vagabrothers. It's day
three of our exploration in Wales, and
today we're surrounded by snow-capped
mountains and waterfalls in Snowdonia
National Park. Mount Snowdon is right
behind us.
It's the biggest mountain in Wales,
second biggest in the UK, and this whole
area used to be historically slate
mining, but it's recently been
rebranded as adventure capital
of Wales. So we're going to find
out why in this episode. Stay tuned.
The way this thing works is that we are
in an old slate mine, and Wales was one
of the regions in the UK that produced a
lot of slate, a lot of coal; there's a lot
of mining in the mountains here, and this
is an old slate mine.
I'm having DejaVu.
This reminds me a lot of our trip last
year to Northern England in the Lakes
District because we were at Honister Slate
Mine, which I think is the last working
mine in the U.K.
Obviously when mining..... the mining
industry kind of declined here in the
U.K. , it caused a lot of unemployment
and a lot of different shifts in the
economy. So this is an interesting way to
see how they're turning something that
once was heavy industry into tourism.
We were just sitting here looking at the
setup and watching these people go down on
this little small zipline here.
There's no way that could be like
the world's fastest zipline.
You can't get going fast enough.
You totally thought it was,
and then we realized that you
just take the zipline, the first one like
a warm-up zipline down, and then you hop
in a truck from there and you drive all
the way up this mountain to up there.
We have to put on these little jackets like
flak jackets, and then we're going to put
on a harness because we're going to
be hanging head first when we go down.
This is going to be insane.
Number one down. Warmup done.
Just arriving now to the top.
It's called the big zipper.
The big zipper, man.
Soft landing, you know, if
you fall off into the water.
Oh my god, dude.
I don't even know if I enjoyed these things
Why do I do it?
You ready, Mark? Let's do it.
3-2-1.
That was crazy fast.
We've hopped back into the car, and now
we're driving off to another zip world
adventure, but honestly that zipline was
amazing. I think that's the closest you
can get to wingsuiting without jumping
out of an airplane or off a cliff or
whatever.
For all the anticipation, it was less
scary than it seemed because once you
got past the ground below, you kind of
lost perspective how fast you're going
opened up over the water and you're able
just to enjoy it. Next we're going to go
to Bounce Below ,which is a really
interesting amusement park that is built
into the underground caverns of a former
slate mine.
The scenery in this valley is incredible.
We're driving up this huge kind of
u-shaped glacial valley.
The tips of the peaks are covered
in snow .
They're waterfalls cascading down into
the bottom of the valley, and we're on this
twisty, turny road that just hugs the
cliffside all the way up and over into
the next valley.
We have zipped over to a different slate
mine, and this one's got a thing called
Bounce Below, which I think
is like a bunch of
trampolines in this underground cavern
that used to be a slate mine.
This should be fun.
In certain respects, this is kind of
similar to what miners would have
had to do. They'd put on a hardhat;
they'd eat a sausage roll;
they would walk or
take the train down into the cavern and
start mining. Mining was extremely
dangerous. They would go 500 meters down
underground and then once you started
working, which usually started in your
early teens, you'd work your whole life.
It was extremely dangerous.
If they didn't die from explosions
or gases, oftentimes a runaway cart
could end your life in a second.
Now, if you get triple bounced,
you could end your life in a second.
What's the best thing about bouncing
down here? It's in a cave,
so it's amazing and it's
different, and it's unique.
This is what it must be like to be a kangaroo.
I'm tired. This is exhausting
All right guys. We have journeyed down
into this little gully, and we're in this
beautiful forest, and we've met up with
Richard who's going to take us foraging.
Hi guys.What's going on Richard?
Where are we?
We're on the edge of Clocaenog Forest.
We're just outside the market
town of Ruthin.
So you're from Cornwall originally.
Why come here,
and why get into foraging?
There aren't any mountains in Cornwall,
for a starter,
but the foraging thing started down
there with my family, and it's something
that's always been part of my life, but I...
Wales is such a fantastic climate for
foraging. Can you tells us about
how foraging has
evolved in terms of restaurants and the
culinary scene in general? It was
the first foraging revolution back in
the '70s when people really started to
pick up on the idea of living off the
land. I don't know. It's like there's
the post hippie movement that
started that, and it really kick-started
this desire to go out and find wild
things to eat and have a greater
connection with with our food. We work
with people to take them out show them
how to gather wild food safely, legally,
ethically.
Just walked down this path for about a
quarter of a mile, and we've already found
something to add to the list. What do we
have here, Richard?
We've got some wild garlic down there.
Really common at this time of year;
really easy to find; perfectly safe to
eat, but there's a lot you can do with it.
Does it bear any resemblance to our non
wild garlic? It's Allium Ursinum,
is its Latin name.
It looks more like spring onion with
longer leaves, but the scent really
intense.
That is incredible though.
It smells exactly like garlic.
It is garlic.
It's wild garlic..... mmm.
With this you could just
chop it and chuck it on top of a pizza
or something ,and you'd get the
same flavor as garlic.
Or a soup....it works actually quite well
with stinging nettle in a soup.
Stinging nettle?
Yeah, you can make that as well
Really? Yeah.
We found the next little batch
What's this one? This one is opposite
leaves, golden saxifrage. That's quite a
tongue twister. This is like a...
like a salad plant, so it's strange but
it tastes a little bit hairy. There's a
weird texture going on with it.
Yeah, as it goes down your throat, feels
like you just ate a mothball,
but it tastes good, cucumber peppermint..
Richard here has a pan and some olive
oil, so we're just going to pan fry
these mushrooms, a little bit of wild
garlic, have ourselves a nice little
Welsh natural feast.
Welcome to Chef's Table, Season 4.
Looks good.
Hmmm. That's good, but you can just tell
that you got good ingredients, don't need
too much to make it taste delicious.
Thanks for watching.
That was a super fun day.
If you enjoyed this video, make sure
you give it a thumbs- up, share with your
friends, and subscribe to Vagabrothers
and don't forget to turn on
notifications so you get an update every
time we publish a cool travel video.
Make sure you stay tuned for the rest of
the Wales series. We've got a lot more
adventures coming at you.
In the meantime stay curious,
keep exploring, and we will see you
Vagabuddies on the road.
Peace.