North Wales and Stroud

North Wales

Bill Andrews invited us for dinner at Rhosneigr, a wind-swept Welsh holiday town on the beach in Anglesey, a mecca for kite-surfers , and only 30 minutes drive from the ferry. Prince Harry and Kate Middleton are living there at the moment as it is near an RAC airbase.

We hadn’t seen Bill for 17 years, and had a great catch-up walking at the beach, over a pint at the pub, and then supper at his holiday house. He originally lived in Monkstown near Dara, got her the job in West Bromwich where we met, and was best-man at our wedding.

Next stop was the stone cottage in Nantmor, North Wales, where we met with Steve Pitman, Andy and Hanne Barton, Chris Alford, Ruth, Julie Calvert, Roger Humphreys, Mike Roger and Mike Thomas.  Sue and Rod Cook, and Bill Andrews arrived on Saturday morning. The cottage was a charming restored farm building, surrounded by green fields and very white tame sheep with long tails.

In keeping with tradition on Saturday morning, many cups of tea and many hours late, we went off walking in the hills with threatening black clouds hanging over the bleak dark gray peaks of Snowdonia National Park. The peaks look huge but the scale is different from NZ and we arrived at the top after a bracing scramble up the Watkins Track.  We were just in time for a cup of hot chocolate in the very naff summit cafe with all the punters who had taken a ride up in the train.

The walk ended, predictably, in the pub a couple of hours later. David Pugh had arranged a dinner at the cottage and we had a great time reminiscing with everyone, finishing the evening with a single malt at about 2.30am.

So another slow start followed on Sunday and another soggy walk, this time a little shorter as most people had a long drive back to England that night.  Dara and I, with Sue Cook, stayed an extra night, heading to Stroud the next morning in pouring rain.  My shoes were beginning to grow smelly moss by now as they had been wet for so long. The drive through mid-Wales was very scenic though and we called in to Bromsgrove on the way. A mistake. This was the venue for the first work Christmas party I went to in England with Dara in 1983, but it was now going through hard times.

Stroud was as we remembered, with beautiful Cotswold stone houses and streets.  We had two lovely nights there, at David and Rowena Pugh’s, meeting Rowena for the first time, and looking at a lot of old photos.

Back to Heathrow the next day the kind and sharp sighted car rental man pointed out that the small dent in the bumper (which appeared after a 10 point turn in a narrow dead-end Welsh lane lined with un-yielding stone walls). 50 pounds please.  The fee was waived when we countered with a complaint about the non-functioning air-conditioning. Time for a climate change; Barcelona, here we come.

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