Wild, wet and windy Wales

We left work at lunch time on Friday (Harry now has the nickname ‘half day Harry’) to drive to Swansea to take our drivers applications to the transport office down there. After all our agonising over what we should do the process was fairly painless (except for the £49 each we had to hand over). We sat on the wharves to eat our lunch on a day that could only be described as cold and bleak but dry. After sitting in Amsterdam coffee bars I have decided that it is far more preferable to sit in a warm place sipping coffee and watching the weather from the inside than sitting on a wooden seat, using Harry as a wind shield and hurriedly drinking a cup of tea while wishing it was warmer (we had another cold picnic on the Saturday so we must enjoy it mustn't we?) We were aiming to get to the roast dinner Anne was cooking us in Newport by 6.00 ish and so headed up the coast feeling quite despondent at the towns we drove passed – they certainly didn’t look as though they had come out of the depression on the right side. But going further north things changed and there were a number of seaside resorts which reminded us a little bit of the Sunshine Coast – wide promenade, large houses built to enjoy the view and the sunshine. Our first stop for the day (and our last considering how long it took) was the Kenfig Nature Reserve (Cynffig in Welsh - we do so enjoy the Welsh language - the English names for towns are often as difficult to pronounce as the Welsh name). The reserve was fairly new and we wandered around the little lake and then headed off over the sand dunes to the beach – it looked quite close – but there was always another sand dune after the one we had just climbed (Harry kept giving me looks that said 'I told you so' but I ignored them) and it took quite a while before we got our sandblasting at the beach. Pretty but didn’t stay long. On the way back we took the quick route down a path (turned out flooded) and then another path (turned out flooded) and landed in the middle of a very wet marsh surrounded by two flooded paths and rather a lot of blackberry. Harry did some bush bashing while I found the shortest route around a few trees (he managed to shred his shoe laces and get a few blackberry prickles in his socks and trousers while I managed to get some very wet and muddy shoes). It was one of those trips we will always remember with a smile. Saturday it started to rain (oh actually I think it was Friday).



'It rained and it rained and it rained, the average fall was well maintained.
And when the tracks were simply bogs, it started raining cats and dogs.
After a drought of half an hour, we had a most refreshing shower
And then the most curious thing of all, a gentle rain began to fall.
Next day was also fairly dry, save the deluge from the sky
Which wetted the party to the skin, And after that the rain set in.

Nothing more to add to that Anonymous Poets (Welsh?) verse. Wet days are good for visiting caves and we wandered through the National ones not far from the Brecons . Then Anne, Haz and I headed off to Aberystwyth on the West Coast. We stopped a bit to admire the scenery, a little bridge, the daffodils and the lambs (spring has come to Wales). The town was so much like home (except for the castle ruins and the pier) as it sat on the shoreline of a rugged coast, once grand buildings faded by time and the sea spray (you could imagine many a cuppa being drunk in the afternoon), a cliff railway (golf Frisbee was closed at the top – could have been the wind) and a lovely bed and breakfast that looked out onto the sea. We saw swarms of birds (which could have been blackbirds), and watched as they followed a pattern for quite some minutes before perching on the local university.

After a healthy breakfast and carvery (the night before) we drove up to Portmerion (where the Prisoner was filmed back in the 70’s or 80’s) via a bird nature reserve. We wandered the woodland in some sunshine before arriving at Portmerion. Clough Williams-Ellis began constructing the little town on the hillside in 1926. As an architect he wanted to demonstrate how a naturally beautiful site could be developed without spoiling it. On the whole he probably did. He completed building in 1976, and I guess one of his greatest achievements is that it is listed as a Conservation area now (when he wanted to change a window in one of his buildings he had to apply for a consent – and was impressed with the rigour of the process but not the time it took). There are many cottages, some gifted to him that are now used as shops, hotels or holiday apartments. The documentary said that he had to refuse so much as it wasn’t in keeping (it was all small scale ie Harry had to bend to go through some of the doors but I didn’t.) Great garden – camellias and rhodos are out – and there were a number of New Zealand natives (flax, pongas) and a eucalyptus tree (expected to see tuis and koalas). I loved the estuary where at low tide we wandered out and our already muddy shoes got muddier. Back through the Welsh countryside on a summers evening – why is it beautiful – there is some hills, some lambs, some trees, rivers (rainfall carved ravines out of the hills), canals and windy roads (sound familiar).