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.

The Caravan is having an early snooze

It usually gets put into hibernation in October: the site is officially closed from the end of October until Easter, although Joseph has been known to mutter, in a diplomatically deniable choice of words, that were someone to turn up during the officially closed season, ‘I probably wouldn’t notice’.  About ten years ago, his mother celebrated her ninetieth, in the January, and the site was apparently packed out.  (I wouldn’t know for sure – we weren’t invited.  Sniff sniff.)

This year, for reasons too complicated to go into here, the shutdown had to happen last week.  But for other reasons, equally complicated and even more boring to relate (think plumbing), it couldn’t completely get done, so I’m relying on Joseph to complete the job – and then, of course, reinstate everything in the spring.  I’ll probably phone him sometime before the first frost, just to pre-empt my anxiety – an unworthy thought, but which comes first: his promise or my anxiety?  I know my answer; and of course I’ll do it very diplomatically.

So that’s Pembrokeshire taken care of for yet another year.  Long term followers of this blog might recall that I’ve been going there since about 1949, so can claim to be an older inhabitant than many people who were born there.  But it wasn’t until relatively recently that I really got to know the county.  When our parents took us to Saundersfoot and Wisemans Bridge for those family holidays, it was all about the beaches of south Pembrokeshire – Barafundle, Broadhaven, Marloes and the others.  The west and north coasts were largely foreign lands.

So it was a surprise when I finally began to discover those parts, about twenty-five years ago.  They’re very different.  A bit more rugged, wilder, perhaps a bit more dangerous.  I remember randomly driving down a ridiculously narrow winding tree-lined road to emerge at a dizzy view of the Irish Sea; and equally randomly down another to fetch up in Porthgain.

If you ever go to Pembrokeshire and don’t visit Porthgain, you have missed something unique.  Is it possible to be unique in many different ways?  If so, this place achieves it.  I’d taken Z there a couple of times before, but we managed this time to climb up the steps at the end of the quay and wander across the cliff path, past the intriguing brick built industrial ruins and the disused slate and granite quarries, almost as far as the great low tide beach at Traith Lyffn, (about which I’ve blogged here before).  We didn’t go down the steps.

Supercaravan

Z showed me an advert, disguised as a news story, about an American, um, thing that claims, for financial or fiscal reasons, to be a caravan but is in fact an incredibly badly designed almost uninhabitable shack.  Sleeps six.  She’ll provide a link to the details if you persuade her to.

My caravan is four feet wider than the American thing.  It also comes with the benefit of Joseph.

I was awoken at 1.33 am precisely by a roaring noise.  Usually that signifies stormy weather, but I knew that wasn’t the case.  So I forced the pace and got out of bed.  The noise seemed to be coming from the bathroom, but when I went in there it seemed not to be.  ‘Ah ha,’ I thought.

Of course, it was outside plumbing, yet again.  I turned off the mains supply tap and went back to bed, thinking dark thoughts that can’t and won’t be retailed here.  ‘Enough’ was the softest.

Next morning, I managed to bump into Joseph.  Once he’d finished his complicated conversation with Brian, he came over in his Lan Rover and fixed the problem in minutes, once he’d found the necessary parts.  I can’t explain the process in detail, because that would require me to imagine lying flat on my back in a brambly ditch underneath a caravan, doing fiddly things with plumbing.  All I can say is: he’s a hero, and worth every penny of the £(fillinyourownnumber) rent I pay him.

In other news, we went to Carew (pronounced, I still firmly believe having been so taught by my mother in 1952, Carey) Castle, which is about as good as ruined castles can get.  And then to the Creselly Arms, a very basic pub on the beautiful Cresswell estuary that used to sell just local beer but has recently moved upmarket by offering cheese and pickle rolls too.

The caravan evolves

We’d taken a circuitous route rather than the usual boring bomb down the M4, because Z had arranged to visit someone in mid-Wales for business reasons, which seemed, from my perspective at least, to offer the possibility of revisiting the scenic route my father liked to take on family holiday journeys back in the fifties.  It didn’t quite turn out that way, mainly because the satnav refused to take us up the A417, over Birdlip Hill, and through the Forest of Dean; nor did I get to see that Black Mountain view down from a dizzy height to a reservoir with a toy train running alongside it.  But the company and the lunch were compensation enough.

Very few of the people I think of as my ‘old caravan mates’ attend frequently nowadays; indeed, some have given up their vans completely, and others I know have health issues.  I can’t expect to relive heady occasions like my 60^th birthday, when I happened to mention it to a neighbour in the gents (no in-van plumbing in those days) and an hour later was joined on the newly-laid patio by a tipsy horde of about sixteen glass- and bottle-clutching Welsh party-makers.  Nor can I expect again to stagger glass- and bottle-clutching up the hill towards Dave and Marilyn’s and fall over halfway under the influence of an unaccustomed cigarette.  Just as well really.

Of course, the next generation has mostly inherited, as well as the property, at least some of the behaviours (though I don’t think they’re as good at them as we were).  I can’t expect or want to be drawn into that.  Watching the little ones will do now.

And the rabbits, which are back in force and still burrowing under the front of my caravan.  Joseph assured me they can’t excavate a big enough sinkhole, but I noticed that a bag of cement had been left behind the van, and was tempted to tip it down there just in case.  Probably just as well I didn’t.  I’m not sure that the insurance covers failed attempts to fill in undermining rabbit warrens.

 

Caravan Diaries – Rules?

There are rules.  I’d always known this, of course, just never knew what they were.  Joseph has remedied this by publishing a long list of them, mostly aimed at preventing and penalising sub-letting.  He assures me that they don’t really apply to the likes of me.

If I didn’t know as much as I do about how Pembrokeshire works, I’d find that slightly patronising.  As it is, I decide to find it amusing.  He’s a nice man whose spirit and skills are in practicality – mechanical problem-solving, farming – not in commercial rental management, and some people have undoubtedly been taking advantage.  But he really should have had someone check it out before publishing.  Some of these so-called ‘rules’ are absurd, not to say self-contradictory, and a lawyer would have a field day if it ever came to it – not that it will, Pembrokeshire law is mostly about how to avoid itself.

Some things called O-rings in the shower mixer unit have been damaged, probably by my insufficient unscrewing of the tiny grub screws when removing it for over-wintering, resulting in a slight, steady drip.  Joseph might have some spare ones, or can get some, and will fit them.  A list of the rescues he’s performed for me over the years would bore you to snores and probably overflow the internet.  I have to allow him a few stupid rules, don’t I?
 

The sea never changes, and is never the same.

Caravan shutdown

If it’s 1797 and you’re going to invade Great Britain from France, obviously north Pembrokeshire is the go-to place, isn’t it?  Good rail links Goodwick to London, regular Sealine ferries to Ireland, nice local beaches…  but you probably didn’t allow for Jemima.

The tapestry (more properly, as Z pointed out, an embroidery) commemorating this bizarre bit of forgotten history (about which you can read more here), immaculately displayed and curated in Fishguard library, allowed us to dispose of a wet, windy Friday.  We proceeded up the coast to Newport (how many Newports are there in the UK, I wonder?) and an acceptable lunch at the Golden Lion, after which we drove back over the misty, drizzly Presilli hills and caravan life took over.

The Presilli hills are locally referred to, in English, as the Presilli mountains.  This is a deliberate mistranslation of ‘mynneth’, which sounds a bit like ‘mountain’ but in Welsh means something rather less.  (I am making this up, but don’t let that stop you believing it.)  Welsh is an intriguing language, which we’ve resolved to learn more of.  (* look up the Welsh for ‘resolve’*)  Sometimes it just looks like bad English spelling (ambiwlans, parc busnes) but then veers off into French (eglwys). 

Back at the caravan, we hunkered down and enjoyed a decent-weathered Saturday, including a walk across the westward Wiseman’s Bridge beach where the geology is, once you notice it, quite fascinating.  I’d spent many early years not noticing that what was now rockpools and striations had once been a massive promontory – huge and high worn down to sea level cracks and sand over many millions of years.  We don’t leave that much of a trace, do we?

The caravan is shut down.  Draining the plumbing was much easier once Joseph had taught me how to do it properly.  Z has made it cleaner than it’s been for years.

I didn’t cut the grass. No rabbits did either.

Ray's Story

Z had taken the kids to the beach, but I’d opted to stay in the caravan.  After an hour or so, and having exhausted the entertainment potential of the newspaper, I dipped in to the small selection of books, leaflets and so on that reside in my bookrack there.  There’s a first aid manual, several quick’n’easy cookbooks, guides to walks and places to visit, and a few snatches of genuine local Pembrokeshire history.  It was one of those that captured me.

It’s a book of black and white picture postcards of Narberth, from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  Old pictures are, of course, always good to look at; but what caught my eye was the foreword, which heaped lavish praise and thanks on Miss Ray Davies, without whom the enterprise would never have happened. 

I knew her quite well, and I just wanted to set down what I can about a rather intriguing character.

Rachel, only ever known as Ray, was born in 1916 and died in 2003.  She never married.  It was rumoured that this was because her heart had been broken, just after the war, by a scoundrel in Belgium, where as a WREN she’d been posted for unknown reasons following service at Bletchley Park on the Enigma code-breaking project. (She was probably one of the Bombe girls, but I haven’t been able to verify that.)  I’ve seen a picture of her, in uniform, from around that time, and can only say that the Belgian heartbreaker must have been crazy.

By the time I met Ray, her focus had both narrowed and broadened.  It had narrowed to a compulsion to sort, identify and catalogue.  The broadening was in the range of material she did this to.  It started, probably, with stamps – she worked for Stanley Gibbons in the thirties – then expanded to archaeological samples, coins, Victorian fans, local history…  After she died we found dozens of exercise books filled with quite indecipherable lists of stuff, which of course we had no choice but to throw away.  Nobody would have cared.  The stamps and fans were sold, not for much.

What started me on this, though, was the local history obsession.  She became, I think, an infuriatingly avid supporter of the Narberth Wilson Museum (which has since closed down and then reopened; it won some ‘best museum’ award a few years ago, and we really should try and visit it next time we’re there.)  She put a few backs up during this late phase of her life, but the important things are that it kept her going, and that her efforts, however misdirected by her oncoming dementia, did get recognised in the foreword to that rather splendid book of old postcards.

Mussels

I promised to tell you more about our caravan holiday, but it's too late to start on Ray's story now, so you'll have to wait till tomorrow again for that.
Meanwhile, here are two words I learnt on a wet evening: Scaup; and Mussitation.

Caravan Life is Alive and Well

Child: “Where’s my *insert child’s object of choice*?”  Adult: “Where you left it.”  Child (pauses): “I don’t know where I left it.  That’s why I’m asking you.”  Adult: *surrenders*

The craze this time was folding paper napkins into neat narrow oblongs.  There were also marbles and complicated card games.  I resisted engagement with any of this, of course, relying on Z to do what grannies do on cool windy wet afternoons trapped in a caravan with two small energetically unfocussed children.

It wasn’t all like that, of course.  We managed a fair bit of time on the beach, which had its usual effect on me.  When I rashly suggested that we might try a different one (I targeted Manorbier, partly, if I’m honest, because I really like the Castle Inn there and carefully timed the trip to arrive spot on for lunch), once the wind had got the better of us and we’d agreed that wasn’t on, Gus and Zerlina made it quite clear that they would much rather be back on what, to my delight, they called ‘our beach’.  (Technically, the correct term is ‘the local beach’, as my brother and sister will confirm, but hey, ‘our’ will do.)

I also welled up, briefly, when they came back up to the van and proudly announced that they’d once again climbed ‘Tim’s Rock’.  (Again, it’s more properly called ‘The Big Rock’, but hey again.)

 

There’s more.  I’ll post again tomorrow.

Still no rabbits.  I blame Joseph’s new lawnmower.

The Caravan Has Legs

Caravan diaries 17.2

Now that Z has her new hip and can do level walking at least as well as I can, I decided a couple of outings were in order.  The first was Lydstep Head, which is a fairly gentle circular mile with great views south and east across to Caldey Island, west towards Manorbier and the wilder coast beyond and, in the last stretch, downwards to what’s now called Lydstep Haven. 

Once upon a time one went (or was taken, to be exact) to this uninspiring shingle beach for a sole purpose – to walk, at the lowest tide, round to the spectacular caves that must, now I think of it, be more or less underneath where we were walking.  Now it’s been turned into a very expensive caravan site, the entrance to which has been made to look like private property (which it isn’t of course, there are no private beaches in this country).  I’ve never driven down to it, but from above it looks horrible.  The walk is lovely, though, and the flowering gorse smelt as coconutty as always.

The other big walk was to Bosherstone.  This is an entirely man-made stretch of lakes created by an obviously mad 18^th century aristocrat to grow waterlilies in, and now owned and curated by the National Trust.  (I know they have their faults, but imagine the country without them!) 

The car park at Bosherstone village being full, we drove round to Broadhaven beach and did the walk from there.  This was not so good, as it involved a long stretch over the beach; walking on soft sand, especially up a hill of it, is tough on the legs, heart and lungs.  But we made it back to the car, the village and the Govan Arms for lunch.  I was pleased to see that the scenic cameos my friend Graham Hurd-Wood had painted in his youth were still hanging on the wall.

On our last day, we’d intended to leave first thing, but the weather was so great that we delayed and instead went to Colbey Woodland Garden, another local NT property.  The garden is fine – what it says on the label, more or less – but they do need to have a look at their signage: I won’t bore you with details, let’s just say that if you have a ‘red’ walk on the map, a few red signposts along the way might help…

Caravan diaries (cont'd)

We had to collect some chickens from Herefordshire and bring them back to Norfolk, so the obvious thing to do was go to Reading, go to Pembrokeshire, open up the caravan, stay there for a few days, go to Herefordshire, pick up the chickens, go to Reading, and come back to Norfolk.  And so it came to pass.  About thirteen hours driving in all, but I don’t mind that.

Opening up the caravan is usually straightforward – you put the drain taps and the shower mixer back in, sweep up the dead flies, clean the green gunge off the outside walls and cut the grass.  This time, normality had gone slightly adrift.  The grass hardly needed cutting (Joseph has a new mower, which goes almost all the way up the slope in front of the van, which used to be entirely my responsibility). Far less green gunge than usual (the overhanging sycamores have been fairly ruthlessly pruned, although not enough for my liking – they’re still above ground level, vile weeds).  No dead flies at all (once some years ago I could hardly see the carpet for them, which was when I started spraying with Raid or Flit on departure, which helped but a few would still get through). 

The plumbing, though, proved unusually problematic.  Joseph had told me, ages ago, that the thing to do in the autumn was unscrew the four drain taps and just remove them.  Of course, he now denies this, and tells me I should have been following a whole different procedure, the detail of which is too boring to relate… anyway, I had several leaks, the last at about 3 a.m.  But once he’d fixed the underlying cause – a crossed thread – all was well and dry, and the problem will never happen again.

After that, it was just as it’s meant to be.  We walked through the tunnels to Saundersfoot (I wanted to make ghosty noises in the long one, like when I was eight, but didn’t want to scare Z), had a nice fish lunch at the Mermaid (now rebranded the Beach View, which is more accurate but less romantic, but otherwise unchanged in twenty years), walked around Tenby, watched the pale everchanging colours of the flat calm sea, failed to connect to the internet… everything as it should be.  No rabbits so far.

The chickens are gorgeous.  Z will no doubt tell you all about them.

Follow the Van (Caravan diaries)

We’ve been from Norfolk to Pembrokeshire and back in the past week.  As a result, the caravan is now asleep until the spring.

I learnt two interesting things whilst we were there.  (Pembrokeshire, that is, not Norfolk.)  The first was one of those circular routes that start from somewhere completely irrelevant, accidentally take you through several relevant places and drop you off at another completely irrelevant spot just next door.

For some completely irrelevant reason, we started singing that song about my old man said follow the van, you know the one.  Turns out they were evicted, had to load everything onto this van, there wasn’t room for her so she had to walk, toting a completely irrelevant bird, got lost and pissed, etc etc.  The interesting bit was, of course, the van, which started its life as a queue of transport camels crossing the Sahara, turned into a single horse- (not camel-) drawn vehicle which later acquired an internal combustion engine, before performing a career swerve, regaining its full name and becoming a mobile home (a term now exclusively reserved for static ones, the mobile ones being termed tourers) commonly known as a caravan, or string of load-bearing camels but, to us insiders, knowingly referred to as ‘the van’.

The other thing was to do with Julius Caesar, who apparently didn’t say (in Latin) ‘the die is cast’ but (in Greek) ‘the dice must be thrown’, or some such thing that means more or less the opposite.  What I learnt was that I’d been wrongly taught, about sixty-five years ago, that the ‘die’ in question was one of those metal stamps for making coins and ‘cast’ meant ‘forged’, as in cast iron.  Ah well.  I have little of either language, and less of the other.

In other news, there was only one rabbit.

Caravan diaries, Here and Now (Part Two)

I’d anticipated sharing, in enthusiastically avuncular tones, my childhood experience of this beach: climbing rocks (there’s a particular one, the Big Rock, they’d surely have to climb that just as I did when I was their age), dipping a hand into a rock pool (I know where the best ones are), collecting shells (you can’t have too many cockles and mussels and razors), watching the slow motion of the tides and working out when the beach would be at its best, feeling the sand and building castles from it, with that special glee of knowing that those tides are going to level them back to flat clean sand in a few hours, so it’s fine to wantonly kick over your own lovingly crafted creation just before you leave the beach for an ice cream (that’s fun!).

I was wrong.  Gus and Zerlina found all that all by themselves, immediately and instinctively.  It’s Tuesday now (I think) and we have to leave on Friday; so I only have two days to discover diverting and damming streams, shrimping (though we have no nets as yet), espying huge live crabs in the recesses of the deepest pools…  Sorry, did I say ‘discover’ there?  Hmm.

 

Caravan diaries, Here and Now (Part One)

If you want to know mindfulness, come to Wiseman’s Bridge.  If you want to explore it deeply, bring two small children. 

I first came here when I was probably somewhere around Gus and Zerlina’s ages, so let’s call it six.  Although I was born and brought up within earshot of the sea, and spent many of my early days on Southbourne beach, that wasn’t the seaside as we understood it:  that had to be Pembrokeshire, obviously. As my parents had patiently to explain to acquaintances –  who expressed perplexity as to why anyone would drive three hundred miles to get from one beach to another, taking about seven hours in the process (the Severn bridges, let alone the M4, not then even having been a post-war planner’s wet daydream, the journey therefore having to be made via the lowest bridging point at Gloucester, followed by scenic detours across the Heads of the Valleys and even further north, as far as Builth Wells sometimes, to indulge my father’s unexpressed passion for dramatic scenery) – those two versions of ‘seaside’ were so different as to make the whole thing not just worthwhile, but essential.

This time the journey was in three legs, over three days – Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  (Modern kids shouldn’t be asked to do seven unbroken hours in a car, even with more distractive technology than we could have imagined or handled, nor required to sing ‘Old McDonald Had A Farm’ and ‘Ten Green Bottles’ for seven hours.)  Leg one was from their child-minder’s to Z’s house: a mere forty minutes, just to soften them up.  Packing my car with what had been interpreted from the phrase ‘travel light’ proved a challenge, though nothing compared to then wedging it all, plus our own modest equipage, plus the food (and the extra food, and the oh-by-the-way food; and we still managed to forget the garlic) into Z’s car for the second leg, from Yagnub to my place in Reading.  Then it was just the boring last three hours down the M4, across the gorgeous bridge and into Wales, lunch at the best pub in the country (the White Hart at Llandarog) and so to – here!

Now is Monday.  I’ve only managed to get us as far as the caravan, and I’m already exhausted.  Parts two and three will be written tomorrow and, perhaps, Thursday, and published simultaneously when I get back to the internet-verse on Friday.

Caravan diaries (June)

Having initiated Z into the worst weather Pembrokeshire can throw at you, I felt obliged to share the best, so (having arranged for a week of perfect sunshine, gentle breezes and no rain), off we set on Monday.  All the traffic was going in the other direction (bank holidays, for people who have to go to work, are travelling days, not holidays at all, aren’t they?) so we made good time.

The site was fairly well populated, although largely with people I don’t know that well; having been there for nearly fifteen years, I’ve observed generations succeeding each other, so the inhabitants now tend to be the children or grandchildren of the old hands I’d first met.  They still wave and smile, of course, but they tend not to stagger down the hill at nine thirty clutching bottles and glasses.  (Nine thirty p.m., that is: they did their pre-yardarm drinking behind closed doors.)

There were dozens of small children (great-grands in some cases), who monopolised every square yard of grassy space with cartwheels, downhill bicycle races, chaotic games of cricket or rounders (you’re not supposed to actually carry the player to the next base, are you?) and all the other incomprehensible games kids seem to invent once they’re let loose into an unconfined, fairly rule-free space.   

No rabbits, though.  Last visit, they were out in force – this time, not a single sighting.  This may be because of the extremely thorough grass-cutting that seems to have become standard this season; or because they’ve all borrowed under the foundations of our caravan and are busy down there, doing whatever rabbits do for fun.  Anyway, there’s a rather alarming hole directly under the front of the van, which caused me a moment’s panic until I realised that it wasn’t on the scale of those car-swallowing sinkholes you hear about.  I alerted Joseph anyway, and he promised to ‘deal with it’ – I didn’t enquire too closely into precisely what this entailed, as I suspect it’s not very pleasant, at least not for the rabbits.

We’d resolved to come back on Thursday, but fine weather trumps resolve any day of the week, innit?  So we came back on Friday.  The sunshine is chasing us eastwards, and will reach Reading for the weekend, and Yagnub by whenever we do.

 

Caravan diaries 2016 #1

The journey down was longer than it should have been, partly due to an entirely inexplicable traffic jam between junctions 16 and 17 of the M4.  The warning signs were lit up right from Reading (junction 12), a good 35 miles earlier.  Sure enough, as soon as we passed Swindon, we slowed down to a near standstill as the signs got more and more alarming.  It took about half an hour to get to about junction 17, when the traffic miraculously cleared and we were back to our normal speed – there was no sign of what had caused the tailback, and I ranted yet again along the lines of “it’s the bleedin’ warning signs that cause it, rant rant rant”.

The caravan had once again survived what was actually a fairly hard winter for Pembrokeshire; in other words, it hadn’t rolled down the hill into the sea, and was only partially covered in green gunge, which will have to be washed off next time – I couldn’t be bothered to do more than the glass door this visit, on the basis that that particular patch of gunge was visible from the inside, and that it was more important to show Z the ropes, and the view.

The other good news is that the lawnmower fairy had called and cut all the grass, even the bits that are usually left for me to delight in.  I can only wax optimistic – has this become a new site policy?  Or a gentle hint about general tidiness expectations?  Time will tell.

On Saturday we went and shopped in Narberth (or Arberth as it’s named in Welsh; couldn’t they agree on at least that minor international difference?  Evidently not.)  It’s still a delightful town, surprisingly thriving for what likes to see itself as a depressed, deprived area.  Staycationing might have had an impact, of course.  Good to see that the best butcher, Andrew Rees, is still vigorously trading, selling local wet fish as well – we bought a turbot, not a beast you see often in the shops these days.  And a local genuinely free range chicken, which we’ve only just consumed the last of, four good meals’ worth.  And the slightly quirky greengrocers’ (or greengrocer’s) cum deli had very new Pembrokeshire new potatoes – easily the match of Jersey Royals, especially for not having been over-marketed and so over-cultivated.  This shop is called Wisebuys, which of course years ago got renamed Wise Boys.

On Sunday the east wind did blow.  The caravan site, unusually for the Welsh coast, faces east (which confused Z slightly until I explained the shape of Carmarthen Bay, without even having to resort to a map – she’s very quick on the uptake…), and when there’s a good blast from that quarter we feel it.  The caravan trembles and strains at its anchors, making for mild excitement and pretend trepidation, always good fun.  And the sea, of course, was churned up beautifully, as these pics show. 

We weren’t as brave as those folks, and didn’t venture onto the beach.  Next time.  Z tells me she loves rock pools, so she has a treat in store, as do I – this particular chunk of my childhood is indelible, but does benefit from the occasional refresh.

Caravan end of term, yet again

I've been down to lovely Pembrokeshire, to my lovely caravan at lovely Wiseman's Bridge, my lovely childhood memory site, quite a few times this year.  Every time, whatever the reason or excuse for the visit, I think 'why do I keep coming back here?'  I have no idea.  Logic, common sense and economic calculation all say 'why bother?'  Yet, every time I drive down the hill, past the pub, along the seafront, up the other hill and round between the two white houses and up, again, to the Lower Field, and across the grass to the caravan, it still feels like a homecoming.

I've sometimes talked about the quiet stillness (although that neglects one of Pembrokeshire's major industries, which is strimming), the views of the sea and the headland, the chums who will gladly share a jar and a gossip, even the rabbits and the pheasants and the wagtails - but that's not it.  I was chatting to a friend to whom I'd lent the caravan for a week back in August, and he talked mostly about his five year old daughter - her delight in discovering rockpools, shrimps, seaweed, low tide corrugated sand - and I suppose that's it.  I keep going back to my childhood.

Here's a picture of the caravan.

And the view.

Buzzy Caravan Visit

As I’ve said so often, always something different!  This time, insects.  Two earwigs had managed to find their way into the earwig-wide space between the glass splashback behind the bob, and the wall.  This splashback is secured by two pozidriv screws, which I had to loosen in order to insert a knife and entice them out.  I wish I could say I rescued them, rehabilitated them, and released them into the wild, but actually I squashed them with a bit of kitchen towel.

Be thankful that I’d forgotten to take the camera.

Then a bumblebee with a body as big as a Luques olive (I know this, I had a bowl of said olives on the table at the time) came in through the window right next to my head, just as I was settling down to a G&T and the early evening news.  I thought: do nothing.  Sure enough, it buzzed around the room for a bit, decided the news was too distressing (as had I), and exited the same way it had entered. Mutual relief there, I reckon.

And just before going to bed (this was all on Saturday evening) I killed three mosquitoes with three swipes of the swatter!  Fly-swatting is probably the closest I’ll get now to a racquet sport, since I gave up table tennis at the age of seventeen.

That’s about it.  Oh, except for the latest ‘THINK!’ sign on the Reading traffic information boards on my way back today:  “THINK!  TAKE MORE TIME TO LOOK FOR BIKES!”  Try as I may, I can’t make this mean anything.

Weather Window

Sheila, whose eightieth it was, has four children, about a dozen grandchildren, and a good smattering of great-grandchildren.  As far as I could tell, they were all there, including the two youngest great-grands, five and seven weeks old.  Then there were cousins, nieces and nephews, friends from all over the globe, and hangers-on like me.  I’d guess about forty humans in all, plus the dogs.

Being almost all Welsh, they almost all talked almost all the time (all right, not the two babies, though I think they’re working on it), not too bothered about whether anyone was listening, which makes for a great party.  I talked to quite a few of them, I think, but don’t ask me what about – it’s called ‘craic’ in Ireland, ‘liming’ in Tobago, I don’t know what in Welsh or English.  The fun point is that the performance outweighs the content.

The drive down the M4 on Friday was one of the worst in my living memory.  Driving through pelting rain and the resulting road spray and road blindness is mentally and physically exhausting, especially as most motorway users don’t know how to do it.  The journey back today was, if anything, even worse.  The M4 powers-that-maybe had decided to switch on all the ‘50’ signs, put up a message saying ‘POOR DRIVING CONDITIONS’, and (in my unfair estimation) pootle off down the pub.  The result, of course, is that Sunday drivers react to the signs rather than the actual conditions.  I have proved this theory over and over again.  As soon as the warnings of a problem disappear, so does the problem.

But miraculously, the 24 hours in between delivered the best weather Pembrokeshire is capable of.  The heavens shone on Sheila’s party.   I’m sure she noticed, but she didn’t remark on it, at least not in my hearing.  Most of the time she was too busy laughing.

SeenTV – the answer, and other stories

So I get there later than planned, sort myself out, have some food and a drink (didn’t open the Pelorus, that’s still there for some other celebration), and decide, perversely, to switch on the TV which I know is beyond doubt kaput, and of course the damn thing lights up, perfectly, twinkling innocently at me as if to say ‘sorry, did you ask me something?’

Well, I wasn’t having that, so I unplugged it, carted it down to the shore, and cast it off the rock promontory into the depths of Carmarthen Bay, where it swam out towards Swansea and torpedoed a tanker at anchor off the Mumbles waiting for a parking space at Milford Haven…

No, that didn’t happen.  I switched it off again.  Cheeky blighter.  Instead I stuck the iPod in its dock, hit shuffle and found ‘Clean Up Woman’ by Betty Wright and ‘My Way’ (no, not that one!) by Eddie Cochran, and wondered why music sounds so much better down there than up here, though the sound system cost a tenth as much.  (I know the answer.)

Steve the Teeve turned up spot on time, which wasn’t hard as we’d agreed on ‘sometime Wednesday afternoon’.   Pembrokeshire operates on its own timeframe, which makes the folk nicer, I think.  It can work against you, of course, if you’re on a tight schedule; but I very rarely am, down there: that’s the whole point!

So I now have a shiny new freesat dish, which means that the nasty metal pole that used to vertically bisect the front window is gone (tucked away under the van in case anyone else might want it, I’ll ask Joseph next time) and I have an unimpeded view of Monkstone Point.  (Except for those bloody sycamore trees.)

I got away quite early this morning, reached Carmarthen and realised I’d forgotten to turn off the gas and water.  I toyed with phoning Joseph and asking him to do it, but I don’t like stacking up favours, so I turned round and went back.  I’m glad I did.  It gave me a bonus glimpse of that view.  And I had the cup of coffee I’d foregone first time round.