Day 193: Made it Ma, Top of the World!

Tags

Aberystwyth, Afon Rheidol, Bwlch Nant yr Arian, Capel Bangor, James Cagney White Heat, lead poisoning, silver mines

A Journey Around the British Isles …Part 85

Between Aberystwyth and Llanidloes there is a little bit of every type of Welsh geography. You start with a coast with sandy beach and shingle and rock and cliffs, a natural harbour and a significant river mouth. Then a population centre with a commercial heart, historic places of interest, retail parks, a major university and secondary industry. Proceeding inland comes a narrow coastal plain with mixed agriculture, small scattered hamlets, dormitory villages and farms. All the time you are rising as you ride not one but two rivers through all of their stages. You can follow either the Ystwyth or the Rheidol. Both are fascinating rivers. The Rheidol  holds the distinction of being the steepest river in Britain. I follow this one.

Both rivers are worthy of detailed study. Today the valleys are sparsely populated but this masks an industrial history. Lead, and silver have been mined here since Roman times. In later years they became an important source of zinc. During the eighteenth century these were the populated parts of the region, Aberystwyth being little more than a few fishermen’s cottages. The heavy metals of the Ystwyth and the Rheidol brought tough employment to hundreds. The turnover was immense. The average  life expectancy of a miner here was 32. There are always dangers in working underground with picks and explosives. The main danger here though was lead poisoning. It’s difficult to imagine as I cycle past the clear waters of the Rheidol that this was once one of the most polluted rivers in Wales. As recently a the late 1960s an adit (horizontal mine entrance) blew out under pressure from mine water held behind it and polluted the river all over again poisoning fish and turning the waters orange.

The river has its own natural filters for pollutants in wetlands, reed beds and run offs. They are still in place. There is  an awful lot of lead and zinc in these hills. Of the fifty most polluting mines in all of Wales, thirty six are to be found in the Aberystwyth area. With all the hundreds of deep mined collieries in the valleys of Glamorgan who would have thought that would be the case?

I’ve chosen the main A44. I figure that the climb is going to be hard enough and I’m hoping that, at midday, the traffic won’t be too bad. There are a number of lorries heading east and we show each other all the courtesy of true gentlemen. Professional drivers, by which I mean ones who are actually qualified to drive at a higher level than we mortals, tend to show a decent level of respect to cyclists. Not all, but most.

Mining has given way to beef farming with sheep taking over on the uplands. The place is a haven for birdlife and popular with tourists. Most aim at the Devil’s Bridge and the spectacular waterfalls. Behind the falls is the entrance to the mine that didn’t need a superannuation scheme. My road is largely free of tourist traffic. My legs are fully warmed up and when I reach Capel Bangor I’m in the trees and beating out a steady rhythm up a determined slope. It’s almost the perfect gradient. I’ve found the cadence that suits and this climb has properly begun.

The people here have found their own pace; a man wheeling his bin out for collection stops, pauses, pushes back a flop of greying hair and nods to the cyclist. An unexpected village school. What a place to learn to write and draw with so much here to write and draw about. You only get one childhood. Why not spend it in a place like this?

“A window opened with a long pole.
The laugh of a bell swung by a running child.
This was better than home” *

You’d remember these schooldays all your life where the classroom glowed like a sweetshop.

Up through the tree line; always a special moment. Any cyclist dreads the thought of hills but loves to climb. I’m uncommonly happy. Fit and strong and never once stopping in the miles and miles of constant uphill to the top. Not head down and surviving but flourishing, savouring every twisting turn. You don’t get many hairpin bends in Britain, the hills aren’t on that scale. They are in Wales. And each bend reveals a different landscape; a different climate. It gets colder as you rise but you don’t notice it. Climbing means getting hot; you chill on the descent when riding a bicycle. This is a modern road but at the same time, an ancient route, a drover’s way. Gravity as much as silver mines and sheep trails connects you in communion with the past. There are two sorts of people in the world: those who have climbed this mountain and those who stayed at the bottom and looked up. It’s more than worth the effort.

The cyclist becomes entranced by it all. Whether you’re holding a steady rhythm on your own on a Welsh flank or trying to leave the pack behind on the slopes on Mont Ventoux, you keep turning pedals, adjusting your hand grips. Sometimes out of the saddle, but mostly seated, eyes aware of all around you as you beat out your progress like Mayakovsky beating out his verses syllable by syllable. It’s an internal as well as an external journey. People don’t ride bicycles only to see what is there but to understand what is here, within. Every cyclist is a poet, a philosopher. I’m rising up the western edge of the Cambrian Mountains; “it’s quite a thing!” **

And then I’m there and I’m ready for a cup of tea and a sit down. On my left the Bwlch Nant yr Arian visitor centre promises me mountain bike trails and views of red kites. Instead it has benches quaintly shaped like foxes and a canteen of the sort you might find in a run down sixties municipal swimming pool. Queues of children aching to get away from the “Oh look… a tree” worthiness of the place in order to spend their money on a waffle and a can of coke. It isn’t for me. There’s a thousand square miles of wonder up here and the visitor centre adds to it not one jot.

A mile or two further up the road I spy a little cafe on the side of the road and imagine tea served from a  china pot into  blue  and white cups and saucers. Freshly griddled crumpets and Welsh cakes and maybe a roast venison sandwich with homemade plum chutney on bread baked so the crust is almost burnt. Locally churned butter and a warm welcome from the proprietress who comes from a family that have lived on this mountain for generations.

The door is locked and the tattooed man working in the kitchen neither acknowledges me nor cares. I walk round the other side and enter a charmless room with condensation blocking the view. The place is under new management. An English couple who are to Welsh traditional catering what Malcolm Muggeridge is to rugby league. The tea is tepid and flavourless. The bacon sandwich, one of the worst I have ever been served. I finish neither.

Higher up and further I finally reach a place that brings the rest of Wales into the picture. I can almost see Shropshire from here. I’m probably on the highest point this side of the Urals; you so often are in Britain. I get out my own little stove and brew a proper mug to celebrate the occasion. It’s a place of brooding beauty. My mother would have loved it up here. Made it ma! Top of the world!

 

* Mrs Tilscher’s Class by Carol Ann Duffy

** Brooklyn Bridge by Vladimir Mayakovsky

Day 192: Elenydd: Crossing the Desert

Tags

Aberystwyth, Cambrian Mountains, Elenydd, epo, erythrocytes, Lance Armstrong, Marco Pantani, Red blood cells, Wales

A Journey Around the British Isles … Part 84

And having cycled up the hill to this great library, my next move is to cycle all the way down it again to find the road that will take me over an altogether bigger hill. A mountain range in fact. The Cambrian Mountains.

At one time the term was applied to any upland region of Wales but has now come to refer to this area of North Ceredigion and Powys. A district known for centuries as the Elenydd and sometimes called “The Desert of Wales”. It hasn’t the dramatic peaks of Snowdonia or the brooding beauty of the Brecon Beacons. It doesn’t attract holiday makers by the barrel. There’s nowhere up here to stay and many would say that there isn’t much to see. They would be wrong as such people usually are. This is the sparsely populated centre of the nation. This is where the Wye, The Severn, The Teifi, the Towey and the Elan all rise. This was proposed as a National Park at a time when such decisions were made in England and was refused. This is more than a national park. The Elenydd is a national treasure.

I’m going to get a taste of it. I’m using a road of course, and the real beauty of the Elenydd is it’s lack of roads, its lack of access, its remoteness. I’m following the northern boundary but there is plenty of high moorland beyond in every direction. Here is a part of our supposedly over-populated island where you can walk for days and not see another person.

But first I’ve got to get up there. The Severn and the Wye are the UK’s longest and fifth longest rivers. They rise within a few miles of each other. Indeed they enter the sea together as well. Between them they flow over 350 miles. In order to have that distance of downhill they must start pretty high up. The mountain I’m about to climb is different to all the other climbing I’ve done in Wales. Here it is one very long pull for many miles followed by the longest freewheel in the country.

There is no downhill at all for the first twenty miles. It’s a gradual ascent out of town. Aber keeps its charm all the way. It even copes with a retail park or two without making the place look either homogenous or shabby. If the whole world is starting to look like Luton then Aberystwyth has managed to buck the trend. Houses grow more prosperous  as they become fewer. It a day of strong breezes and they swirl around the built up areas. It’s not easy to tell which direction the wind blows but it’s either behind me or my legs have undergone a remarkable recovery. As the gentle uphill continues I realise that it is both. I’m feeling superbly strong and I’ve got the wind in my sails. It is remarkable what a good night’s sleep will do.

How can I have such a reduced lung capacity and yet be able to cycle with such power? It works something like this. My legs are strong from weeks of pedalling. Any energy I can send to them is going to be used very efficiently. My calves have been like the stages of a butterfly. They commenced more than a little out of condition. I’m a naturally fit person and even during my resting period I undertake a good deal of physical activity. Even so, my legs were decidedly flabby at the beginning of the tour. By Scotland the muscle definition became more and more obvious and I was rather proud of them. Through Ireland they went from looking powerful to becoming powerful. The more powerful they became the less powerful they looked. Well into the latter part of my journey they were now skinny. They didn’t look anything like as strong as they had while pedalling through Dumfries and Galloway but they were now producing nearly twice as many watts per kilogram. If I could get oxygen to these limbs then the hills would provide few problems.

But I was suffering from a lung infection that reduced my air intake significantly, had me wheezing while walking upstairs in the hotel and yet I was climbing all the hills that mountainous Wales could throw at me. The answer lies not in the lungs but with erythrocytes. Red blood cells to you and me. These are the principle means of carrying oxygen around the body. The more red blood cells, the more oxygen is circulated, the more energy you have for your legs to turn into power. High levels of fitness means high levels of erythrocytes. Professional cyclists have long known this and have long used any means of increasing their red blood cell count (for the race but not for the drug testers.) The two finest exponents of this pharmaceutical art were Marco Pantani and Lance Armstrong.

Pantani was the finest climber of his generation and a man who could electrify a mountain stage of any grand tour. He was also widely suspected of being an EPO user. EPO is a synthesised protein that stimulates the production of red blood cells. It’s mis-use in professional cycling had long been known in the cycling community and came to light with well publicised drug busts on members of cycling teams. It’s secret use was what allowed Lance Armstrong to become the most feted athlete on the planet before being reduced to the most famous cheat. The story is perhaps best told in Tyler Hamilton’s book, The Secret Race where he repeatedly calls the drug Edgar. (Short for Edgar Alan Poe which sounds a bit like EPO).

Cycling has long forgiven its cheats so long as they didn’t break the eleventh commandment: Thou Shalt Not Be Found Out. Hamilton himself was a frequent EPO user but his work in uncovering what was going on and how it was being got away with tilts the scales. The three men cycling can most thank for exposing the fact that the best chemists rather than the best athletes were taking the palmarès, are Paul Kimmage, Christophe Bassons and David Walsh. One a professional cyclist who refused to dope, one a professional cyclist who became a respected journalist and one a journalist. All three suffered greatly to expose the problem. All three could and should have got support from the cycling authorities and all three were badly let down by those authorities.

Professional cycling is now largely a clean sport. Not only do we have the testers words for it and health and fitness passports and the close scrutiny of a passionate following where cheating is deplored. The cleaner nature of the cyclists can be seen in the same features that I myself am now displaying. When Pantani was riding away from the pack in the high alps he was doing it with abnormal sized legs for so small a man. When Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome were doing the same they were doing it with legs like pipe cleaners.

I wasn’t taking as much air into my lungs as I would like but what oxygen I was sucking down was finding no shortage of red blood cells to carry it to legs , arms and brain. No illegal substances for Simon. Just a surfeit of cooked breakfasts and a million rotations of the pedals. I was making good progress up a very big mountain and I was enjoying every rotation.

Day 191: Education Education Education

Tags

Aberystwyth, Henry IV Part 1, Llanddowror, Llanwit Major, National library of Wales, Owain Glyndwr, St Illtyd, The Reverend Griffith Jones, Wales

A Journey Around the British Isles … Part 83

It is no surprise to find a major centre of learning in so remote a part of Wales. There are other major universities at Bangor and Lampeter and they are arguably even more off the beaten track. Wales is a country of education and Aberystwyth is perhaps the purest example of a town where learning takes a proportionally higher status than almost any other in Britain. Aber has a population, according to the 2001 census of 15,935. It has a student body of 10, 400. The sums are not as simple as they seem. It isn’t known how many of the students are from the area and how many have come to study there. However you do the working; there are an awful lot of educated people in town.

Aberystwyth was the first university in Wales and is a proudly Welsh institution. Money for the building, staffing and maintenance was all raised by the working people of the country. It is a model that has been replicated throughout the intervening years. The Welsh people have always put a value on education and have always been prepared to put their money (and often money has been in very short supply) where their values are.

Owain Glyndŵr, the last true Prince of Wales, had written of his desire to establish a university on Welsh soil as long ago as the fourteenth century. The English have long seen Glendower, as they call him, as something between a boastful mystic and a terrorist. The truth is far from that. His true nature is more nearly encapsulated in a wish to build a centre of learning than in uninformed tales and some Shakespearian mischief making in Henry IV Part One.

It took nearly five hundred years before his wish came true. But educational advances had been happening in the principality for many centuries.

Llanwit Major is today a thriving coastal town in the Vale of Glamorgan. I was taken there by a friend while visiting Cardiff in the late seventies. The town was founded by a remarkable man known to history as St Illtud. He sailed from Brittany to establish a monastery which makes him special but not unique. His place in the history books is made special by his founding of Bangor Tewdws (Great university) which is recognised as the first formal centre of learning in the British Isles.

There had been a Roman College on the site but what made LLanwit Major special is that it attracted scholars from all over Britain to study under Illtud. Ancient Greece has its Academy established by Aristotle who had been the pupil of Plato who in turn had been the pupil of Socrates. South Wales had Llanwit Major where Illtud’s students included the historian Gildas, Paulinus and more famously St David of Wales and St Patrick of Ireland. Both Plato and Socrates  had a world ranked philosopher among their former students. Whether this beats two patron saints is a point for discussion. Llanwit Major became a hub of enlightenment. St David and St Patrick being only two of many who left there to establish their own places of study and devotion. In Wales, religion and the advancement of learning have long gone hand in hand.

Further west in Carmarthenshire and a millennium or so later another remarkable Welshman brought about a silent revolution which left sparsely populated, rural, badly run down and neglected Wales one of the most literate countries in the world.

The Reverend Griffith Jones, rector of Llanddowror had a simple idea which worked so well it changed the whole nature of Welsh culture. As a teacher myself I am inspired by the work that he did in recognising that by far the most significant teaching aid  are the students. If you can create a class based on the dynamic of learning; a class where the teacher becomes primarily a learner who leads, and the students become teachers who learn, then you are a very good teacher indeed. Griffith Jones was just this.

In 1731 he created the idea of circulating schools. He ran a school in one place for several months where he taught pupils to read and those pupils in turn taught other pupils and so on. After several months he’d circulate the school to another place and begin the whole process over. Supported by wealthy philanthropist Bridget Bevan, it is estimated that he taught over 200,000 people to read and write. One of the nicest things you can hear as a teacher is a student saying that they wouldn’t have done it without you. It gives you a little boost but you know that anything you may have done would probably have been accomplished anyway by the sort of student who is aware enough to thank you for your help. In the case of Griffith Jones’ students, they simply would have remained illiterate had it not been for him. Not just one or two, but half the population of the country.

There weren’t many books in eighteenth century Carmarthenshire, so they used their new found skills to read the bible. Wales suddenly had a literate population who knew their scripture. Things were ready for the great Methodist Revival that gave us a land of independent thinking Non-Conformists, a land of song and a land where education was valued above all else.

University College Wales started life in the splendid gothic buildings on the sea front. Over the years it has extended itself and moved uphill and further inland. The town and the university are mutually dependent. There are occasionally town versus gown skirmishes in the many pubs but these tend to die down as quickly as they arise. Between the university and the seasonal holiday trade, Aberystwyth has a pretty secure future.

My destination is the National Library of Wales. I value libraries above almost any other institution. My own walls are book lined but I still love to sit and read or study or write in a library. I have favourites. Sheffield has a fabulous reading room, I’ve written much of my best prose in Scarborough Library and I could live a year in the British Library at St Pancras. The National Library of Wales would easily enter my all time list.

I intend a flying visit just to be able to say I’ve been there and end up staying for much of the rest of the morning. And I barely touch a book.

Anyone can visit and anyone can apply for a reader’s ticket. Without one you are not supposed to use the reading rooms. I committed this minor indiscretion and sat and completed my notes and then sketched for a while and finally, just sat. It is a magnificent library. And next door is a rather fine theatre.

I came late to study but have loved every minute that I have spent as a student. The institutions I have attended or worked at have given me an enormous amount for which I am eternally grateful. I wouldn’t want to change a thing. But, if I had my time again, I might just, like my friend Pat, choose to spend my student days in this remarkable Welsh seaside town. It seems to have everything I could possibly wish for.

Day 190: Milk Bars and Memorials

Tags

Aber, Aberystwyth, Billy Butlin, Cycle tour of Wales, National library of Wales, National Milk Bar, The Beatles, war memorials

A Journey Around the British Isles … Part 82

I added nine hours straight through sleep in the most comfortable of rooms overlooking the sea. I’ve always enjoyed waking up in the morning and enjoyed it ten fold this morning. The body had been tireder than I would care for it to become again. It was exhausted through physical effort and fatigued through lack of sleep. And now, it felt like it had been re-born. Strength was in my legs and my lungs pulled in more air than they had managed for days. I even felt that I had cast off the illness that I had carried with me since the Sperrin Mountains. That wasn’t to be but it felt very good to be alive.

It was pretty classy to sit in the window and write my notes while drinking tea. The tide was half way in. A wide sandy beach, hills, pier, harbour and wide stretching sea. I’d seen a lot of the British coast in these three weeks and this was likely to be my last sight of it. I spent as much time looking out of the  window as I did looking down at my writing. It was cloudy and breezy. You could almost say downright windy and from my bedroom it was impossible to tell which direction it was coming from. If it was behind me then I was going to be blown over the Cambrian Mountains. If it was going to be in my face, I’d consider another day on the coast.

Breakfast came and went in a dining room which felt the nineteen fifties so keenly it had forgotten to move on. Even the teenaged waiting staff were from my distant past. One almost expected them to be in black and white, and they were.

I was keen to get on my way; the next stage of my journey, whether it took me three, four or five days, would end with home and it was beginning to exert its pull. I wasn’t going anywhere though until I had had a look around this unique town.

I’ve never seen a National Milk Bar. Like Lyon’s Corner Houses  and Maypole Groceries, I’ve heard of them, absorbed them into a part of the pre-me Britain, but had never actually visited one. There’s one just around the corner from my hotel and I’m seven and a half months too late. It’s deserted and for sale. And even though I have no desire for a cheese toastie or a cup of frothy coffee, this seems a pity.

A National Milk Bar 1935

Once there was a minor empire of these shops. Willie and Florence Griffiths came up with the idea after seeing the growing popularity of milk bars in the United States. Like Billy Butlin, he took and American idea and made it work in depression hit 1930s Britain. The first one opened in Colwyn Bay in 1933. Within 10 years there were a dozen of them, mostly in Wales but there were National Milk Bars in Birmingham, Liverpool and, of course, Shrewsbury. Coffee bars were the new meeting places of the young after the war. Lionel Bart wrote that, “Once our beer was frothy and now it’s frothy coffee ‘cos, Fings ain’t what they used to be.” Sixties publicity made a big point of saying that the Beatles met in a National Milk Bar. It was true but a matter of semantics. They didn’t actually meet, as in become known to each other, in a milk bar but they  once met up in one.

Inside the National Milk Bar Llandiloes before its closure.

In a way their passing is a good thing. They were very successful while their founders and owners lived. They provided  a generous living and were part of the big push to drink milk of earlier times. We had a free bottle of milk to drink at playtime in primary school. Adverts cajoled us merrily to “Drinka Pinta Milka Day”. Cycle races were sponsored by the Milk Marketing Board and my favourite was the winning players from the FA Cup final being interviewed in the Wembley tunnel while quaffing from a pint bottle of the white stuff. But they were also a part of the nadir in British catering. The milk shakes were thin, the coffee tasted vaguely of coffee and was mostly foam and the food was largely uninspired. They would have suited me down to the ground. If only I’d done this trip a year earlier.

The last National Milk Bar is still open in Rhyl. It’s time to make that trip if I am going to catch a last taste of the Britain I was born into.

Map showing the National Milk Bar Empire at its height in the 1960s

At the southern end of the parade is what many regard as one of the finest war memorials in Britain. It indeed has a timeless beauty which sets it apart from most of its fellow monuments. It was built between 1921 and 1923 to a design by Professor Mario Rutelli. The money was raised in the town and Rutelli himself gave his plans and skills for free. There are four elements to this piece of work. They all work individually but collectively they are an impressive and fitting memory to the Welshmen who gave their lives for the freedom of others. The statue on the top represents Victory, the leaning statue pushing towards the sea is Humanity emerging from the effects of war. There are inscriptions in Welsh “Dros Ryddid: For Freedom, and in English “Greater love for no man than this…

The War Memorial Aberystwyth

It is a thing to see. I’m a sentimental old fool and I’m touched to the trickle of a tear.

A pale watery sunlight welcomes me back onto the sea front and in full daylight it is glorious. The town piles up the hills and cliffs behind to provide a glorious backdrop to the buildings nearest to the sea. The castle, the church and the old university college buildings are the three graces to Aberystwyth every bit as much as the three glories of the Liverpool pier head. The stone is largely the same but many hundreds of years, three very different architecture styles and three very different uses separate them. They blend perfectly. A monument to a warlike race, a monument to centuries of worship and a monument to higher levels of learning. They somehow encapsulate the town and what it stands for.

To have three such buildings on a British seaside promenade is unique and splendid. The rest of the seafront curves around the bay in long terraces of elegant houses and hotels. There is an extra dimension to Aber. It is cut off on one side by high mountains and on the other by the sea. It has always remained in touch with the latest developments in the world, but there is something detached about the town and that is something that makes it all the more special. All I need to fill my cup completely would be a major centre for the arts and a great national library. And Aberystwyth provides these too. All I’ve got to do is collect my bicycle from the hotel, post my notes home to the family and push my way, gently, up the hill.

Day 189: Aber

Tags

Aberystwyth, Cardigan Bay, James Toseland, middle aged bikers, red kites, the sea, university of Wales, Valentino Rossi, Wales

A Journey Around the British Isles … Part 81

Middle aged bikers join in the procession to the sea. These puzzle me as much as caravaners. Outwardly it’s the appeal of the highway and the escape from the crowd. Yet these folk love nothing better than to gather in herds, either in convoy on the roads or in taking over a market town or a seafront. In the days of patched Levis and bandanas bedecking youthful forms, there was a certain romance. Now they are older and the smell of mid-life is rich off them, their stunning girlfriends (it’s not a feminist sect) have broadened and coarsened. They are a bunch of rebels who set out to tear up the rules on health and safety yet they are now encased in body armour and corporate branding. Two fingers to the man has now become a need to express identity through brand names. Leathers can look good on a lithe, fit James Toseland or a  tiny, little Valentino Rossi. They don’t suit the waddle and the paunch. They pass by endlessly through the August afternoon on the coast of Wales. Used to a perceived lack of respect from the four wheel fraternity they pass on discourtesy to the cyclist.

The closer I get, the greater the remaining distance seems to be. It was around sixty mountain miles when I set off at the first light of dawn. Now it’s six and that seems almost too far. I stop at what must be a contender for the worst café in the principality. Attached to a CostCutter mini-mart it serves tepid tea and cottage pie with greater adhesive power than taste. It isn’t the sort of place to complain. The road outside is hot with holiday makers. The café is practically empty.

I’m sure I’m ready to enter the town when one final hill presents itself. Once over this another decides to take its place. A double last sting in the dragon’s tail. And here are a sight to see. I’ve waited all my life as a birdwatcher to see red kites and here are dozens of them. Soaring high on thermals rising from the cornfields or plunging through the very trees I cycle under. They are spectacular. Regarded as an endangered species for much of my life and, according to my bird books, only to be seen by the very lucky while walking in the deserted regions of mid Wales, they have been reintroduced in various parts of Britain. The success of the scheme around Aberystwyth is clear for all to see. One comes in to land quite near me; wings arched and back, legs extended and talons like meat hooks ready to grasp the branch. I feel privileged.

And finally I’m among streets and houses. I lose my way and struggle to find a town centre, but once I get off and push, I’m soon passing shops and colour and holiday crowds. The general movement is towards the sea front. I go with it. I’m tempted by anywhere that offers a bed for the night but hold out until I have seen the town. The Belle Vue Hotel is right on the front, is painted a delightful shade of Welsh blue, and has a double room just outside my price range which the girl on the desk can see no reason at all to reduce. I take it. Follow instructions to some outbuildings that were once stables and home of ostlers, I relieve my bicycle of bags it has carried from Kilkenny.

The room is perfect. A double bed , an easy chair looking out to sea and a bath that accepts my aching body. I don’t even try to read. The whole day passes before me as I lay back and know that I haven’t got to pedal another rotation. I can hear seagulls and waves heaving on the shore and the distant calls of children playing on the sand. I’ll walk out there later, but for now I towel myself down, climb into bed and am asleep almost instantly.

And I sleep for gentle hours. The bright afternoon sun looking over the shoulder of my hotel has become a low western sun glinting onto the waters of Cardigan Bay and beyond to Ireland where my head last lay down on a pillow.

An evening walk is just right. Trippers have gone, either the long drive home or to the many small hotels and guest houses. Weary ways have been taken and I’m still half asleep myself. But this town is radiant in the later light. I walk the length one way along the sand and shingles. We’re constantly drawn to the sea. It renews us, it refreshes us. The very sound of it speaks to something within us. I was born near the sea and it is the one thing I must return to. It is the call of a clock that was set many centuries before my birth. The drag and drift of the surf. The smell of salt and seaweed and iodine in the evening air. The very walk does me as much good as the sleep that rescued me. I feel more sleep calling but  want to see the town and have an hour of daylight.

The pier doesn’t want to let me on and I’m not disappointed.  I’d have to go through the sort of bar I’ve spent my adult life walking away from, in order to get out on the finger into the sea. It’s not much of a pier. The town and the sea look well enough from the shoreline. I walk to the other end and find the ruins of a castle.  I’ll find out the history and the stories later. Right now it just feels nice to be there and to see it. I sit on a bench and enjoy the flapping of a large Welsh flag above me and the call of the sea birds changing from gulls to waders as the evening slowly closes into night.

This is a town of poetry and language and learning. Wales holds a very special place in the development of education in Britain. It gave us our first centres of learning and our first real attempts to extend learning to all. It is the land of the teacher every bit as much as it is the land of the poet and the storyteller. It is a land of aspiration against the odds, the land of having to do things the hard way but getting on a little bit further because of it. The wonderful gothic pile on the front is part of the University. It softens its hard edges in the evening light. It reminds me of so many lectures in Manchester and Exeter and Oxford and Birmingham. I found my own route to an education at a different time and at a different pace to my peers. I’ve found my own route out here to this university on the western coast of Wales, the land of my grandmother. I feel at home and I feel at peace.

Day 185: Up and Down and Side to Side

Tags

Aberteifi, Aberystwyth, Brynmor Williams, Cardigan, eisteddfod, Gareth Edwards, Lord Rhys, Welsh counties

A Journey Around the British Isles … Part 78

Just as it begins to rain, a man arrives in a van to water the hanging baskets which adorn the Guildhall. He’s very Welsh and very helpful; the two seem to go together.

“Is it just as hilly? Well, I should say it’s thirty eight miles of ups and downs and another thirty eight miles of side to side.”

“The woman in the shop said some people don’t like the road.”

“She’s telling the truth. A lot of people avoid it if they can. It’s not just that it’s hilly and full of bends, it gets all the holiday traffic as well, see. You’ll be sick of the sight of caravans by the time you get to Aberystwyth. Still, it’s not as bad as the road you’ve already travelled. You’ve done well to be here by now. Keep going at this rate and you’ll be fine. Good luck to you and mind how you go.”

Despite the rain, which is falling in a soft Welsh way, I promenade the town once more. Earlier I had been seeking sustenance, now I was trying to put off the hills that lay ahead. Cardigan is compact, diverse, historically fascinating and from what I could tell, a rather good place to live.

People of my age learnt the names of the counties at school and any that have changed since the sixties cause us problems. (Baby boomers have lived through greater change than any previous generation; but we still find it hard to cope with). We refuse to recognise Merseyside and Cleveland even though they make sense and are not unpleasant names. We disliked the name Salop so much (even though it was an ancient one) that it was got rid of. We never did learn all the Welsh counties but we have an idea whereabouts they were. Montgomeryshire on the border with England, Flintshire in the north and Cardiganshire out there on the west coast. Modern Welsh counties have ancient and appropriate names. We English haven’t a clue where they are. We cannot distinguish our Gwynedd from our Powys. The only one we have a chance with is Glamorgan and that is because of the cricket. Originally the county and the town were both known as Cardigan. The “shire” was added to avoid confusion. In the 1990’s the county became known as Ceredigion which is the Welsh spelling of Cardigan. It means Ceredig’s land. The Welsh know the town as Aberteifi (the mouth of the River Teifi).

The Norman’s built a castle here and it became one of the strongholds of twelfth century warlord and patron of the arts Lord Rhys. He held the very first Eisteddfod here in 1176. The town twice held the international Eisteddfod in the twentieth century and has a fine tradition of celebrating and preserving Welsh cultural traditions.

For over two hundred years during the industrial revolution, Cardigan was the most important sea port in South Wales, handling seven times the goods as Cardiff and three times as much as Swansea. Like Wexford across the St George’s Channel, the port declined through silting of the river and the changing sands of the estuary. Shipbuilding was another important industry. But it is as a market town that Cardigan has long prospered and continues to do so. It serves a huge area and has always been able to provide skills and services to the forge and to the field. In 1830 there were four blacksmiths, two tanners and a miller, but there were also no fewer than thirteen bootmakers in the town.

The river drew me. I’m always drawn to rivers that flow through towns. Here the morning peace of the modern Cardigan contrasts strongly with the historic bustle of a major seaport of years gone by. I sit and absorb. I love to read history books but have learnt every bit as much through just sitting and looking around me. It is yet another place that I feel the need to return to.

Among the famous people who were born in the town is a favourite name from the sixties. Brynmor Williams was perhaps the most poetic sounding of all the great Welsh rugby players of that golden era. He was a very good player too. He was without doubt the second best scrum half in British rugby for many seasons but only won three caps for his country. He had the misfortune to have a playing career that coincided with one Gareth Edwards. Once Gareth Edwards retired from the game the Welsh half back factory produced another master in Terry Holmes. Holmes eventually went north to earn some legal money with Bradford Northern playing the greatest game. By that time Brynmor Williams was coming to the end of a magnificent but sparsely capped career. It was one of the treats of gallic fusion to hear his name being pronounced by Scottish commentator, Bill McLaren.

It’s only a passing shower, but the sky promises one or two more, so I decide to take advantage of the dry conditions to get back on the bike and roll out of town. The ride begins with a hill. It doesn’t look steep but it makes me feel that the bicycle and the panniers have doubled their weight while at rest. Any enlivening of muscles and lungs is used up on the slope.

Past terraced rows and schools. Past discount supermarket and Ford dealer and, as the houses begin to give way to fields, and the slope changes from gentle to severe, I pass a Tesco and the urban street becomes a major road.

I now have a map that tells me most of the main roads of Britain. It doesn’t give any smaller routes. The main road hugs the coast. It has a cycle lane to keep me separated from the growing volume of traffic. I really don’t see any choice. I’m Aberystwyth bound and I’m starting as I will go on; struggling against fatigue and gravity. I have 38 miles to pedal to get to the great university town. We have universal measurements. A mile is a mile whether it is in Oslo or Oregon. It just seems that a Welsh mile is a little bit longer and an awful lot steeper.

Day 184: It’s in the Mirror

Tags

Aberystwyth, afon teifi, Cardigan, Cycle tour of Wales, Daily Mirror, nescafé, Wales

A Journey Around the British Isles … Part 77

There are no plateaus on the tops and no valley floors. I cycle up one side of the hill and glide down the other. The day gets stronger, occasional cars pass and farmers begin to tend their fields. It’s still before the getting up time of the majority and my sleepless fatigue is balanced by the stunning beauty of the west of Wales. When I take the main road option at Newport I leave the sea and the coastal views but plunge into the interior. It’s an adult portion; no gentle, undulating flatlands here for the faint-hearted; these are the hard yards for the legs but the sweet miles on the eye and the ear.

I continue to pass little guest houses and farmhouse b&bs. If it were after six in the evening I would stop at any one of them, but it is only just after six in the morning. I resolve a plan. If I can’t fill up with sleep; and it is at times like this that you appreciate just what an amazing job sleep does in restoring the body, what enormous strength we draw from it; then I will fuel myself on food. If only Cardigan would come closer.

The Afon (river) Teifi marks my arrival. This is a river to study. Almost perfect in every detail whether you are a painter, a fly fisherman or a coracle builder. This river is rewarding and beautiful in equal measure. Its source is a collection of tarns in the sparsely populated regions of mid Wales, its course contains one of the largest natural bog lands in Britain and it flows with grace and power through all the stages of a river. It’s entry into Cardigan is hidden and mysterious in a steep wooded gorge. It is a majestic stream that flows under the town’s bridges and after Cardigan it opens out into an estuary to match any in the five nations. I’ve camped by the Teifi, swum in the stream and built sand castles where it reaches the sea. I like this river.

I like Cardigan as well, even if it is a little slow to provide this cyclist with the sustenance I require. The café I had been fantasising about doesn’t seem to exist. The smoking mugs of coffee and the plates of devilled kidneys and hot rolls belong to another world. I’ve got empty streets and closed shops.

The town is pretty. Not a word I often use to describe towns of this size, but it has preserved its good looks while providing all the services a grown up town needs. Except at seven in the morning! I’m not alone. A number of directionless fellows are wandering the otherwise deserted streets. I park my bicycle and join them on the aimless saunter. Always hoping that the perfect breakfast is just around the corner but finding everything as closed as an oyster. Even the Portaloos near the river are firmly shut, though my need obliges me to find a way inside. I almost wish I hadn’t.

I park myself on a bench in the muffled middle beneath a Welsh flag and the town clock and watch the somnambulists of the west stare into shop windows or shuffle by untrusting. A portly, bearded man on a mobility scooter waits patiently at the pelican crossing until the light shows green. There isn’t a car for miles. Once across he engages me in a conversation. He could be speaking Welsh. All I hear are incomprehensible phonemes with a rising inflection that suggests that he is asking me a question.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

The phrase gets repeated three more times, each time with increasing waving of the arms and a darkening of fierce facial features. The nearest I can make out is “Are you rough?” and I decide to go with this.

“No, I’m just a little tired thank you.”

He seems to think that I’ve spent the night on the tiles  There’s a half empty beer glass on the ledge behind me that I hadn’t noticed.

We grunt at each other a little more and he seems satisfied and scooters away.

Down a side street a Premier shop opens and I become the first customer. The woman is beyond delightful; she is seriously lovely. She’s sorting the papers into piles on the floor of the shop and before I’ve properly entered she’s being helpful. “Which paper is it you are wanting?” (the full magical glory of the lilting tones of Welsh are there. I feel as though I am in an opera.) “So I can sort it out for you.’

“Well, actually. I wasn’t wanting a paper. I wondered if you sold maps.”

“No we don’t.” It was said rather beautifully with full apology in the manner. “But!” she announces as her hands fall on a pile of thin road atlases. “They are giving these away today with the Daily Mirror. They look very good, see? They’ve even got a map of Ireland.”

“That’s where I’ve just come from.”

We look at the pages together. They are really quite good. Enough detail and the all important confirmation that I have chosen (by accident) a sensible way of getting from Fishguard to Derbyshire. We both agree that fate was on my side when it brought me to this shop on the day the Mirror was actually giving away road atlases.

“A lot of people don’t like that road (to Aberystwyth), it’s so bendy see.”

“I’ll have a Daily Mirror then please. And, have you anything that I could have for breakfast?”

“I’ll sort your newspaper for you. You go and see what you can find.”

And stone me if there isn’t a coffee machine and a selection of yesterday’s sandwiches. The machine produces me a Nescafé cappuccino and the shelf provides me with a ham and egg roll.

“You get the coffee half price because you have bought it with a sandwich. It’s a meal deal see.”

She has made my morning. Friendly, cheerful and wonderfully helpful. I take my purchases back to my bench. I’ve had better breakfasts but I can’t remember one that I enjoyed more. A street cleaner shows undue diligence in collecting every tiny scrap of paper from around me without acknowledging my presence. Another man walks by, stops in front of me and stares in a manner I would have found unsettling half an hour earlier (I now recognised it as a local pastime), took out a comb, straightened his tousled locks, stared at me again as if to garner approbation, and walked on.

The coffee is delicious and it brightens my brain magnificently. I use these renewed mental powers to look through the tabloid. Ten minutes later I feel enriched enough with the world of boob jobs, minor celebrities and the detailed news of Manchester united and Chelsea to dump, all bar the road atlas, into the nearest bin. I am watched closely by the road sweeper. I contemplate a second coffee and sandwich. It starts to rain.

Day 183: The Longest Day

Tags

Aberystwyth, Cardigan, Dinas Cross, Fairport Convention, Fishguard, Incredible String Band, Land of my Fathers, Steeleye Span

A Journey Around the British Isles … Part 76

Despite having my notes to occupy me and chocolate and water from a Wexford tap, the night extends itself and I feel a terrible tiredness. If a hotel had a night porter I’d book myself in and sleep for twenty four hours. I used to admire those who managed without sleep and have stayed up in my youth and in my prime. All I feel at present though is hollowness and a cold that worries my chest and legs. The plan had centred on getting some sleep on the ferry and I got none. I’m about to discover just how important sleep is to a man in his fifties. Sitting quietly in a deserted railway terminal in the West of Wales is no sort of rest. I have nothing to knit up my ravelled sleeve of care. I have little spur to my ambition. I haven’t even got a map, just a distant memory that there is a coast road to Aberystwyth and that, if I get there, I may be no nearer home. But I’ll at least be further north and this pleases my homing instincts. I made a bad mistake in not buying a map in Wexford and am only too aware that I may be setting off in entirely the wrong direction.

If only the dawn would arrive and I could set off in some direction.

I’d hoped to be on my way by half past four but it’s still thick night. By quarter to five you can tell that morning is on its way and I mount the bicycle and slowly pedal through the shadows of the docks. The port seems to go on forever and my legs are almost devoid of strength.

Instinct tells me to ride through the town, the road sign tells me to go a different route. I obey the sign, being happy to see the word Cardigan, my first target, and find myself on a hill that not only points to the sky but nigh on reaches it. I have hopes that it may get the blood circulating and rejuvenate my legs. There is to be no rejuvenation. I’m buried and I’ve only cycled two miles and climbed one hill. To rub considerable salt into my deep lack of morning enthusiasm, I pass a sign pointing to my left. It says Fishguard half a mile.

I’m on a main road. I have nowhere to stop. I’m already completely exhausted and I’ve covered a net half mile. Welcome to Wales.

As the morning washes the inky darkness from the sky, the gathering light reveals a landscape to make my spirit dance. This is beauty true blent. This is the land of storyteller and the saint. My Welsh blood starts to pump. Maybe not the land of my father but certainly the land of my grandmother and all of her family up until her for as many generations as one can count. I have the world to myself and, despite fatigue, that world is magnificent.

And it is only twenty miles to Cardigan. Twenty miles doesn’t seem very far; an evening run out; a morning jaunt. On the other side of the hill is a downslope and my jauntiness gets an airing. At the bottom of the hill the road immediately points upwards again. It is to be a pattern they repeats itself for the rest of the day. I start at sea level and end at sea level and climb thousands and thousands of feet.

A scattering of cottages and bed and breakfasts bead the ribbon of the road. I envy every sleeping person within. I envy every sleeping person in the entire principality and then, not thirty yards in front, just where the shadows of the tall trees meet the first rays of the sun, a fox, midnight black and nimble on his pins is dancing in the middle of the road. And I mean dancing. Stopping, he becomes aware of me and calmly leaves the stage. No panic in his breast at my entrance. If anything, a parting sniff of derision.

And up we go again. I climb as far as I can and push the rest of the way. It’s hard work and my mental state becomes as deflated as my physical. But as I rise up, magnificent coastal views come into sight. Who can see these without some quickening of the heart? To my right the fields eventually give way to upland hills and fells. I’m caught in a pincer movement between beauty and pain.

At the brow I come into the pretty village of Dinas Cross. The houses here are still sleeping and look most attractive in the morning air. They know how to paint houses in the west of Wales. Mostly they are whitewashed which always works, but the locals like to experiment with bolder shades which you wouldn’t think would work. In the Welsh morning light they look just fine to me.

The uphills are so hard fought that the downhills cannot repay. What can take twenty minutes to climb can take less than two to descend.

At Newport I find myself nodding off at 30 miles per hour. I’ve heard of it happening to motorists (we don’t admit of it happening to ourselves) but I’ve never heard of a pedaller falling asleep at his wheels.

In the 1790s poets left urban settlements in search of truth and beauty in the countryside and rural settings. In the 1960s progressive rock bands did the same. They had a farmhouse stage which usually lasted a little over a year and involved drinking industrial amounts of alcohol, producing an inferior LP and then having the musical differences that lead to an eventual split. Newport was the country base of The Incredible String Band. I loved, and indeed still love, the folk rock fusion of Fairport Convention’s Liege and Leif phase and I like the early work of Steeleye Span but I never really fell for The Incredible String boys. They seemed to sum up what happens to perfectly good music in the hands of people who are too clever by half for a simple medium. They are to English folk music what the Sealed Knot are to English history. Interesting in their own way but largely to be avoided.

If I had possessed a map I would have chosen the little coastal road but my over-riding desire is to get to Cardigan and some breakfast and some rest. The coastal road would have saved me a couple of miles, but I wasn’t to know. The five hills I’d climbed so far were the toughest five hills I’d encountered on the whole journey. There were plenty more to come.