Especially for Jane Knox!
Dear
Friends, it is time to wind up our delightful unexpected holiday in London
& Wales, so we are enjoying a very quiet last day in our tiny little
cottage in Hay-on-Wye. Wes is sitting on the veranda with a cup of tea, enjoying
the latest Ian Rankin, while I took my time getting up this morning as I am
reading the latest Peter Robinson (D C I Banks). He is, of course, rugged up,
as it is cold outside, but there is no rain and the wind has died down. The
sound of the running water, the black sheep and the many birds is just lovely,
although we do miss our view of Lake Daylesford and the sound of snuffling
Labradors at our feet.
Since I last
wrote we have spent another whole day in the village and yesterday was spent in
the car driving. Our Saturday started with my brilliant idea of having
breakfast locally, only to discover everywhere shut at 9.30am except for one of
the pubs, where we endured a proper fried breakfast. The Welsh sense of humour
is best explained by the fact that they offer Glamorgan Sausage with their vegetarian breakfast as it is a
vegetarian sausage…quite a trap for the unwary, especially if you don’t eat
meat because you don’t like the taste! Sadly the Welsh tomatoes are just as
tasteless as English ones, can’t wait to get home and pick whatever remains of
our Roma tomatoes and enjoy every bite.
We explored
some more bookstores including one with more Penguins than I have ever seen
before. I managed to pick up a couple of Margery Allingham, Henry Cecil and H R
F Keating that I was missing, then we enjoyed the delightful experience of
collecting Wes’s watch from the jeweller’s shop – you may remember that we put
the watch in to get the battery replaced and the jeweller is only available
after 10.30am on Saturday.
I left Wes
heading off to Richard Booth’s bookstore for a long read, while I climbed
upstairs into the Magic Faraway Tree (well it seemed like it) for my facial
with Sammy, the 25-year-old local who started the business 18 months ago with
her aunt. I enjoyed an Environ
Hydra-Boost Treatment that took 1.5 hours and made my skin feel great. Wes
and I then waited 30 minutes for a late lunch at the café in the bookstore,
where the food & service is wonderful, and where Wes had tarragon ice-cream for afters. Welsh
ice-cream is rich and creamy and inventive in its flavours and this was superb.
Then we went back to the Deli for some more cheese and biscuits. We went to the
fruit shop to buy a bottle of wine…because you can, and were assured by the
owner that the bottle we chose punched
above its weight and it does.
Yesterday we
set the alarm for 6am and settled down to watch Collingwood vs Hawthorn. At
quarter time I was feeling good about the game and gave Viva a quick ring on
Skype as we can’t make mobile phone calls here anymore (no idea why). I hadn’t
been using Skype even though it is so cheap because she couldn’t hear me in the
past, but she assures me that the line was clear and she was OK with it. At
half-time I was getting worried about the game, so had a shower and came back to discover the
Hawks were getting back to business and slowly but surely running over the top
of us and so it went. Wes was disappointed that Carlton had lost narrowly to
Geelong and didn’t want to watch the game, so we had a quick muesli breakfast
and into the car in pouring rain to explore.
I was keen
to visit the nearest big town, Brecon,
but it was like a morgue, so we drove through and decided to go to the Rhondda Valley
area instead. And we are so pleased we did. The countryside was very different,
sheep grazing by the side of the winding roads, a low-lying constant fog and a
sameness about the little villages that made us realise how hard life must be
in this coal-mining area.
The Rhondda Valley
Then we set
our Tom Tom for St David’s on the
coast – the smallest city in the UK according to its sign, in the hope of
finding a good lunch spot. We were out of luck with lunch as everywhere seemed
to be closed, but we did see stunning beach views and were very amused by a
sign outside a small private hotel on the outskirts of the town, promising
disabled facilities. It would be all very well to stagger in there on your
frame or wheelchair or with your walking stick and your room might be very
user-friendly, but there is nowhere you could go without help and if you
ventured outside the wind would blow you out to sea before you knew what had
happened.
We
backtracked to Solva, which seemed to
have three lunch places; all open, with a large parking area by the harbour,
and chose the least family-friendly one of the three. We ordered seafood
chowder as it appeared the fishermen hadn’t been fishing and there was nothing
else to eat that wasn’t battered within an inch of its life. The chowder tasted
like tomato soup made on milk (a particular non-favourite of mine) and there
were lots of mussels and the odd calamari ring to find in it. We tried to go
for a walk to look at the boats but the wind was too strong, so we turned back
and drove back here. Wes did heaps of driving as it took 2.5 hours to get back
and we stopped for sips of tea and later an ice-cream by the side of the road. (One
of the big advantages of having our own Tom Tom, apart from familiarity is that
it talks to us in terms of kms and sadly the UK, although it has embraced so
much of the metric system is yet to change from miles.)
We have to
make room in our suitcases for 63 books (and I didn’t even look at the general
fiction section at the biggest bookstore), so tomorrow morning’s packing should
be fun. Thanks for everyone who has followed our trip, especially those who
have read and commented on Facebook or by email – it has been lovely to hear
from you and know you are interested in our doings. We are driving to Heathrow
tomorrow via Oxfordshire and hope to be home sometime Thursday morning.
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