Caravan, August Bank Holiday

The entire population of the rest of the United Kingdom was clearly headed for Pembrokeshire for the pointless August Bank Holiday.  Well, a lot of cars were heading west down the M4.  This wasn’t a problem, until we got to Bristol, Junction 19, and the Smart Motorway.  At that point the signs lit up and the traffic slowed down.  The variable speed limit dropped to 50, then 40, then up to 60, then 40 again, then 50, all within about six miles.  For most of that way, we were doing 10 to 30.  Once we’d got past Junction 21, the Smart Motorway turns dumb, and the traffic gets back to normal.

The exact same thing happened around Newport, between 24 and 29, also a Smart stretch.  Are you detecting a pattern here?  (Clue: it happens on the M25 too.)  And they’re busy turning the M4 from Slough to Reading into yet another one – I don’t know the cost, but judging by the size and timescale it must run into tens of millions – whereupon, in 2022, a perfectly adequate motorway will turn into yet another traffic jam.

That’s quite enough about traffic, isn’t it?  So I’ll leave out the part about the A48 time-saving detour which added another hour or more to the trip, and my anxiety about running out of petrol before we could reach Carmarthen and locate the Tesco filling station.  Z was monitoring the satnav and warned me that there might be a slight delay around the Red Roses turnoff on the A477.  I didn’t think this would add much to the six hours we’d already clocked.

We’d presciently decided to stop at Pont Abraham and grab a bite of lunch (sandwiches, crisps and drinks).  We chose WHSmith’s rather than Costa, for reasons of morality.  I’ve probably written here before about the aptly-named latter company’s approach to their business, which can be summarised as ‘price up, quality down’.  Mind you, WHS can’t be absolved either: we paid over £13 for exactly the same stuff we’d bought at M&S two days previously for £8.40, the only difference being location – one on a motorway, the other not.

Once we got here, everything was fine.  Nothing had changed except the grass, which had grown a bit.  The six hour journey had made it too late to do anything with the rest of the day except have a drink, eat again, and absorb the sight and the smell of the sea.  That’s why I still come here, against all logic.

Sunday was a fun day.  We walked into Saundersfoot through the tunnels, had a pint at the Royal Oak, walked back.  That’s actually quite a lot of walking, especially for Z, who has a recovering but still slightly gammy foot, but also for me – I need to do something about my fitness level.

In the late afternoon, the usual bank holiday Sunday entertainment started up down the pub.  I usually hate being subjected to music I haven’t chosen, but these guys were pretty good.  I flatter myself that the guitarist sounded a bit like I might have done fifteen years ago.  (That’s high praise, in case you weren’t sure.)  And after that there was a classic Welsh boozy singalong, which politely finished well before lights out.

Today (Monday) we went for a walk up the valley then crab salads down the pub.  I‘m going to give the Wisemans Bridge Inn a free plug here – great location, superb service, good food, decently priced.  And they manage to satisfy up to a hundred customers all at once. 

Back to Reading tomorrow.  Back to, or from, the real world.

Oh, and I even managed to get a lot of work done.  That’s what happens when you don’t have internet.

No rabbits.  But the local wasps are very friendly.

Benefits of Brexit

It has been pointed out that there needs to be a Government publication to counter the leaked Yellowhammer report about the dangers.  They’ve had a good 45 minutes to come up with it, but they’re clearly not up to this simple task, so I’ll do it for them.  I don’t have any spads to help, so forgive me if I’ve missed some out.

1. 1.     We will all become free.
2. 2.     We will trade on equal terms with the US, Mexico, China, Brazil and India (as long as they trade on equal terms with us).
3. 3.     However, we won’t have to trade with any frogs, krauts, eytiyes, dagos or spics. Or micks.
4. 4.     We can have our own faceless bureaucrats.
5. 5.     Our Parliament will be able to take back control of whatever it is they didn’t already have control of.  (Nobody knows.)
6. 6.     The Red Chins in their millions
7. Will overspill their borders
8. And chaos then will reign in our Rael (©Pete Townshend)
9. 7.     Unless we fight a war against them.
10. 8.     Which we will obviously win, because we won’t be vassals.
11. 9.     We will compete with all the other offshore islands and principalities in the world’s greatest industry (moving money from place to place without spending any of it).
12. 10.  Except Singapore, of which we will become a colony.
13. Technology will solve all our problems.

I've left intact blogger's weird interpretation of a Word numbered list. It seemed apt.

Caravan Diaries, latest

There wasn’t a lot of activity this time, due to Z’s broken leg.  (All right, foot. Oh, all right, toe.  But you can’t prance around on the clifftops with a socking great surgical boot on.)

So instead we concentrated on eating, drinking and sitting.  The eating is the only interesting part, so I’ll tell you about the three pub lunches.

The first was at the Dragon in Narberth.  It’s one of at least six pubs that are still alive and well in this small Welsh town.  (There used to be about 165, I’ve been told, though that was by a Welshman.)  it doesn’t look much from the outside – indeed, I’d never been in there until a couple of years ago – but it has a lovely scruffy garden and does perfectly decent food and beer.  We had calamari and chips.

On Friday, we drove across to Angle.  It’s a remarkably popular nondescript village at the end of nowhere on a muddy cove on the south side of the Milford Haven sound.  There was an extraordinary amount of traffic on the increasingly tortuous road from Pembroke – quite a lot of it going the other way to us. (Of course, you don’t see the traffic that’s going the same way as you, unless you’re stuck behind a tractor, which happened a few times.)  “Have they already had their lunch?” Z wondered.  It was twelve o’clock.
Our target was the Old Point Inn.  This is a little 16^th century pub that can only be reached at low tide via a very car-unfriendly track.  You have to find the right right turn in Angle, which is clearly not that easy – I’m a good navigator, but I’ve got it wrong every single time I’ve tried it, so far.  It’s worth the journey, though.  Excellent (though expensive) food, and a fabulous setting, with great views of the oil refinery across the sound.  I think I’ve put pictures on here before.

Lunch #3 was, of course, dahn the pub.  That’s the Wisemans Bridge Inn, which is the most popular pub in Pembrokeshire.  It’s an easy walk down to it, a less easy walk back up.  Z struggled a bit in both directions, I think, but she’s pretty resilient, and wasn’t going to let a mere broken leg/foot/toe keep her from a decent pint.

So that’s the lunches.  Shall I do the dinners?  [Ed: No.  Me: O alrite.]

In other news, the mirror door on the bathroom cupboard had managed to fall off and break in half.  I had to smash up the remnants with a big hammer to bin them.  That was fun.