Day 83 - Suntanning

There is an opinion I think manifested by the anti-colonial sect in countries that have most benefitted from colonialism that the English countryside is blighted by smoke spewing industry, council housing estates, gangs of hoodies marauding over the farmlands and country lanes filled with eighteen wheelers.

With still my holiday goggles on maybe, I can tell you with some certainty that in this part of the world that I now inhabit that is not the case. There are few places that I have seen on my (quite extensive) travels that offer a more picturesque environment. There are few places where the lanes are as wide as the car you are in but there is not a pot hole or scraping branch in sight. There are few places where homes are in buildings that are hundreds of years old, homes that pre date the roads, and today their stone walls are bombarded with ivy and hanging baskets. Where there is acre upon acre of different coloured farmland where the fence is rickety and only a meter high. Where at the end of a driveway so impossibly long, sits a pile worth more than a small country. 

Unless of course you take the road to Barmouth on the coast line of north Wales, as we did on Sunday. The difference in landscape from the plains of this part of the country to the almost Alp like conditions of Snowdonia cannot be fully described. From reasonable main roads to narrow hair pin bends, through tiny hamlets with steep roofed houses and what would be snow covered hillsides in winter, over bridges that crisscrossed over many rivers, this was country side that was so green as to be impossible. A leisurely Sunday drive turned into a 400km round trip marathon; but to see Fairbourne, with its narrow gauge steam railway that chugged through the town and Barmouth, with its houses made of slate stone cannibalised from and cut into the side of a slate mountain. Where homeowners would have to carry their shopping and furniture up the narrow paths to their homes. Where you can imagine in the past, women staring out of their windows, out to sea, high up on the ‘mountain’ waiting for the fishing boats to come back in. Hoping that their man would be coming home. Hoping that the bitterness of the north Atlantic in winter hadn’t claimed another soul.

Where in the summer months today, not that it gets too hot too often; this small village becomes a resort for tourists, campers and hikers from all countries. Where the bars, restaurants and the pavements are full of happy people, where the beach is a sea of colour with all the kiters. 

Nevertheless, it was a long way to go to the beach! It seemed longer coming home to be honest; it always does with two tired and getting whiny kids in the back. But at least we have been there and I would recommend the drive, not for the destination necessarily – even though it is picturesque - but for the journey itself. Welcome to Wales.

Until tomorrow. Hope you like the pictures.

There are few places in this world where the lifestyle of many, rich and poor, are determined by the steepness of the tradition of their predecessors.

This is the land where, today the hunt gathers in the winter months to chase the fox – although not to kill it anymore because that would be illegal - and hundreds of years ago, the Kings men rode their steeds in pursuit of his orders. Where the evidence today is the ancient oil paintings depicting the scene and the dotted ruins of castles built on outcrops of rock. Where centuries old pubs, found in the oddest of corners each tell their own story. Arguably there is no prettier place than this part of the English countryside.